Chapter Text
It was so deeply dark that the stars were Arthur’s main source of light as he stumbled, exhausted to his very bones, over the wide, gorse-covered landscape. The moon was the barest sliver, offering no help. Every rise and dip in the land, each stray stone and sudden hollow were unseen and unexpected. His feet broke through something, and when he reached down to tear it away he found animal bones, as brittle as egg shells and so white they gleamed even in the near black. He staggered on, thinking with pain about the exhausted horse he had left far behind him and the quick apology he had said into her twitching ear over her rapid breaths. Ahead of him, he saw the black shape of the woods, his destination, though he seemed to be getting no closer to it. His body and mind ached with the thought of the journey that was still before him. Hopelessness flooded the tight container of his heart, he tried not to drown in it and willed himself to press forward.
Morgana’s strange undead forces were no doubt searching for him still, searching as well for the same thing he was –Excalibur, stolen, now lost deep in these woods. It was a place rarely spoken of and so forbidden to the likes of him, that none could know just what lay ahead.
Following his escape, the chase had been long, overland first on horses then on foot. It was only a few hours ago that he managed to give them the slip, taking advantage of boulders and copses and the single-mindedness of the non-living, who did not look up as they passed to see Arthur perched just above them on the stone, holding his breath. Every movement sent shooting pain through his bruised and swollen arm where Morgana’s dragon had lunged for him, he needed all of his limbs to climb and catch himself in the dark, so in his pain, maintaining silence as he scrambled away from them was no small feat.
It was another new moon six years ago that had set all of this in motion. His mind wandered as he fell and caught himself over and over, on circles, on things resurfacing, on old pains and dangers come back to haunt him in the present. Years ago, a small kingdom wiped out by a sickness only magic could heal, a family seeking their revenge for Uther’s regime, so brutal it reached far beyond Camelot’s borders; now, a dead kingdom raised for his sister’s army led by wraiths bent on ending the Pendragon line. Merlin had saved his life that night with his magic, and had fled Camelot and the death sentence Uther had placed upon him. Before his escape he imparted the prophecies that he would wield Excalibur, that he was destined to unite and bring peace to Albion. Merlin was long gone now and had not been seen or heard from since, even in his homeland.
Not long after, Uther had died, marking the beginning of Arthur’s lonely reign.
To the east the stars had started to fade, the sky slowly lightening there gradient by gradient as the open landscape was interrupted by trees. At first it was small stands of birch and rowan, with the occasional juniper making up the understory, but soon he had plunged into the dark as sessile oaks took over and grew in size and age, forming a gnarled canopy overhead. He descended with the mossy dip of the land deeper and deeper, the sunrise behind him. He hurried, watchful, knowing, even if the undead had given up their pursuit, that they would surely be here too, trying to find the sword. He moved from one tree to the next both for cover and to help him find his way forward. The softness of the moss underfoot meant even stepping over the debris of the trees, he made almost no sound but for his laboured breath. In fact, there was no sound here but the ringing of his own ears, too early still, he supposed, for the dawn chorus.
Travelling in a line he navigated the obstacles, and used hand and foot holds where he could. He held onto an oak, descended a steep slope and caught onto branches as he went, he broke what would be a fall with the rotted trunk of another. He pulled at ivy, trying to find purchase as he stumbled over a root. He pushed his way through the soft bracken, realising too late that nettles were hiding within. He ignored the prickling it left behind, the small points of pain and irritation, and pressed on. Then he saw it, through a break in the trees, on a rise with the sky behind them, the armoured figures, the wraith of Lady Seren and her collection of dead warriors, not looking in his direction. He hid behind the huge roots of a fallen wych elm and watched. He readied his off-hand uselessly over the sword Sir Leon gave him before they parted, though the dead were far off. Just when he thought they might turn in his direction, they disappeared over the ridge. He went quickly in the opposite direction to put a safe distance between them.
The world around him lightened as he went, but his vision narrowed at almost the same pace. He blinked and caught himself, the ground startling him, suddenly closer than it should have been. He realised with a start he didn’t know how far he’d gone, not even sure if he had been going in the right direction. Had he turned west already again like he had planned? With no treeline or opening to the sky to aid him he slowed and looked for shadows, trying to gauge the direction of the sun. Then, seeing light winking through the captured dew of the morning somewhere overhead, he started heading deeper again.
Mist began to rise around him as the woods warmed, in some spots lying as ghostly sheets in the air, taking away his hopes of better visibility. His skin cooled and moisture gathered in his hair. When he breathed the air felt thick and smelled of green and soil. With every step forward he wished for rest, every tree hollow, every bed of moss enticed him to simply lie down. He imagined bedding down in the leaves, his head pillowed on the clover just then at his feet. In his daydreaming he was blind to the terrain around him and suddenly he was tumbling down a slope, hitting stones and knotted roots. He came to a stop on his side in a pile of leaf litter.
He was still for a few moments, letting the ache of the blows subside. He watched the progress of a millipede over a dry leaf that foregrounded his vision. It was then he finally allowed himself to be taken under by that flood of hopelessness, feeling like the riverbottom had finally disappeared from below his toes. He was tripping half-asleep toward his death, he knew, what else could possibly lay ahead for him but death when he was alone, exhausted and without Excalibur? He flopped onto his back and stared at the pattern of branches above, the image contracting and expanding strangely as his heart slowed. Recognising the signs of dehydration, he wished for water that he didn’t have. Between the leaves the sky had brightened to pink, seeing it he wondered vaguely if this was the last sunrise he’d ever see, whether would live to see it set.
He frowned at himself. Well, if I’m going to die there’s no honour in being a coward about it.
He sat up dizzily and examined the hill he’d fallen from. The trees above were all tipping toward him, if he had been less tired he might have taken note and seen the drop before falling. Set into the base of the hill he saw a lichen adorned tomb or cairn of some sort, big enough for him to curl up in its inside. The hill and the small recess would ensure he was hidden. It looked mightily inviting. Too exhausted to consider anything else, he crawled across the leaves and tucked himself below the protruding lintel stone, his back on a boulder that partially sealed off the entrance. When he peered inside he saw many trefoils of three conjoined circles etched into the stone, extending back into the empty, shadowy space. He ignored the two competing internal voices that sounded alarmingly like Merlin and his father telling him to be respectful, or fearful, of things sacred to the Old Religion. He crunched up as he settled in, and although his temple and good shoulder were uncomfortable against the stone, and his mind was on the things that stalked him, he dropped quickly into sleep.
Arthur awoke half-prone and confused. He looked around to see stone all about him and, dejected, he rapidly remembered his situation. His head was resting on the boulder, he must have slipped down in his sleep. He began to right himself but a noise close to his ears stopped him, a deep, chest shaking grinding. He had no time to wonder what it was. Above him and below him the stone shifted and opened like a maw around his head, ready to clamp down. He rolled forward adeptly into the leaf litter, suppressing a shout. Already on his feet, Leon’s sword out, he saw the lintel meet boulder in a powerful bite and then grind and draw back, looking, bizarrely for the thing’s lack of facial features, like it knew it had been thwarted. Arthur got away quickly, kicking leaves, headless of the tracks he was making as he escaped, heart quickening as he processed what he had just witnessed. Climbing out of the hollow he made to clutch for a bare branch, only for his hand to grasp air. He reached again, and just when he almost had it the branch moved, it moved! Reeling, he scrambled up without it, using his bad arm.
Up and out, he struck west again, but the forest was alive around him. Something in his periphery shifted and when he wheeled about, a bush was- surely that dogwood wasn’t creeping toward him? But it wasn’t the only thing moving. Picking up his pace he noticed vines of ivy snaking down from the surrounding trees, growing bolder as he went. He sliced up at it but this seemed to only incense it. He tripped on the loop of a root that he knew too late was rising from the ground. Before he could get away it closed around his ankle, he flipped onto his back and, thinking quickly, he dug at the mud below with his heel and then was free and running away, hacking at all before him. Ivy and bearded lichen dropped like curtains before him and twinned around his sword, he had to employ more strength than he thought he had to pull and slice it free. He splashed over a ravine and shucked his feet from mud that he was certain was trying to swallow him. Too occupied, he didn’t see the briar tendril stalking toward him until it had wrapped around his leg and he was being dragged fast on his back through bracken and over unseen roots that would no doubt leave bruises over the bones of his spine. He brought himself half-upright and with a few hacks he had severed it. He took just a second to unwind it from his bloodied ankle before he was on his feet and running hard. The woods blurred into colours in his periphery with his speed as it tipped toward him, reached for him.
Then a heavy, fast swinging branch hits him hard in the stomach and all the air is gone from him. With all the momentum of his frenzied run he folded and hinged over it, and the horizon shifted from canopy to treeline to- Arthur tipped head first into a drop below.
And suddenly he was in water with something immediately around him, keeping him down. But his feet kicked and found the shallow bottom quickly. He rose out of the water, gasping, hands on the thing surrounding him, a- net? A fishing net. And thankfully inert. Regardless he started to fight out of it as he tried to assess this new place and its threats, his heart drumming in his ears. He was in a large pool in an almost grove-like hollow, behind him he heard the small waterfall that fed it. Above, the canopy was dense, only the barest blue -blue now, he noted- was visible above this world of greens and browns.
Through the net and the wet curtain of his hair, Arthur noticed with a start a pair of bare feet and accompanying staff approaching him from the bank above. Alarmed, he tried to shrug off the net but only succeeded in tangling himself further.
The figure stopped above him, staff striking stone hard. “Hey! That’s my net,” a voice said, and Arthur knows that voice. How couldn’t he? Though his heart had picked up again he stilled, more concerned now with confirming his suspicions than freeing himself. And through the tangle he saw him, a tall, lean figure, bearded and unkempt but otherwise unmistakable.
“Your net-?” Arthur intoned incredulously before coming to his senses. "Merlin!?"
Notes:
The general plot of this chapter, the forest being alive, Morgana's strange forces and Hermit!Merlin are shamelessly and lovingly pilfered from Quest for Camelot.
Comments make my silly heart smile.
Do also let me know if you find a typo, I'm a fiend for them.
Chapter 2: United We Stand
Summary:
On their way to marry their daughter to the prince of a petty kingdom, a small noble family arrive in Camelot in the depths of winter. It is not shelter from the weather but revenge they seek. A sickness spreads in the small kingdom that can be only healed by magic, but Uther's influence has spread far beyond the borders of Camelot and no healer could be found. With the guests bent on ending the Pendragon line, Merlin has no choice but to save Arthur's life and reveal his magic in the process.
“Arthur, you’re alright, it’s over it’s- oh thank the Gods! Arthur look at me-”
Look, he thought, as though the sense had been forgotten, and Merlin was above him, his face red, wreaked with anguish. Then a small smile of relief, of fondness, as Arthur came back by degrees. Still grabbing at the pieces of himself, he was sure Merlin’s smiles were something of great importance.
“There you are, you’re alright.” Smile sad now.
Arthur matched his expression, worried.
“Listen to me,” he said hoarsely. Arthur flinched as fat tears hit his face from above but was soothed when a thumb wiped them away, realising now that the pleasant cold, the comforting touch, was his friend’s hands gently cradling his face.
Notes:
Hullo hullo!
The next few chapters explain what happened six years ago and in the intervening time. How and why did Merlin leave Camelot? Who are these wraiths and dead soldiers that Morgana has raised for her army? How did Arthur come to stumble head first through a magical forest in search of Excalibur? These are sad times and the tone is different to the rest of the fic, but I promise you the magical forest and Hermit!Merlin are on their way >:)!
Up top, these chapters take place after Morgana's betrayal/siege and it assumes there was a stretch of time that Uther was kinda okay™ after the ordeal.
The fic also places Merlin hatching Aithusa a little earlier, Lancelot is somehow alive (we won't think about it too hard) and we're accepting that the deleted scene wherein Arthur gives Merlin his mother's sigil is canon.
Apologies to any Welsh people for my misuse of your language in the naming of my minor OCs, please feel free to return the favour - yours sincerely, an Irish person. I make frequent use of asterisks and other place markers in my writing so their names are a dumb in-joke purely for me.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
6 Years Ago
It must have snowed overnight. Or, snow wasn’t quite the word for it, this stuff was crystalline, and was melting in piles all around Camelot, leaving the air biting and the ground wet. Still, all was transformed white below Arthur’s window and he took a moment to appreciate it as Merlin dressed him. He was watching the lines of smoke from the morning fires against the still winter air, and the opaline effect of the low winter sun on the snow upon the roofs. Merlin secured a warm fur-lined vest over his shirt with a belt then peeled away to rummage in Arthur’s wardrobe. Returning he slid a red padded jacket over it all, the emblem of Camelot embroidered in yellow thread on the left side. It was completed with thick light-coloured trousers and brown lace up boots.
He patted him down like he was dusting him off. “There,” he said, and stood back to admire his handiwork. “Warm enough?”
“I should think so,” Arthur answered, adjusting the belt a little over his stomach. Before he could think about it very much he asked, “and what about you?”
“Mm, me?” Merlin blinked, startled at the question. He was wearing something deep green, oversized and stiffly woollen over his usual tunic. It was a ridiculous thing, there were no buttons or laces to speak of, he would have had to slip it over his head like a dress. It looked new, a Yuletide gift maybe, perhaps from Gaius or Hunith in Essetir. Noticing Arthur eyeing it, he flashed him a toothy, eye crinkling smile. “Oh, yes, plenty warm. Nice of you to care.”
Arthur lamented the lack of goblets in reach to throw at him.
Thus went the domestic dances they performed when there was little else to do. This winter, although a particularly harsh one, was gratefully lacking in the perils to which they had become accustomed and was proving to be a very welcome reprieve from the events of the year just passed. All told, they had settled with little resistance into the uneventfulness of the season, strangely reassured that their enemies were human enough to pause their nefarious doings until such a time as the weather improved.
At this time of year, when the cold was at its worst, one had no choice but to stay put and wait patiently for spring. The castle was largely shut to guests because guests rarely came, they simply made their own fun, worked through their stores of food and broke into long awaited casks of ale and mead. Even the servants slowed down. With training and excursions all but halted, Merlin’s ordinarily long list of duties had been whittled down to the most basic tasks. But even he, lazy and useless servant as he was, seemed to be restless. With little for either of them to do they shared many idle hours together. It was in these many hours that Arthur learned they were evenly matched in chess -it was an excellent, if surprising, discovery. A memorable game had both of them with promoted pawns play-acting as queens, and a pair of kings diving in and out of check all across the board. Their armies mutually decimated, there were few other pieces left. But it was Merlin’s bishop (Arthur expected this was his favourite piece for he used them cleverly in their games) and his same said promoted pawn that eventually cornered Arthur’s king. The prince was too impressed and having too much fun to do anything but laugh at his own defeat and his servant’s not entirely unexpected genius.
He had to admit, though lacking guests and its usual bustle, the castle was richer in company these days.
Just last night he, Merlin and his knights had piled into this very chamber, the drink had flowed, bawdy (and increasingly filthy) songs were sung and Merlin beat them all at cards, repeatedly. By the third consecutive win Arthur sought revenge for them all and trapped the obviously cheating man in a headlock, tugging at one of his absurd ears until he cried for mercy. He had given the abused ear one more tug before letting go as extra, special revenge for his awful singing voice. Learning nothing from his punishment however, the man went on to repeat his crimes, and this time he had accomplices. In a strange show of clumsy group poeticism reserved only for the drunk, they all composed a truly stupid ditty that had them laughing at themselves but banging the table all the same. Soon all of them, including Arthur, had joined in, shouting it together. Arthur would be lying if their combined efforts didn’t make his heart swell:
United we stand, now and forever
In truth, divided we fall
Hand upon hand, brother to brother
No one shall be greater than all!
Even now, Arthur heard himself humming it, sometimes to the shy tuneless accompaniment of his manservant as he tidied around him.
Today however their merriment, or at least the close informality of it, would be interrupted. They were due guests, a wedding procession of sorts on their way to the minor kingdom of Astyrex. The petty King had fallen gravely ill and as per the kingdom’s traditions, the crown prince must first be married to succeed. The bride was the only daughter of that king’s most trusted Lord and Lady Dalfan and Llenwi. The sudden snowfall had stranded the travellers on their way from their winter home in the south and they had sent a messenger ahead requesting shelter until the cold weather passed.
Finished with his tidying, Merlin joined him again at the window alcove, standing within arm’s reach. After a long moment of silence, it occurred to Arthur that they were looking at different things, the other man choosing to follow the careful process of the people in the icy streets below, the bare trees beyond and occasionally, the flight of a bird. Arthur spent a little time paying attention to each of these things in turn, two ladies carrying baskets leaning together in conversation, their breath white; the beech trees of the woods outside of the walls, dark now in contrast to the white that lined their branches; and a pair of grey crows taking off from the walled-off castle gardens, making their way quickly across the limited latticed field of the windows. He looked again at Merlin, wanting to know what else was catching the man’s interest, but clearly he had grown bored with the window because instead he met his eyes.
A mischievous smile spread across his face. “How’s the hangover?”
“It’s hell,” Arthur admitted, sighing, like he was waiting to be asked. “I’d rather be in bed. Remind me not to drink with you again, or sing…. Good God the singing… Definitely shouldn’t gamble with you again either.”
The other man’s smile transformed into a smug one, but he said nothing.
“What? Not taking the opportunity to gloat?”
Merlin made a popping sound with his lips like a bottle being uncorked. “No, wouldn’t do that to you, sire… If I did I would say ‘better luck next time’ or maybe I’d say ‘that’s just cards?’ Or, I could call you a sore loser… But I won’t.”
“Oh you won’t? I see, how mature of you.” Arthur said evenly, and then he swiped for the back of the other man’s head.
His servant muttered something under his breath.
“What was that?”
“Nothing!”
“I’m sure.”
“So... Have you met these people before?” He asked then, referring to the coming wedding procession, the corners of his mouth still twitching with suppressed laughter even as he tried to change the topic.
Arthur sighed, his headache was wearing him out and the prospect of guests was wearing him out even more. “Three or four times I think, though not for many years. They’re a little intense from what I can remember.”
“Intense?”
“They’ve had tenuous claims to their lands over the years, something about their noble blood is disputed. Some think of them as nothing more than peasants, they’re sore about it I should think.”
“Tenuous you say? That’s a big word for you,” Merlin smirked and Arthur found himself wondering, bizarrely, about the strange adaptability of the other’s smile, he seemed to have one for every subtle change of mood. “Does your father think they’re peasants?”
“Their king is an ally.”
“So he has to treat them well,” Merlin deduced.
“What are you getting at Merlin?” Arthur asked testily.
“Just eh- you don’t care about their ‘blood?’”
“I can’t see how it matters,” Arthur answered, pursing his lips and looking at nothing in particular. “They’re honourable, not bad company...”
And for some reason his servant smiled inanely at that (yet another of his smiles), though he tried to hide it by turning half away to buff a corner of Arthur’s desk uselessly with his sleeve before returning to the window.
Soon though he was swaying from the tips of his toes to his heels, the restlessness setting in again. “I should go, preparations and all.”
“Fine,” Arthur said, then muttered as he left, “I’m sure you cheated last night.”
“Say something, m’Lord?” Merlin said, half-way out of the room already and holding the door.
“I called you an idiot.”
He heard Merlin’s laugh echo in the stone corridor outside.
* * *
The sun had already gone down when the small family arrived, the ice and an ailing horse having slowed their way considerably. To top it off, it was a new moon and an already profoundly dark night. The sky was bare of clouds and the stars had long since made an appearance.
The torch and candlelight of the castle half-illuminated the courtyard where they greeted them, the shapes of the windows and doorways casting competing oblongs onto the icy stone. The groomsmen and stable hands were helping the family of three and their tiny retinue of two men off their horses and leading the animals away as, at the base of the courtyard by the steps, Arthur, Uther and their guards waited. Merlin and Gwen stood off to the side ready to assist, standing close for warmth. Arthur noticed that Merlin looked more occupied with the frozen moss between the stones than with the guests, an elbow from Gwen put him to rights, reminding him to pay attention, unintentionally reminding the prince to do the same.
Arthur saw that the couple were as he remembered, Lord Dalfan was a small but well-built man with shoulder-length red hair and a prominent cowlick like an arrow in the centre of his hairline, his lady was the taller of the two, her hair grey and plaited below her fox fur hat. Their daughter, close in age to Merlin, looked older now than when he last saw her but she was still slight and elfin, bearing little resemblance to her parents. She had impressively long brunette hair that had fallen loose, allowing it to tangle in the wind. She had no head covering to keep her warm either, just a fine circlet of twisted silver.
“Lord Dalfan, Ladies Llenwi and Seren,” Uther greeted them, coming forward, with Arthur close behind, their steps crunching the layer of ice underfoot. “It is good to see you. I understand your journey has been a hard one, I won’t keep you in the cold.”
“We thank you sires for your hospitality,” Lord Dalfan said, ceasing his stretching to bow at Uther and Arthur.
“I’ll hear none of it,” the king countered, a tight, diplomatic smile on his face as he beckoned them to follow him towards the warmth of the castle. “It is rare to have company this time of year and I must say it’s welcome.”
“Thank you, sire,” Lady Llenwi said as they walked across the courtyard, her breath white in the cold air as she spoke. “I’m afraid, sire, we must ask another thing of you. My daughter fared poorly in the cold and will need to be warmed up.”
“A small matter, we wouldn’t have the young lady cold,” Uther said as he clicked his fingers at Gwen, then tipped his head in Merlin’s direction. “Tend to her, would you? And you, take their bags.”
When Arthur looked, their daughter, young Lady Seren, was indeed frozen stiff and shivering, her fingers, if they had ever been gloved at all, were red with cold and her cheeks were wind burned. She looked more than a little exhausted. He met Gwen’s eyes, she understood and came forward to offer her arm, the young woman took it gratefully and seemed to lean into her as they made their way up the steps.
Merlin lagged behind, struggling with the bags.
“I’m pleased Camelot could be your way station on this happy occasion,” Uther said, making conversation as they passed through the threshold and began walking through the castle, up through the galleried stairway exposed to the night air.
“If only it were happy sire, the king is a friend and an ally, we go with heavy hearts,” Lord Dalfan said solemnly a step behind Uther and step in front of Arthur, his voice heavy with emotion.
“Of course, that was careless of me. Please accept my apology,” Uther said, stopping and bowing his head just a modicum.
“No need, my liege,” Lady Llenwi stepped in, her voice deep and treacly. “While the circumstances are sad, our dear friend’s son and our daughter have long since proclaimed their love, they are already devoted to one another, their marriage will surely only be a formality. Rarely do we see such matches.”
“It is rare indeed,” Arthur agreed, speaking finally.
When Arthur looked behind, glancing again at Gwen, he saw that Lady Seren was gripping her hand hard and leaning on her even more heavily. She returned his gaze, equal parts confusion and worry on her face.
The hall was alight with candles and the room softened by thick tapestries bearing the Pendragon crest for their arrival. Although he had been dreading the whole affair, Arthur found himself enjoying the warm and festive atmosphere, they had not feasted like this since the solstice and Yule celebrations. The tables had been set up in a square formation with Arthur and Uther at the head table, select knights down one side and their guests to the other. Plates and goblets were spread out across the tables. Merlin brushed his side to pour him some mead and Arthur almost downed it before his father could say a toast, so distracted was he by the glistening ham before him on the table.
The toast was given, something about honoured guests and friends on a cold and dark winter’s night.
He tucked in and only started to take stock of his fellow diners once his immediate hunger was sated. His father was in high spirits, a miracle after their recent ordeals, and was eating the grizzle off a chicken leg bone – managing to look regal as he did so by patting his lips with his napkin every few bites. The knights were also using their table manners but stuffing their faces all the same. The visiting couple on the other side had their heads dipped together in conversation. With her very long hair a little wet but combed out after her bath, Lady Seren looked mostly restored, though she was still oddly ghostly with her very pale skin and the wind burn that hadn’t left her cheeks and nose. Arthur figured the cold had got to her and it would take a night’s sleep for her to recover fully.
Arthur overheard Gwen and Merlin speaking as they made their way around the tables with pitchers in hand, coming within earshot of him.
“It’s nice to tend to a lady again,” she said, a little sadly.
“Can’t say I enjoyed the bags, for my part,” Merlin muttered, clearly trying to make light of it.
Arthur heard a noise that he knew was Gwen laughing into her sleeve, then a pause, her next words were quieter. “She’s a little… off? I’m not sure what it is, it’s like she’s shaky, it's more than the cold, I don’t know how else to describe it.”
“Maybe Gaius should-”
Uther cleared his throat, annoyed by their mutterings. He held out his goblet and Merlin stumbled forward to fill it. The two servants dispersed and made their way around the hall in opposite directions, Merlin toward the guests and Gwen toward the knights. Arthur watched them refill everyone’s goblets and take up mirror positions, their backs to tapestries.
To one side his knights ate heartily. He watched as Elyan, a mischievous glint in his eye, sneaked a hand over to Lancelot’s plate. His fingers had barely grazed the prized bread before the other man went overhand and snatched a short beef rib without so much as glancing at him. After a short interval of shock, Elyan attempted the same with Percival’s plate only to have his hand quickly and decisively slapped away, the cut of ham that he had been coveting fell between their plates with a wet plop as he shrank, sheepishly under the tall man’s gaze. Lancelot and Percival met eyes and clinked their drinks together over their fellow knight’s plate.
Hiding a laugh with his goblet, Arthur swept his gaze over to their guests and their retinue on the opposite side, only to find that they had not touched their food. Before he could puzzle out why, there was the scrape of a chair against wood and Lady Llenwi rose, goblet raised. Everyone stopped and readied their own for the second toast of the evening. But to their dismay she lowered the goblet again, a faraway look suddenly in her eyes. “I’m afraid, friends, that this is not a wedding procession as we have led you to believe, but a funeral procession,” with this she cast her grey eyes about the room, noting the frowns, the expressions of alarm, the hands that twitched above swords. “In Astyrex a sickness spreads that cannot be healed by ordinary physicians.”
Arthur’s skin prickled at the words ‘ordinary physicians,’ beside him Uther’s frown was a front to the immediate unease the words no doubt gave him, only Arthur saw that his hand was shaking where it still held his cup.
“The sickness is now upon the crown prince,” Lord Dalfan joined in, now also raising. “Even now he ails and suffers, his death is assured.”
With this their daughter lowered her head in grief, suddenly looking very small where she sat in her high backed chair.
The whole room was silent with shock.
“Surely,” Arthur said, standing up, looking at the young woman, whose shoulders had started to shake. “You do not travel to marry a sick man, lady? He may be your betrothed but your loss would be ours too should you succumb to this as well. If you cannot do anything, why risk-?”
Her visible flinch stopped Arthur’s words. She looked at the Prince then with a hard expression he couldn’t read, and didn’t stop looking.
“Arthur,” his father hissed, slamming down his goblet. “Do not speak out of turn.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend,” he apologised to the family, adding a respectful nod toward Lady Seren before sitting back down. The features of her face seemed to stiffen further, and she continued to bore into him with her strange stare. Arthur felt his spine tingle.
Lady Llenwi continued. “It is true. No healer can be found there that can prevent this tragedy. With both father and son dead they have no one who can succeed them. It’s not only the royal family but our entire kingdom that may be lost… An entire kingdom,” she paused, she glowered first at the table full of food then lifted that gaze to the Pendragon emblem tapestries, then to the king as her voice rose in anger. “Alas, even outside of its borders Camelot’s influence is strong indeed... All those who could have saved them have been purged from the land, all but three, but we could not reach them fast enough!”
Lady Seren rose suddenly, a hand raised, and with her strange commanding words every candle in the room was extinguished.
Uther shouted for aid as Arthur felt him grabbing a hold of his jacket to haul him out of his seat and to safety. Arthur heard the guards and knights unsheathe their weapons and rally towards them.
“Bewæpnian ! Gefeoht !” Came the young lady’s voice and weapons clattered to the ground, the sound still bouncing off the walls of the hall as Arthur attempted to back away, only to find that his feet were planted to the ground, that no part of his body would move. He saw figures making their way through the darkness, at least one of them heading in his direction, but he lost sight of them as they slid from the periphery of his vision and out of sight. Arthur’s heart began to thump hard in his chest.
“Fiell ,” he heard in his ear and he hit the ground hard, his head slamming on the stone and his jaw jarred with the impact. He tasted blood, his teeth having clamped down on his tongue. He was aware his father had fallen too.
The dark form of Lady Seren appeared over him. She placed her feet on either side of him so she stood directly over him. Her eyes lit up bronze in the black, giving Arthur the briefest glimpse of her rage twisted features and suddenly his whole body rose and slammed down into the stone on which he already lay. The force bore down, increasing by the second.
“The father, Seren!” her mother shouted from somewhere in the dark. “Kill Uther Pendragon, not the son!”
“Father and son, mother,” she screamed back, her voice both shrill and hoarse, filled with bloodlust. “Their line must end!”
Her attention back on Arthur, her magic pinned him down with an invisible force. The back of his head pressed painfully into the stone. His nose bled, the blood pooling over his cupid's bow. His heart laboured painfully. He gasped for air but could get none. His focus swam on her dark form. She’ll kill me, the thought came as he tried to struggle and plead with her in his mind. In the corner of his eye he saw movement, the shadow of Lord Dalfan was rushing with a strangled war cry toward the attendees, still frozen in place, the glint of steel telling Arthur he wielded a dagger or sword, likely stolen from a guard. He couldn’t see Lady Llenwi, but he knew she was working her way towards his father, hearing her low voice speaking enchantments of her own. He heard rather than saw Lord Dalfan twist the weapon into the gut of an attendee, he wasn’t sure who, and move onto the next. He noted, with a sick feeling, that he couldn’t hear the sound of them falling, they remained suspended as they no doubt bled out. Arthur moved his pupils as far as they would go. He thought for a moment he had lost sight of him but there he was again, a shadow moving rapidly toward where he had last seen Merlin.
Arthur managed to make a desperate, strained sound, trying to call out to him. Move, Merlin, move! He wanted to scream out.
Lady Seren shrieked then in rage and, suddenly straddling him, she slammed her hand hard onto his chest, over his heart. She breathed shakily and he tried, uselessly, one more time to get through to her. He thought of the young man, her betrothed, as he started to choke on the blood that was pooling at the back of his throat, unable to escape from his nose. Please, don’t cause yet more death over his.
But she couldn’t hear his plea. “Ic i weargcweþe ðu pīnnesse unberendlicne apa úre heortan forsett, Arthur Pendragon!”
Nothing happened and she screamed again in anger.
She reared back and gritted her teeth, her pronunciation shifting. “Ic i weargcweþe ðu pīnnesse unberendlicne apa úre heortan forsett, Arthur Pendragon!!”
“Edcwicaþ styring! ” A voice cried from down the hall and there was the sound of gasps and movement everywhere, of bodies injured or already dead, finally falling to the ground. Near him his father started to scramble, kicking him by accident once in the dark before lunging at and unbalancing his son’s assailant. She fell bodily over Arthur with a growl but kept her hold on his chest with her knees pressed into his sides. Uther started to wrestle her off.
“Inlīhteþ! ” The voice from earlier barked out and every candle in the room, even the neglected ones high up in the chandelier, were lit with an abrupt whoosh and Arthur knows that voice. It can’t be, it can’t-
The change startled both Uther and Lady Seren into freezing. Arthur realised that even pinned, he too was no longer paralysed, he spat and coughed finally, then turned his head against the force still on him so he could see down the hall through the table legs, the blood from his nose trickling down across his cheek as he did so. Standing, hand raised and eyes alight was Merlin, it was Merlin.
At that moment Lady Seren yelled something and his father was thrown bodily away. Hitting the stone, he rolled violently until he hit a wall, a tapestry coming loose to fall over him like a blanket, wrapped in Pendragon red... at the feet of Lady Llenwi. Llenwi had taken up a bloodied sword from one of their fallen men and was already whispering words to the blade. Every knight and guard still alive rushed toward the king and prince.
Though reeling from all of the happenings of the last few seconds, Arthur shouted for his father and tried to flip Lady Seren away but the magic was still on him and every part of him was simply too heavy. Briefly he saw the mad grief and desperation in her eyes. Her hand went over his heart again as she screamed out. “Ic i weargcweþe ðu pīnnesse unberendlicne apa úre heortan forsett, Arthur Pendragon!!”
But even as his vision whited out, his senses unable to process the pain upon him immediately, Merlin’s voice joined in with a string of commanding words and he knew somehow that his father was safe.
“Riht unfram!” is what he heard Merlin shout as he fell into the white, a foreign agony rushing up to take him like so many hands grabbing at him from a pit. Arthur found himself writhing as the pain seeped into his skin and into his veins. The sensation pulsed toward his chest, burning pathways into him like roads towards a centre. Every part of him clenched as his back arched from the floor and he burned and burned. His mind filled immediately and inescapably with images of the pyre.
He knew more strange words were spoken and distantly he noticed that Lady Seren was no longer upon him. There was clattering around him, the shouts of others. His senses narrowed to the essentials, and he felt hands on his shoulders, then his face, someone calling his name, his father.
“Ic þe þurhhæle þin licsare !” Merlin’s, his friend’s, voice boomed out, coming nearer and then, “Get off! I can save him!”
“How dare you!! Don’t you dare use-!”
“Gefeoht!” He shouted and everything was suddenly still again.
And someone was straddling him for a second time, scrambling at his chest. He felt the long knobbly fingers he knows so well, the ones that dress him in the morning, that rub salve into his bruises, that had accepted his mother’s sigil by the light of a campfire, press against his searing chest. “Blódseten ! No, no! Arthur! Ic þe þurhhæle þin licsare, hit ġehǣleþ!! No, please, I’m no good at this, just-!”
The pain consumed the words and Arthur lost awareness of his body, he was just a mind in agony. His ears rang loudly but it might have been his own scream.
“Come on, for Arthur, please,” Merlin pleaded, taking readying breaths, the white of Arthur’s world lit up bronze with the string of desperate, foreign words that issued from him, only to end in a cry of frustration and fear when nothing happened. “Please, please ..! Curse, it’s a curse, I can-I can do this... Āfæreþ feorhbealu! ”
In a breath the pain was gone and Arthur was the last person in the world, entirely alone, or at least he felt alone, he had the sense that he was unmoored and floating in a still black sea and there was nothing else, no one else in the whole world. He perceived the vaguest of sensations, cold on his back, a weight on his body; all sensory information was suddenly too small, too soft to take in after the impossible onslaught on his nerves. But God, it was so lonely here. He tried to focus on the feelings, the weight on him, that it shifted, a new coolness on his neck, then his cheek. The sound of his own name cut through the nothing.
“Arthur, you’re alright, it’s over it’s- oh thank the Gods! Arthur look at me-”
Look, he thought, as though the sense had been forgotten, and Merlin was above him, his face red, wreaked with anguish. Then a small smile of relief, of fondness, as Arthur came back by degrees. Still grabbing at the pieces of himself, he was sure Merlin’s smiles were something of great importance.
“There you are, you’re alright,” smile sad now.
Arthur matched his expression, worried.
“Listen to me,” he said hoarsely. Arthur flinched as fat tears hit his face from above but was soothed when a thumb wiped them away, realising now that the pleasant cold, the comforting touch, was his friend’s hands gently cradling his face. “That was a powerful spell, I’m too tired, I can’t hold everyone for much longer and I don’t think I can get out in time... I want you to hear it from me... I was born with magic… But it’s always been for you, Arthur. I hope that’ll make sense to you one day. Gods, I’ve made so many mistakes along the way, so many, but I’ll never regret that I did it all for you, or regret this, saving you, not for as long as I live. Do you understand?”
Arthur stared for a while, but then shook his head. He didn’t understand.
Merlin breathed, almost a laugh. He straightened then, his hand leaving his face. This new smile was like a goodbye. His eyes were fluttering closed like he was falling asleep.
Suddenly there was sound and movement all around them, hands were grabbing a hold of Merlin and then a guard tackled him violently to the stone floor, toppling tables and chairs. Before Arthur could do anything, he saw a fist draw up.
Notes:
The assassination attempt on the Pendragons is again, very loosely based on Quest for Camelot (hereafter known as QfC).
The drunken ditty the knights devise is from United We Stand, the opening song of QfC.
Chapter 3: In Truth, Divided We Fall
Summary:
Merlin is dragged away to the dungeons to await his death sentence in the morning. Arthur takes in the destruction Merlin left behind and finds he cannot match the man to the deed. Uther urges him to question his unusual friendship with his servant.
“Is he? Can you truly say you know him, Arthur?” Uther snarled, getting out of his seat now too, inches from Arthur’s face. “You cannot.”
Arthur realised he must have let his fright show because his father eased off a little, looking sorely disappointed in him. Arthur said nothing.
“I see that you are having trouble accepting this… If you think it impossible, if you find you cannot match the man to the deed, then you must know that you have been deeply deceived. You must know! Did you not see how he murdered the lord and ladies with none so much as a few words? How can you deny the brutality of it, the power?!”
Arthur stumbled back. Could he match Merlin, the Merlin he knew, to the man he saw tonight?
Notes:
No notes, just sad times :(
Chapter Text
The crack, the broken off cry, the crashing of the furniture and the tableware, the shouts were the kind of sensory input Arthur’s overtaxed mind was primed to process. He was all action, scrambling after a motionless Merlin. But he was shaky and weak and found that he could not fight the hold of the guards on him, or his father who was on the ground with him, wrestling him down. He must have been screaming through his earlier ordeal because when he shouted Merlin’s name his throat already felt ripped to shreds.
“Hold him,” Uther said, gesturing to Arthur as he let go of him and stood. He gazed around the room, eyes widening at what they landed on, no doubt it was the bodies of the guards and the guests alike. Arthur couldn’t see the aftermath from the position they held him in on the floor, and right then he didn’t care. He continued to struggle in vain toward the prone man who had saved his life. His father’s head snapped back to Merlin and with a steely voice he commanded, “get him to his feet, have him face me.”
Merlin was manhandled between two guards, limp, head lolling and eyes fluttering. A heavy drop of blood was drawing a curved line from his temple and around the prominent ball of one of his cheekbones. There was a spatter of blood on his woollen clothes too, not his own. They brought him before Uther.
Uther stood straighter and looked over the half-conscious young man with cold eyes.
Arthur strained in panic, knowing what was next. He felt a knee press into his back to keep him still. “Father, please-”
“I hereby sentence you to death for the use of sorcery in the court of Camelot,” with a voice that matched his hard expression.
“Father!” The prince cried, his voice breaking.
“There can be no exceptions,” Uther said detachedly, looking dead ahead.
Merlin’s head swung up briefly, making Uther take a step back, but then it fell back. “It was worth it,” he slurred, and Arthur was able to crane just enough to see the small smile on his face. His heart twisted hard at the sight.
The knights turned and took him away toward the door.
Before Arthur could say anything else, across the room there was shouting and swearing, someone else being restrained. Gwaine was shouting for Merlin, for justice, and was telling the king exactly where he could shove his laws.
“Get him out of my sight!” Uther barked, disgusted. And Gwaine too was seized and brought out of the hall.
The slam of the hall doors that marked their exit made every candle in the room flicker and the stone of the room sing. The echo bounced around in Arthur’s mind as he tried to process what had just transpired, what was about to transpire.
Vaguely he was aware of his father kneeling before him, pressing a kiss into his hair. “...my son, you are safe,” he was saying, cupping his face. Arthur looked into his familiar, cold, slightly mismatched eyes and saw the utter panic there, saw the man who had spent the past few months in a chair by the window in despair at the treachery of his daughter. “Camelot will not fall so easily.”
What does this have to do with Camelot? Arthur asked himself, feeling over drunk. A family was dead, a whole minor kingdom was soon to be dead, and Merlin would be dead in the morning.
“Let go of him,” Uther commanded, and the guards released him.
As the hold left him, the prince quickly calculated the distance between his father and the guards, could he make it between them and to Merlin? Maybe he should go right over the toppled table. He clenched his jaw and tried to propel himself forward from the ground as though preparing for a sprint. He got only about four feet before his limbs collapsed beneath him and he hit the stone. There were shouts of “Sire!” and his knights, safe for having been on the opposite side of the hall, immediately jumped to his aid. He was aware of Uther making a halting gesture. The king lifted Arthur off the ground and guided him bodily into his chair. The hall spun.
“You,” Uther pointed across the room. Backed up against a tapestry was a terrified Gwen, her shaking form coming into focus in Arthur’s vision as all else swam around her. “Fetch Gaius, tell him what has transpired. There are injured here to tend to and dead to take away. Tell him my son almost died by a sorcerer’s hand.”
She was still for a moment, her lips quivering, too shocked for words but blessedly, blessedly safe. Eventually she curtsied and peeled away. Another figure joined her, uncommanded, and she and Lancelot left together. Arthur stared at the door, finding it easier to fix his eyes somewhere as the illusion of motion started to lift. He knew his father was talking to him but he couldn’t understand the words, not that he wanted to hear them. Not far from him, against a plinth, lay Lady Seren, her eyes wide open. Her skull where it had connected with the stone was entirely-
Arthur stared, the force needed to do something like that… The room was spinning again. He clutched one armrest and retched.
“Sire!” he heard Sir Leon’s voice cutting though his fog, and hearing it, Arthur was deeply grateful that the man survived. Good, reliable Leon. “Lady Llenwi she’s-”
“Alive?!” Uther gasped, standing.
And Arthur looked. He wished he hadn’t.
At the back of the room, next to the fallen tapestry, the Lady had a sword shallowly in her side, through her ribs. Arthur knew it was Merlin and not his father who put it there, and he would have done so with his magic, without even getting near her. Llenwi was turned toward them, her eyes unfocused. Blood and small gasping sounds spilled from her mouth. She was trying to speak.
“Just give the command, sire,” Leon said slowly, his tall form standing over her. He was gripping his sword tightly. Here was one of the assassins who killed his men, still breathing.
On the floor Lady Llenwi spat blood and opened her mouth, a faltering, bloody smile spread there. “A sor-sorcerer,” she choked, but her voice was full of satisfaction, “s-saving the... prince... how... y-you mock us.”
“Do it,” Uther commanded.
“Th-this will n-never end, Pendragon!” she screamed low, spitting, animal-like, chest heaving. “You-your… war on magic it-!”
Leon drove his blade down then stumbled back, stricken but still staring.
Uther collapsed into his chair.
Everyone left alive in the room was silent. The dead too were silent. Arthur could see them now, guards and servants vacant eyed on one side of the room, gone in service of Camelot, because of their service to Camelot. He had known some of these people since he was a child. He tried to name them all in his mind but found he could not for he did not know all of their names.
Merlin would be joining their ranks soon.
“Sir Leon,” the king commanded after some time, breaking his knight out of his trance. “Check on the wounded before Gaius arrives, assess who needs to be seen to first. And have the bodies taken away. In the morning they should be brought to their homes with the highest honours. As for our attackers, they should be buried in an unmarked grave, no rites.”
“Sire,” Leon said automatically, his eyes very wide. He bowed then set about putting these commands into motion.
“Once again magic has almost cost us our lives,” the king said in a faraway voice, looking like he was in a nightmare. “Arthur you’ve barely spoken, please-”
“Please, father... Release Merlin,” Arthur said, hollow eyed, hollow voiced.
Uther drew up in his seat, anger building, but was interrupted by Gaius entering, Gwen and Lancelot were on either side of him as though for support. Gwen had been crying and Lancelot’s face was pale, his eyes not quite on the room. Gaius said something to them and the two rejoined the knights and the servants working through the wreckage.
The old man looked lost in the centre of the room as he took it all in. Eventually he came forward.
“No, Gaius,” Arthur stopped him, composing himself, trying to look convincingly healthy. “I’m alright. See to the wounded first.”
Gaius looked at Uther, who nodded after a beat. Before turning away Arthur saw that his eyes caught on Lady Seren haltingly and trailed up the thick line of gore on the pillar.
Uther dragged a gloved hand over his face and sighed, watching everything unfold.
Arthur felt his mind slowly clear, the dizziness fading as dread set in. After the protracted turmoil of the past few minutes, minutes , everything proceeded agonisingly slowly.
Gaius treated the wounded on the spot and they were carried off one by one once the physician was confident they were stable. Gwen kneeled by him to assist, quietly playing the role of Merlin by the king’s orders.
The two ladies were removed from the room, though not entirely, Arthur noticed with a sickly realisation that blood and… brains had been left behind.
For some time there was a commotion around the body of their final attacker. The sword in Dalfan’s chest was lodged so far into the stone that it had to be shorn off before it was removed. Again, Arthur was so far unable to process these acts, the shape of them eluding him when he tried to examine them.
When Gaius could finally tend to him, his father dismissed everyone else from the room. Their absence made the hall seem dauntingly big, the emptiness causing every little noise to echo. With shaking hands Gaius checked the burned skin of Arthur’s chest, his pulse, reflexes and eyes. He talked to him for some time about how he was feeling, what he had experienced. When Arthur tried to recount the latter he was at a loss, the details of what happened and in what order weren’t quite right. He felt like a liar or, absurdly, that these experiences weren’t his. Uther's eyes were on him the whole time.
“Physically, the prince is in mild shock, both medically and otherwise. He should be kept warm and be allowed to recover until his extremities are no longer cold and his shaking subsides.”
“I’ll see to it,” Uther replied automatically.
“He’s otherwise healthy,” the physician continued, then slower, he added, “though the toll on the mind should not be taken lightly.”
“We must tighten our defences,” Uther said evenly as the leather of his gloves made a stretching noise, his hold on his armrests growing tighter, “a firmer grip will be required to prevent such a thing happening again.”
Gaius looked very, very tired. “This spell was devised to cause unimaginable pain to the user. I prescribe convalesce and care as one would for a wound or illness before a return to any duties. Recovery may take time.”
“Just barbaric,” Uther whispered, and Arthur saw his eyes had taken on a familiar glaze.
“Sire?”
“Fine, Gaius,” he granted before returning to his thoughts.
Arthur took this news with no feeling at all.
“You’ve been through an ordeal most could not have survived,” Gaius said softly, addressing Arthur directly and Arthur saw that he was fighting tears, “owing to what I imagine was a very powerful spell.”
“A spell, Gaius,” the king interjected with clear anger, alert again. “One that will no doubt have some unknown consequence in time. You should be more careful than to say such things in my presence.”
“I-” the old man cut himself off to shake his head, mouth open like a cry was about to escape from it. “I’m afraid I’m finding all of this rather distressing.”
“Of course, of course you would do,” Uther said, sounding empathetic but waving his hand in dismissal all the same. “Do you really believe there is no trickery here?”
The physician breathed. “I do believe it, sire.”
“And that you care for the boy who cast the spell has no bearing on this?”
“Father-” Arthur warned, shifting in his chair, horrified but exhausted.
“I…. I’m certain no bargain was struck here,” Gaius maintained, meeting the king’s eyes. “Nothing was exchanged here that could later harm the prince. The lifting of the curse was an act that relied solely on the power of the wielder.”
“You’re absolutely sure?”
“Yes... Only the scar may remain, but I’ll do what I can to ensure it heals as well as it can.”
“Please do,” Uther said wearily, eyeing the man. “You may leave. But Gaius, the boy lived and worked in close quarters with you... You will be questioned.”
“As I can only expect,” he said quietly as he turned. Arthur watched his age bent back as he went, his heart tight.
They watched him leave.
“To think, right here in court,” Uther murmured beside him. “And after all this time... It is just like-”
“If Merlin wanted me dead, or wanted you dead, he could have done that already!” Arthur interrupted him before he mentioned his half-sister, finding his voice at last, though Gaius was correct, he was shaking. “Easily! A hundred times over!”
“Do you think there is no strategy in magic?!” Uther gritted his teeth, incensed. “It is rarely so much of a spectacle as we witnessed this night. More often it is slow, treacherous. It corrupts, it twists one’s intentions... I understand you occasionally seek his counsel, I found this alarming even when I’d thought him an ordinary peasant, but now...”
“He saved my life,” Arthur said simply. “More than once.” I trust him.
“We don’t know that.”
“I know he did. You saw it!” he exclaimed, hands flying. “You saw it the first time when he drank poison for me. He’s done it many times since and he did it again tonight. He risked everything to save me, you must see this!”
“He used sorcery!” Uther countered, his jaw tight and teeth gritted as he spoke the word. “And should all of this not strike you as usual? How many times can one ordinary boy ‘save your life,’ as you say? There is so clearly something afoot here, I’m horrified I did not see it before.”
“Father!” Arthur shouted, rising out of his seat, trying to resist the words invading his mind and robbing Merlin of a chance to explain, to defend himself. “He deserves a trial!”
“The rule for one must be rule for all,” Uther stated, immovable. “And for someone so close to you… there should be no leniency. The people must know our strength in this matter or we are doomed. Tell me you don’t disagree?”
“I-” he started, but he didn’t have the words. What can I say that will not end with Merlin executed in the morning?
“If we are not decisive now it will send a clear message. Camelot can be infiltrated, that it is weak .”
Arthur was shaking his head, his hands gripping his hair in despair as he paced.
“You cannot be weak Arthur, if you are weak the kingdom falls.”
“He’s...He’s my frien-” he said breathlessly, feeling faint. It was true. Why have I only begun admitting this now, when it could be too late? His shaking was growing painful now and his limbs felt impossibly cold. He wanted immediately to sit down again but felt he needed to remain on his feet or he would lose this fight purely by showing the weakness his father so feared and loathed.
“ He’s a servant!” his father shot, and then clearing his throat, his tone going cool he asked, “how would you have me do it? ”
Arthur's heart was racing. “Sire?”
“The guillotine, the gallows, the pyre. How would you have me do it?” He repeated, leaning back in his chair and gesturing languidly as though they weren’t discussing how a man’s life was to be ended. His expression told Arthur his mind was made up, that he was eager to be done with the matter.
Reeling at the question he was being asked, the prince shook his head. An image of Merlin’s silhouette swinging on the noose at dawn invaded his mind. His hand went involuntarily to his own neck.
His father noticed. “Not the gallows? The pyre then.”
“He’s my friend,” he repeated, quiet and beseeching as he tried to shake free of the immediate visceral thought of smelling the man’s flesh burning on the winter air. He remembered too the burning of his own body under Lady Seren’s spell. He wasn’t sure he could remain upright for much longer.
“Is he? Can you truly say you know him, Arthur?” Uther snarled, getting out of his seat now too, inches from Arthur’s face. “You cannot.”
Arthur realised he must have let his fright show because his father eased off a little, looking sorely disappointed in him. Arthur said nothing.
“I see that you are having trouble accepting this… If you think it impossible, if you find you cannot match the man to the deed, then you must know that you have been deeply deceived. You must know! Did you not see how he murdered the lord and ladies with none so much as a few words? How can you deny the brutality of it, the power?!”
Arthur stumbled back. Could he match Merlin, the Merlin he knew, to the man he saw tonight?
He thought of Merlin’s gentle nature, his love for living things; his distaste for meat; his every effort to thwart their hunting trips; the smoothing way he whispered to the horses when he thought no one was listening –yet he had been utterly decisive, unflinching in the destruction he had employed to end the lives of their attackers.
He saw his smile, how quick it was to spread on his face, to his eyes –and he saw the glow in those eyes, heard again the bellowing, foreign words that left his same lips.
He knew the private, quiet way that he listened to Arthur’s troubles and remembered all of the strangely wise advice, always fair, always in favour of the subjugated, the needy –it was this, Arthur realised, that was the most crucial and disturbing part. Magic was a weapon, but a magic user being a close friend of the crown prince? How could he not use that sway to his own bent?
“This is the way of it, Arthur,” Uther said, breaking into his mind, seeing his thoughts. “This is the treachery of sorcery.”
He breathed shakily and covered his face with his palms and his head lolled back where he stood. He couldn’t feel his legs anymore, sure he would collapse.
“You’ve decided it then, he will die by guillotine.”
In the sparking dark of his closed eyes as he pressed on them, Arthur saw a vision of Merlin’s head dropping, separated from his body, onto the stone of the castle square. Half-blind with it he scrambled to find purchase on any surface he could find. Taking a hold of the leg of a toppled table, his stomach revolted violently and in short order he had lost his battle with it.
Chapter 4: Let the Darkness Find Its Sad Ways
Summary:
Arthur is paralysed by the events of the night. The knights and Gwen petition for a lighter sentence and cannot understand why Arthur will not help them, and help Merlin. In pre-dawn dark, Merlin delivers a prophecy to Arthur before he escapes Camelot.
It was not much longer before Merlin was gone from the world.
Arthur imagined swinging his legs out of bed, his feet on the cold stone. He imagined getting up and leaving the room and not stopping until he got to the dungeons. What would he do? Cause a scene, halt proceedings. But Uther would never allow it. But at least then Merlin would know he was grateful, that he cared, that he more than cared. But his body would not move and the morning outside lightened a margin more in open mockery of his pathetic inertia.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
The bar was firmly in place when Gwaine came like a storm to his bedchamber door. Arthur thought he might have been thrown in the dungeon or in the stocks, but here he was, shouting through the wood. Arthur had dismissed the guards at the door an hour ago, wishing to be left alone. Or perhaps he had been hoping for the anger, for the pleas to reach him like this unchallenged. Whether he wanted their words to break him from his paralysis or to serve as a form of self-flagellation, he wasn’t sure.
“I know you’re in there, Arthur!’ Gwaine seethed, slamming on the wood with his fists. “Do something to call off your damn father. It’s Merlin, Merlin , for God’s sake!! You and I both know he’s loyal to his bones!”
Arthur said nothing, Gaius had given him a draught to increase blood flow and another to calm his mind, neither seemed to be working. Even beneath his cover and with a bed warmer he was still shaking. He was starting to believe it no longer had anything to do with the magical attack on his very nerves, or with the cold.
“Are you really going to let this happen to him?!” Gwaine growled, shaking the door powerfully now. “You better be passed out or dead in there because if you’re hearing this and you’re just sitting there prettily, so help me-!”
“Sir Gwaine, peace,” came a quiet voice, Lancelot’s. He almost didn’t hear it over the ringing in his ears, a ring that had not abated since the attack. He wondered if he would ever hear silence again.
“Peace?! Merlin’s your friend too, aren’t you going to- Stop! Get off!”
“Sire,” Lancelot said clearly, despite the barrier and the sounds of a restrained Gwaine fighting against him. “I won’t pretend to know what it is to be prince of this kingdom, nor can I make demands of you, but I’m certain only you have the power to intervene. He saved your life, he should be banished for his crime, not killed.”
“ The rule of my father is final,” Arthur called back hollowly from his bed, surprising himself.
“Say that again you bloody coward!!” Gwaine all but screamed, rabid.
A pair of footsteps, half-running, a new voice, Elyan’s. “We were talking, Perce and I, we’ll petition the king, all of us!”
“No way is that going to work, he’ll think we’re bloody enchanted!” Gwaine spat, his words pure vitriol.
“Better to try than not try at all,” Elyan countered, breathless.
There was shuffling.
“We need you to join us, Arthur,” Elyan beseeched him.
There was total silence within and without the chamber.
“Please,” he said.
A further hour later, there were a few short knocks. Arthur had left his bed for one of the chairs by the fire, only for him to stare into nothing in the barely lit room.
“Sire, I wish to speak with you,” Leon said through the wood.
He rose on shaky feet and let him in, knowing but not caring that he was wearing only the bandages on his chest and his white sleeping breeches. Leon’s face was a little pale, his hair a little wild when Arthur opened the door. He invited him to sit by the hearth, though he only noticed now that the fire had died to ash.
Leon bowed, looking hesitant, like he would have preferred to stand. But he sat down beside him all the same, awkward. “I need you to know I joined the effort to petition for Merlin’s sentence.”
Arthur swallowed, urged him continue.
“The king would not rescind his judgement.”
Arthur couldn’t look at him, his eyes found a vein of embers in the ash instead. Cold fingers clenched around his heart.
“Your father wished to have them stripped of their knighthood for their insubordination,” the knight continued. “He has long believed them to be ignoble...”
“I’m well aware.”
“I pleaded that they stay, our numbers have not recovered since the siege and tonight we lost yet more. Camelot cannot afford to lose any more people.”
“Thank you, Sir Leon,” Arthur said after a beat.
“He’s having them questioned, he’s convinced Merlin has a confidant among them.”
“I’m sure that he doesn’t,” he told the knight immediately, he couldn’t reconcile with the idea that there could be those among him, people he trusted, who kept such secrets from him. But then he thought I might have trusted Merlin most of all and yet... He kept this to himself.
“All the same, sire...”
“Yes, I know father must do these things.”
There were tiny sounds like finger taps on the black window panes across the room. It must have started to snow lightly outside.
“I must know, what do you think about all of this… About Merlin?” he asked suddenly.
Leon started, looking surprised, then cautious. “I supported the lighter sentence.”
“No, I’m asking what you really think.”
Leon set his jaw, clearly debating with himself. He looked about a little and lowered his voice like the walls had ears. “I only know what I don’t think. I don’t think he is evil or would ever wish you harm… as much as that doesn’t match up to the king’s estimations of magic users.”
Arthur nodded, taking this in.
They sat silently for some time. The tapping at the glass continued. Then, as though it were the most natural thing in the world for him to do, Sir Leon left his chair to kneel by the hearth, and placed some logs on the ash. He blew on the dying embers, ash swirling, until flames sprang up and the wood caught. That done, he courteously, sadly, took his leave.
“Arthur… Please,” Gwen’s voice was all sobs now, reaching him even through the pillow he had clamped over his ears. It was the dead of night, and this was the second time she had come to his door.
She had been through this before, she had lost someone to this nightmare before. Even she had been accused once. In just a few years, Arthur realised, accusations of magic had terrorised her life, and it was happening again.
He knew, somehow, that she had slid down to the floor against his unmoving chamber door, inconsolable, her body finally giving up with so much time spent pleading with the prince in the corridor. “I saw him, Arthur,” she said broken-heartedly. “He didn’t say so, but I know he’s waiting for you.”
There’s nothing I can do.
“It’s so cold down there. Please! He’s your friend, I know he is.”
He’s a sorcerer, how can he not use his sway with me to his own bent?
“You fought for me when your father almost sent me to the pyre, I’ve always known you to fight for what’s right, why are you not fighting for Merlin? Has he not been a friend to you? Has he not shown his loyalty over and-”
“You are not a sorcerer, Gwen!” he shouted, tearing the pillow away, tearing at the bandages on his chest as he said the words, there was a deeper pain there as though he were going against his very heart. “How can I fight my father when the evidence was plain for all to see?! He has never pardoned someone like this, not when there’s no denying it. Merlin is a sorcerer, that’s the truth of it.”
“Merlin is Merlin!” she cried, gasping.
“Gwen-”
He heard her rising and then, her voice colder than it had ever been, she said, “I cannot love a man who will not fight for the people who love him.”
***
The wait for dawn is far longer in the depths of winter.
Every second is doubled, he feels sick to his stomach, sicker than he’s ever felt.
***
The very first signs of dawn came in the form of a lonesome blackbird song, as high and clear as a bell. His heart stilled to listen to it, he gave up lying prone and sat up in bed to see that the light had just started to change. It’s not too late, you can still go to him, he’s still here… but not for much longer-
Not for much longer.
It was not much longer before Merlin was gone from the world.
Arthur imagined swinging his legs out of bed, his feet on the cold stone. He imagined getting up and leaving the room and not stopping until he got to the dungeons. What would he do? Cause a scene, halt proceedings. But Uther would never allow it. But at least then Merlin would know he was grateful, that he cared, that he more than cared. But his body would not move and the morning outside lightened a margin more in open mockery of his pathetic inertia.
There was the sound of the bolt lifting, a click of the door, and a shadow was in the room. It came to stand somewhere between the entrance and the foot of his bed.
At his startled sounds Merlin says, “I won’t hurt you.”
Arthur believed him, feeling fear for only what he would say next.
“Arthur, are you listening?”
It was still too dark to make out his features. Arthur was grateful for that, but he knew he deserved to see his pain, what his betrayal had done to his friend. “Yes,” Arthur croaked, his voice tight.
“I have something to tell you, a prophecy,” he said, his voice sad, soft and even. He seemed to pause, readying himself. “You, Arthur, are the Once and Future King, the man destined to unite the kingdoms of Albion under peace, I know this with all my being but it's more than just knowing, it’s a prophecy told long before you or I were born and passed from person to person for generations.”
“A prophecy?” the prince repeated, suddenly dizzy. “Merlin...”
“There is a sword deep in the woods placed there long ago by your ancestor, the first king of Camelot, from the stories. The sword’s name is Excalibur. It will help to ensure your destiny comes to pass. None have been able to release it from the stone, but you can, you are who it’s been waiting for. Once you wield it you will see the truth of it. It can slay the undead and the most powerful of magic creatures, things that no mortal blade can otherwise fell.”
“How can I trust you?”
“Haven’t you always?” he said by way of answer, and Arthur was sure he could hear the sad smile there.
No response was needed, but Arthur nodded his head once uselessly in the dark all the same.
“You must be certain it never falls into enemy hands,” he continued, and as certain as he sounded, Arthur could hear a shakiness in his voice, “that you are the only one to wield it. In times of peace if you do not need it, or if the sword is in danger of being taken, cast it into the lake of Avalon. You will be able to retrieve it there in time. It should only be wielded in the most dire of circumstances.”
“Where will I find it?”
“Your people already know, they will lead you to it when Camelot needs it most.”
For a drawn-out moment they were both silent.
“You have to know too that I’ve protected you with my magic until this point, in secret,” he continued, cutting into the sound of their shared breathing, his voice had lost the impassive edge of prophecy and a very human mix of hope and sorrow had stepped in to replace it. “I did it because one day I know you’ll be a fair and just king, because you are good, Arthur . I’m not sure if I can be by your side to see it happen, if you’d even accept… When you’re king, you must rule with your heart, do you understand what I’m saying? ”
“No,” Arthur admitted after a beat for the second time, he felt lost.
“You will.”
Arthur worried briefly about magical suggestions, that Merlin would manipulate him, but everything he was telling him spoke to something inside him he had always known was there, a drive to fight for what he believed to be just and a secret expectation of his own greatness that told him he would surpass and be a better man than his father in every way. ‘ Merlin is Merlin ,’ he heard Gwen say into his thoughts. It was strange, even though he was talking about the future Arthur could see the truth in it. Overwhelmed, he wanted to say he hoped to be the man he expected him to be, he wanted to say thank you, I’m sorry, please don’t go, he wanted to say something that would help Merlin know something of the secrets he had harboured in his heart these past few years.
But when he opened his mouth to speak, he could no longer see his silhouette in the room. He didn’t need to look any harder to know that Merlin was gone.
Soon the alarms were sounding all over Camelot. Arthur lay sprawled on his back, exhausted, cycling through every emotion imaginable. He wasn’t sure who he was addressing but he found himself sending out a silent prayer, lead him to a place he’ll be safe.
Had he stolen a horse? Was he just now riding through the woods, the guards and the knights on this tail? He had magic, he was clever, would he obscure all traces of himself? Or was he moving from pillar to post in the pre-dawn shadows? He had evaded Arthur’s notice until now, had gone undetected, a sorcerer at the very heart of Camelot for years, surely these things came easily to him? He almost saw him in his mind’s eye, racing over the land, leaving everything and everyone behind.
Lead him to a place he’ll be safe, he prayed again as he heard the guards clatter down the corridor toward his room.
Notes:
I've read and re-read that little scene between Arthur and Leon. I know it's mine and I wrote it, but I kind of love it.
I added a little bit of shameless self-representation into this fic and gave Arthur tinnitus. I was either born with or developed it in very early childhood. I understand the concept of and can imagine true silence, but I have no memory of ever experiencing it. It's part of a sensory issue I have called Visual Snow Syndrome that also has me seeing tuned out TV like static at every second of the day, even when my eyes are closed. Brain fog, sleep disturbances and anxiety are frequently part of the condition, as is pain and stiffness, and baby I got it all. I actually care least about the sensory symptoms, if I was granted a wish to remove one it would be a toss up between the others. It's not all bad though, my own way of coping with it is realising I experience the world a little differently to others and that's cool I guess? It comes in degrees though, everyone has a different experience with it, so I can't speak for the whole community. I hope that one day it will be a more recognised condition and I can mention it in a work settling without fear. Anyway, Ao3 felt like a good place to share this little bit of awareness, as random and out of nowhere as it may be!
Always happy to hear your thoughts if you'd like to share/chat! And if there's anyone out there with VS or other sensory issues, hi, I love you, I hope you're doing alright!
Chapter 5: I Want to Live My Life the Way You Said I Would
Summary:
So begin the next six years. When Uther dies at the hand of assassins, Arthur resolves to rule as Merlin asked him to. Everything has changed, so he settles into something new. Slowly he regains the trust of the people he once called friends. All the while Morgana occupies the former kingdom of Astryex and amasses power.
This chapter has a few more tags that didn't make the cut, namely canonical character death, No Agravaine, We Don't Like Agravaine in This House.
“You’ve ruled so differently to your father,” she said in a confiding tone, fidgeting with her hands. “That night, I thought maybe you didn’t care enough. I know now that’s not the case at all. I know Lance sees it too.”
“No, you were right before.”
She frowned at him in askance.
“I didn’t deserve his loyalty or his sacrifice then,” he explained bitterly, looking away. “I met it only with cowardice.”
“And now you’re trying to be worthy of it,” she stated.
Arthur's eyes snapped back to hers, he didn’t mean to forget how clever she could be.
Notes:
Title and song lines at the beginning of the chapter are taken from QfC again. **Spoilers** The song takes place after our protagonist Kayleigh loses her father, a knight of the round table who always promised she would join him when she was old enough. It fits very well here, I think.
I'll be occasionally pasting in lines like this from QfC songs. Anything added at the end of chapters in the future will be from other sources and will be clearly referenced.
I'm also here to talk to you about our lord and saviour Excalibur (1981). Damn that movie is a wonderful, trippy masterpiece. I've borrowed some of the aesthetic of flashing and gleaming metals that makes the film so visually stunning. One of the filming locations is Powerscourt Waterfalls in Co. Wicklow, if you ever manage to go there I recommend seeing it from above by walking through Crone Woods up the hill trail. I did this on my birthday this year, well worth it.
A note re the timeline here. I wrote a part about Arthur's fight with Queen Annis' champion forgetting that it happens earlier in canon. I liked it too much to take it out, didn't think it mattered too much anyway!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
I want to live my life, the way you said I would
With courage as my light, fighting for what’s right
Like you made me believe I could
The commotion of Merlin’s escape played out, in the prince’s opinion, in just the same way servants bowed to his father and lords snivelled at his feet, as a perfunctory performance, a display, to the king’s power; the bells rang and searches were carried out because the king demanded it, and that was all. There was reluctance in every peal of the bells and when they came to a stop, Arthur knew, it was at a time perfectly calculated by the guards, no one could say they had not done their duty. Ultimately, the castle was run by servants and there was not a servant in Camelot who had not held Merlin in high esteem.
Although Uther had expressly told him not to, Arthur rode with the funeral procession that afternoon, choosing to follow the body of Sir Lionel, one of his father’s men he had known since he was a youth, when the carriages diverged. When they arrived in the small stone farming village in the hills, it was bitterly cold and, as it was winter, already almost dark. It was bright enough, however, for Arthur to catch the harrowing realisation on the face of the girl that had run toward them with all of the excitement of a child about to greet her returning father. He knew that the man died in service of Camelot but what was Camelot to them but a far off extension of his grave? At the burial, the prince instead recounted moments of kindness, the times he had taught him patiently as a squire and shared food with him on the road. Arthur mourned then not just the man, but all of those he had forgotten to mourn, who had become somehow faceless in the relentless and arbitrary momentum of his father’s kingdom. He gave Sir Lionel’s sword to his widow, Juliana, and his shield to his daughter Kayleigh. He resolved to remember their names, they too should not be forgotten. Turning his back, Arthur wished he could scratch the blood red dragon from the surface of the shield, even as the girl hugged it and cried.
It was late at night when Arthur returned and learned that Gwaine had left earlier that day with no hesitation. As the bells were still tolling, the remaining knights said, he had divested himself of any and all adornments that linked him to Camelot and had simply walked through the main gates without looking back.
So began the next six years.
***
Over the weeks that followed, Arthur watched Gwen be overtaken with quiet fury and Elyan hesitate in his role. It was like the siblings each had a foot out the door and Arthur accepted, with resignation, that it was only the need to keep food on the table that kept Gwen in the castle, and Elyan naturally stayed within her orbit.
Lancelot too was drawn toward her but not long after, like Gwaine, he too disappeared in search of Merlin. When he arrived back in Camelot it was for Gwen he returned. By then his father was deeply suspicious of the man, who found himself, to Arthur’s remorse, on the receiving end of an interrogation far more brutal than the first. After, Lancelot retook his position as knight. The prince might have silently applauded his bravery had he not feared so much for his welfare.
Of the knights that remained it was as though they had greyed out, their eyes seemed to wander elsewhere, never looking into his for long. Only Leon’s wary manner was familiar, but even his attention was divided between his loyalty and the faltering morale of his fellows.
The winter went on and on, without the warm company Arthur forgot just how long it could be, how much of the spring it can overtake. When it came, the lengthening of the days and the greening of the world brought only fleeting relief; it was early summer when the assassins left Arthur with a father on his deathbed. After a month of only perfunctory communication between Arthur and Gaius, the old physician had urged him to sit down and had gripped his shoulders, calling him “my boy,” as he delivered the news. Arthur, who already understood that the king was dying, felt like a thief, he could only think that he deserved none of Gaius’ tenderness, the fatherly love that should have been Merlin’s. He shook him off and asked that the king be made as comfortable as possible. Arthur resolved, lying to himself, that he would bear this stoically, that he would remain composed out of respect to his father. And then reality set in, and reason left out the window.
“Is there nothing that can be done?” Arthur asked Gaius over the still, candlelit form of his father in a tone that sounded an awful lot like pleading, as he all but dropped from his seat at the old man’s feet. In just a few days of lonely vigils he had watched as his father’s eyes sink into their sockets and his ringed hands grow purpled and stiff; he couldn’t go on like this and just watch him die when there might be a solution he was overlooking.
Gaius shook his head and kept shaking his head.
“But what about- couldn’t you-?” Magic , Arthur thought wildly, there is no other path left now.
“I cannot.” Gaius whispered, understanding what he was asking.
“Cannot or will not? Please Gaius, I don’t care the cost.”
“I beg you be careful with those words!” Gaius warned, more serious than Arthur had ever heard him. “I’ve heard them before and they only led to the unspeakable.”
“My mother,” he stated flatly, having had many sleepless nights to piece things together, to pick through every moment of the last few years and try to understand the truth of them. “Gaius please-”
“I cannot.”
“Is there no one who can?” he heard himself beg. “What was his name, Dragoon, surely he-?”
“No sire,” Gaius said, an odd flicker in his expression. “Not now.”
“But there was someone, wasn’t there?” Arthur gasped in despair, barely recognising his own voice now. His head is in his hands, he doesn’t want to see if the physician is nodding or not. Something very like Lady Llenwi’s words came unbidden to his mind, no ordinary physician can heal him; all those who could have saved him have been purged from the land.
In those last days by his father’s bedside, he was haunted by that family’s shades and many, many more besides.
***
When Arthur closed Uther’s cold hands over the hilt of his sword for his final repose, the prince found to his horror that he was grateful this would be among his last acts of fealty towards a man who had inspired so much of the turbulence in his still young heart. Arthur had loved and hated him, had admired but despised him -but somehow, none of this was true either, these conflicting feelings had pushed one another ceaselessly into ambivalence until he was rendered just a boy, his son, wishing to win the approval of a complicated man. With a final goodbye, Arthur settled into the new contradiction of grief and relief.
His coronation was held a mere month after father’s funeral and Arthur was prepared to face it with just the same measure of confliction. Hearing the rites spoken, he felt acutely that the cold and steely thing that had made its way into his core would never leave. But something about the expressions of his people, extending all the way to the very back of the hall, told him that they did not share the shadow on his heart, he was instead startled to see tentative hope in their faces. He lifted his head up, though his heart did not lift with it. He tried to remember Merlin’s words that he would be a good and just king, one long destined to unite Albion under peace. As the crown was placed on his head, he could only think he wished Merlin was there to see it.
“Long live King Arthur!” Leon had shouted first, as if he knew something of the prophecy too. The leadership of his most trusted knight roused the others into something new and Arthur promised silently that he would try to inhabit this new something that they offered him.
With his coronation, or more likely it was without Merlin, friendship had given way to loyalty, smiles became bows and curtsies, and camaraderie was swallowed by the stiff formality of the war room. Throughout it all however, Leon remained his most trusted ally in all things. Still, it was at the round table that these relationships played out, with Arthur maintaining to the best of his ability the ancient value of equality, believing that the kings who had devised it lived in a fairer world than the one he had inherited.
His first acts as king were not to right the wrongs of he and his father, because those could never be truly righted. Instead, as seemed the way of things now, he aimed for something new. He put a stop to the persecution of the druids and promised that they would not be harmed under the banner of Camelot. When it came time for him to preside over trials, he overlooked the accusations of harmless magic, first finding some excuse, some explanation for the things people claimed to witness, and then later showing blatant leniency. He instead doled out minor punishments when necessary, theft was theft, for example, and should be punished as such whether assisted by magic or not. Occasionally however his ignorance in the matters of magic made him feel a poor judge, recalling one incident between feuding cousins involving one cousin burying rotten eggs in the lands of the other, a seemingly innocuous thing he initially dismissed, but that led to great misfortune and ruin for those involved. In the council meetings, a flock of grey haired men questioned his fitness to rule again and again. At night, when he should have been sleeping, Arthur asked himself the same questions.
Only when magic could be proven to have been used for great harm did he rule as his father might have. When he sent his first man, a proven murderer, to the pyre, he did so unflinchingly, at least outwardly. He watched him burn at dawn after a sleepless night and continued unaffected through the day as though this were routine, as his father might have. When he was finally alone however, anguish and nausea had overtaken him. Gaius was discreet enough to go along with the pretence that the king had succumbed to a brief illness.
In those few coalescent days away from his throne, and to his surprise, Gaius had warned Arthur against his recent rulings on magic users in the kingdom, believing his leniency could inadvertently cause harm, show weakness. But Arthur held firm. The old physician came to understand his stance in time and as though a candle was lit, when he looked, he found bright pride in the old man’s expression and found his support in these matters when he needed it.
But there were whispers, if the king ruled one way why did the law still dictate another? The answer, for the most part, was that he did not have the support of the council, but the king was scared, they said in their not so quiet whispers, and it would only be a matter of time before he fell back in step with the shade of his father and used the fullest of the law against magic to protect himself. Every word they uttered Arthur feared would prove true. There was a war inside Arthur, on one side there was what his heart knew to be just and on the other there was a fear so deeply ingrained he believed it could never truly leave him. He felt like a soldier that had changed sides; exposed, all eyes were on him awaiting his inevitable betrayal, for him to return to the fight more familiar to him.
Never missing an opportunity to challenge him was his half-sister. Morgana, he understood, had taken up residence in the former kingdom of Astyrex, a place which had quickly gained the unsettling name of the Empty Kingdom. No one was quite sure who had first coined it. There she was steadily amassing power but with each trial she threw his way, Arthur strove to prove himself, putting his kingdom and his people first. Eventually she succeeded, it was her spies in Camelot that led to its siege and their flight from the castle.
Although injured, he would not have left Camelot but for Merlin’s prophecy. It was this that finally drove him to seek out Excalibur. He was unsurprised to learn that those close to him knew something of the sword, each swearing they had known of it since childhood, a myth, a story. There were some variations in the stories they told, as is the way of things passed from mouth to mouth, but something in the quality of the words transported him back to the night when Merlin spoke to him in the dark, and he wondered, but did share his wondering aloud.
In a shady section of forest, far from home and to an audience of his knights and subjects, Arthur pulled the sword from the stone and held it aloft, ringing into the air along with the rallying cry that seemed to come from somewhere deep within him, breaking through their collective despair. With the help of the sword’s shocking power, as the crops burned and the kingdom was in chaos, they retook Camelot.
When it was all over, Arthur did not cast it into the lake of Avalon, instead it went with him from one peril to the next, its work near ceaseless.
He found that it was more than a powerful weapon, occasionally it seemed to have an intelligence, so subtle he thought he was imagining it at first. When he was unsure, he felt gently guided. When he could not go on, something urged him continue. When he could not perceive a threat, a small but urgent tug alerted him. It had saved his skin more than a dozen times, but never enough that he relied solely on its help. It gave him occasional counsel, that was all.
Facing Queen Annis’ champion on a suspended, redundant battlefield, Arthur received but a few slashes at the start. But as his energy suddenly and strangely flagged the sword kept him alert of the coming blows, ensuring he could still meet them. It had thrummed with great urgency through it all, its power now undeniable. It grew almost frenetic with every new cut, however small. Just when his strength had ebbed to almost nothing it was the sword, not he, that found the opening and ended the fight. With Excalibur’s tip to his opponent’s breast Arthur stopped short, and with his remaining strength he thrust the sword into the ground. Mercy.
In the windy infirmary tent later, over the loud snapping of the canvas he said to it: “What use are you to my destiny, sword, if you cannot suffer me the glory of a few battle scars?”
It gleamed in the morning sun that flashed through the space and he sighed, resolving to recover quickly from the sudden illness that had overcome him just to spite it.
There was one thing he and the sword seemed to truly disagree on, however, and that was the boy Mordred, who Arthur had taken on as a knight in training. When he was near, the sword frayed Arthur’s nerves with its insistence, its inexplicable certainty of danger. The king was convinced that whatever threat the youth posed could be averted with kindness, he knew from experience that shunning and persecution would only drive such as him to vengeance. But more than that, in Mordred’s eyes Arthur recognised an admiration and loyalty for him that he would not overlook in someone again. But the sword tugged and it tugged until one day in his chambers where he kept it (for it was always by his side) Arthur snapped and threw it to the floor. It clattered and rang on the stone before going silent.
“Fearing everyone to be a spy was the modus operandi of my father! I will hear none of it!” he shouted at it.
The sword said nothing, did nothing.
“Am I really arguing with a sword?” Arthur asked himself aloud, pacing before throwing himself into his chair, head in his hands.
He hadn’t heard the door open but he sure as hell heard it click shut. George. George had entered and heard his outburst. As the days went by however there was no hint word had travelled around the castle that the king was losing his mind, bless the man’s unfaltering professionalism.
The sword had seemed dormant for some time after that. He kept it with him, the threats that came his way too frequent still, he told himself, to consider parting with it. The memory of Merlin’s voice nagged at him occasionally, ‘ cast it into the lake of Avalon.’ Arthur didn’t heed him.
There were bright days for Camelot too. Though he had been invited, Arthur did not attend Gwen and Lancelot's marriage ceremony due only to Arthur’s wish that the day be for them, their friends and their two family members, two because of the sudden appearance of Lancelot’s adoptive mother. None of them should have to worry about the presence of a king. It was held outside the castle at Gwen’s insistence under an entirely blue summer sky. Gwen had a crown of white flowers threaded through her hair, Leon, who had grown up with her, had told him. Many had laughed at how utterly besotted Lancelot had been. In his vows he had promised that should he wake to find this had all been a dream, his heart would still be Gwen’s. Arthur imagined Gwen wrinkling her nose at that, laughing the way he knew she laughed.
Arthur himself had not thought about marriage and engaged in so many treaties, presiding over so many trials and more importantly with the pressure of his father gone, it had simply slipped to the bottom of the pile, something to pick back up and think about later, or so he told himself.
When the couple returned after some weeks, Arthur found Gwen at the edge of the training ground one day, watching them. When she saw him walking in her direction, helmet under his arm and sweating, she shielded her eyes from the flash of his armour in the summer sun and waved with the other.
“I wanted to congratulate you in person, Guinevere,” he said once he had stopped in front of her. “I can think of no better man to be your match.”
“Thank you, sire,” she said quietly, smiling, and then adding, “Arthur.”
It had been a very, very long time since they had spoken directly and Arthur’s heart clenched a little over her use of his name. At one time they had been friends, he dearly wished to go back to that.
“I know it’s been a long time,” she started cautiously, echoing his thoughts, “but I wanted to say that I’m sorry.”
Arthur didn’t need to ask what she was referring to. He sighed, a tension that had lain unchanged for five and a half years dissolving without resistance, like it had been ready. “And I the same,”he said.
“You’ve ruled so differently to your father,” she said in a confiding tone, fidgeting with her hands. “That night, I thought maybe you didn’t care enough. I know now that’s not the case at all. I know Lance sees it too.”
“No, you were right before.”
She frowned at him in askance.
“I didn’t deserve his loyalty or his sacrifice then,” he explained bitterly, looking away. “I met it only with cowardice.”
“And now you’re trying to be worthy of it,” she stated.
Arthur's eyes snapped back to hers, he didn’t mean to forget how clever she could be. Inanely he found himself reddening, that she could put such plain words to a struggle he thought he had kept silent was at the least embarrassing and disconcerting at the most.
She smiled then, all warmth. “He would be proud of you, you know.”
“You can’t say that,” Arthur said quickly, his mouth suddenly dry.
“Fine then, I’m proud of you.”
And if he didn’t mean to be choked up by that he certainly didn’t mean to let it show. He hadn’t noticed Lancelot making his way over to them until there was a hand upon his back.
Notes:
Ok so, here's my thinking:
If Arthur has no one close to him Morgana has to figure out other means to get to him. There's no Merlin to control with a weird worm, no Queen Gwen to brainwash, no dead Lancelot to raise from the dead and no Agravaine to be her spy. Instead she's working on something big in her Empty Kingdom >:)
Similarly Merlin isn't around to accidentally kill Uther, ostracise Mordred and generally mess things up to save Arthur's life. I'm firmly in the Merlin's Behaviour Led to Mordred Killing Arthur camp.
Merlin's concern and irrationality about Arthur's life in general is very much explored later in the fic.A further note about the pilfered funeral scene from QfC. The Arthur in that movie talks about him being a brave and trusted knight, his service to Camelot etc etc. This/My Arthur has a bit more compassion and talks about the fallen knight on a more personal level, resolving that people's lives won't be forgotten in service of the kingdom.
Chapter 6: Let's Go Back to Good Old Bad Days
Summary:
Arthur and the knights go to the late Sir Lionel's village to deal with what at first seems to be a standard bandit invasion, but they quickly learn that something strange has been done to the local well and Morgana is involved. The events are set in motion that see Arthur alone and racing to find Excalibur in the forest.
Then the third interruption came. A mighty shattering above them, pieces of coloured glass flew far, some of it showering over them in a glitter. A large white form careered into the hall on wide wings, and with a great whoosh of wind almost all of the candles were blown out. It landed powerfully upon the round table, and knocked Arthur back into his seat.
It was a dragon. Its eyes, cold like a lizard’s and contracting like a cat’s, found his and there was a flash of intelligence, recognition there. Then its eyes settled above him, where Excalibur was slung over his chair in its scabbard. It stepped slowly forward among the thin plumes of smoke from the extinguished candles, its wings flexing as it let out a high growl.
Notes:
This is the last chapter before we meet Merlin again in the forest and the narrative comes back around to the present.
Again the well, the strange forces, Aithusa stealing then dropping Excalibur, the overheard exchange about the sword and Arthur's flight to the sacred forest are inspired by QfC. The well is a particularly great one. In the movie our villain Ruber shows up with an absolutely bangin musical number, he whips out a little vial with green liquid in it that just says ACME on it, delivers this amazing line "with this potion I bought from some witches..." and proceeds to turn his men and the farm animals into living weapons. Phenomenal stuff. I reused the well and hint that its Morgana's means to raise the dead.
Aithusa is a little transformed in this, she's a tiny bit more capable of flight and speech, enough to be able to kind of impart basic information. This is partly because I paired her with a griffin character in QfC who speaks, but more so because I never liked her being completely broken in Merlin, our girl deserved better.
Arthur mispronounces the name of the woods, accidentally calling it the Land of Witches, using the Irish word Cailleach. As far as I can tell we don't share the same word with Scot's Gaelic. The proper name is the Scot's Gaelic name for Caledonia. I love the idea that there's a fantasy version of Caledonia that was just never decimated by clearances because it was magical and could defend itself.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Let's go back to war and violence
I'm so bored with peace and silence
Nights of evil filled with fear
Your worst dream, that's my idea of fun
Let darkness find its sad ways
Let's go back to good old bad days
No more foolish acts of kindness
Arthur and his kingdom will be mine
The third siege of Camelot began almost three quarters of a year later in late-spring. That the trouble began on the day of a new moon and in the stone village of the late Sir Lionel should have at least raised the hairs on the back of Arthur’s neck, but it did not.
On that windy early afternoon, among tightly arrayed farmhouses and terrified chickens, Arthur and the knights dispatched the few standard fare ne'er-do-wells that came lunging at them inexpertly with daggers and hoes. It had taken them a quarter of a day to ride there, but it took less than ten minutes to solve the problem- or so they thought.
“It’s weird,” Elyan remarked when the short fight was over, frowning and stepping around to look at the bodies that lay in the straw and chicken shit. “It’s nowhere near harvest time.”
“The animals weren’t stolen either,” the newly knighted Mordred said, his gaze alighting on a trio of pigs in a pen between the tightly gathered buildings.
“The villagers too, they seem shaken but unharmed,” Leon added to which Percival nodded in agreement.
“Why invade a village like this, yet take nothing?” Lancelot asked, finishing their thoughts.
“Mm,” Arthur wondered, moving a man’s hand with his boot and seeing that it was dirty and heavily blistered. He wasn’t the only one, all of them seemed to have blistered palms. He wasn’t sure what to make of that, but something, either his instincts or his sword’s (he was never quite sure where these started and ended these days), told him this wasn’t over. He scanned their surroundings. “It’s too quiet.”
And then, in the crack of a cottage door he caught sight of a short haired girl of maybe fifteen, her expression urgent even as she put a finger to her lips. He recognised her with a start, Kayleigh, now almost grown. She pointed discreetly with her other hand at the covered wagons and half-open doorways banging in the wind about them. He gave her a very small nod, trying to impart that he would ensure her protection. He gripped Excalibur, and went to give the silent signal to his men when-
Bandits burst forth shouting from their hiding places, the canvas of wagons whipping away to reveal three men, others poured from the animal sheds, one even burst from a barrel of dry feed.
“You just had to say it was too quiet!” Elyan laughed nervously right before his sword met with another.
Arthur managed to shoot him a look before he too was fighting.
There were at least two bandits for every knight and each of them had to be quick to parry the many blows that came their way. They were poor fighters but having the triple advantages of ambush, numbers and recklessness, it was a near thing.
Surrounded and forced into close combat, their swords made high staccato notes in the tight stone lane. Arthur heard a deep cry only to see Percival, gritting his teeth and protecting a bloodied side, his attacker wielding a vicious looking serrated blade, no doubt designed for breaking through mail. Parrying, the king circled in front of the wounded knight and made quick work of his opponent and Percival’s both. Mordred was holding his own, economising his movements like Arthur had taught him and was coming to the aid of Leon who seemed to be fighting a mad man, clearly over-strong even for Camelot’s first knight. To Arthur’s relief the boy kept as much distance as he could but drew the man’s attention enough for Leon to get the upper hand, though the man remained standing. Slowly their enemies fell, until there was but one left, the over-strong man Leon was fighting, by now bloodied and sweating. They advanced on him, but just when he should have been cornered, he found his back to a half-open door and slipped with a quick step into the cottage, Sir Lionel’s daughter inside. Arthur didn’t need the dull pulse of warning Excalibur gave him then.
Going first, Arthur kicked the door open all the way and slid inside with his back to the wood. He found himself in a low-ceilinged space, a hearth on the far wall, a doorway to one side of it and a table dominating the space. Displayed above the fireplace were the sword and shield he remembered pressing into the hands of the small, bereaved family.
Before the hearth, the bandit had his blade to Juliana’s neck. She saw him and Arthur would be lying to himself if he said he saw trust in her eyes, because he did not, she was purely terrified.
The bandit locked eyes with Arthur, then Leon’s and Lancelot’s who followed him. “I’m sure I don’t need to tell you all what I want, and what’ll happen if you try anything,” he growled, tightening his grip.
“Alright,” Arthur said placatingly, slowly. “Please, let her go and leave in peace.” He started to lower Excalibur. Then he saw movement, the girl had emerged from the door and was tiptoeing behind them, her hand reaching for the sword on the mantelpiece. He wished he could try to give her some signal to make her stop, but looking over the bandit’s shoulder would alert him to her presence.
“See, I know how this goes,” the heavily bleeding man panted, his tone strangely conversational. He hadn’t noticed the activity behind him. “You’ll lower your weapons but you’ll not let me go. Soon as I let go of the lady here, I’m a dead man.”
“No, you have my word,” Arthur said resolutely, trying with all his might not to look at the girl lifting the sword silently. She held it surprisingly for its weight, like she was practised, and moved her feet in a way that made no sound at all.
The man spat. “Not worth much to me, your word. If you let everyone get away who took hostages, Camelot’d have a lot more hostages.”
The man had a point.
Clearly deciding there was no way he would get out of this alive, he braced himself to make the killing slice to the cries of his hostage, his eyes completely wild as he shouted, “long live Morgana Pendragon, Queen of the Empty King-!!”
And all at once he was kicked forward and the sword went with him, through his back. He gurgled a few times on the farmhouse floor and was silent. A pool of blood spread out from below him.
All were stunned into stillness.
It was the girl who moved first, skirting the body and wrapping her arms around her mother. Both were crying.
“That was a very reckless thing you did!” Arthur shouted, coming forward to one side of the dining table.
Kayleigh’s arms left her mother and she went to stand before him with clear anger and determination, Arthur had seen less bravery from kings and warlords. “I had to! There was no way you could have done it.”
Arthur put up his hands placatingly. “You are right, I only wish it had not come to it. You saved your mother’s life today when I could not… It was reckless all the same.”
She seemed to be expecting more of a fight because her expression hardened some more before faltering. She nodded slowly, grappling with the reality of it. She became very aware of the body then and seemed unable to keep her eyes from it. His heart clenched for her, he had been around the same age when he had first killed, too.
“He invoked Morgana,” Leon breathed then behind him, when Arthur looked he saw the knight was nursing his wrist, clearly sprained if not fractured.
The king watched a very quick ripple of fear run through all of the men who had piled into the tight space.
“These didn’t strike me as sorcerers,” Lancelot said.
The rest all made noises or gestures of agreement.
“I might have said the same...” Arthur trailed off, thinking.
“You said they didn’t strike you as sorcerers,” Kayleigh said suddenly. “But I saw something.”
“What did you see?” Mordred asked redundantly.
“There’s an old open well further up the hill. It’s long been filled in but… for some reason they dug it out, right down to the bottom.”
Arthur remembered the blistered hands of the men.
“Show us,” Leon said, stepping forward.
In response she took an immediate step back, looking from man to man. Her frightened eyes fixed on Arthur, she seemed calmed by him. “I’d rather just show you , sire.”
So she remembers me, Arthur thought.
There was the clicking of metal behind him, his men tensing.
“It’s fine, she’s just scared. Really,” he admonished and rolled his eyes, looking back at their suddenly sheepish faces. These were strange times, that his knights should worry for their king’s safety from a gangly girl. Fear of magic still had his kingdom in a stranglehold. “It’s alright. Lead the way.”
She nodded shakily and led him out from the farm. She didn’t avoid the path with the bodies, Arthur noted, though she seemed to take in the sight with a solemn gaze before looking away. They passed along a looping stretch of trodden earth between two fallow fields together. This was wide, hilly country and the fast-moving clouds hid and revealed the sun over and over, casting huge shadows over the land.
They came to a natural indent in the hill where a set of crumbling buildings were set around a very large and very circular hole, flush with the cracked paving. When Arthur pictured a well, he had not imagined this awful thing, around twelve feet wide and generally foreboding. True to her telling, there was a significant pile of rubble and earth off to one side. They stepped down toward it. Arthur drew his sword for good measure and bid her fall behind him, being sure to look into the ruins before going to the well.
“See? They-” she began, stepping a little forward before she stopped, eyes wide.
“What is it?”
“The well dried up years ago but...” she said quietly, shaking her head.
Sure enough the well was filled with water, black and mirror-like even under the afternoon sun. He waited for Excalibur to quiver, it did not. He dared not touch its surface. Still, goosebumps prickled all over his skin.
When they returned he sent Mordred and Elyan out to it, in case Mordred with his druid background or the well-travelled Elyan might be able to glean more, but when they returned they were just as stumped.
His men and the villagers were dealing with the bodies when Arthur addressed Juliana and Kayleigh in the open air some paces away from their home, away from the gory sight. “I will send a patrol for your safety. Make contact with them should anything suspicious occur. For now, keep away from the well.”
Mother and daughter nodded grimly, the wind wiping their hair. He took his leave, seeing over the hill that his men had finished their grim work, he started toward them when he heard footsteps behind him on the stone. It was Kayleigh.
“I wanted to thank you, King Arthur, for your words about my father after he died,” she said, that same admirably brave look upon her face from earlier. “Camelot seems so- big, so great, but then you told this little story… just him, sharing some cheese and an apple with you when you were the age I am now. I think other kingdoms swallow up people’s lives and forget about them when they-” here she cut herself off , ‘die for them,’ were the missing words- “but not yours... I’m not sure if I’m making any sense.”
Arthur blinked. He remembered Merlin’s words about bringing peace to Albion, the hopeful faces of his people during his coronation and his own resolution not to forget those who fall for his cause, but what could he say to her words? Trust the young to speak candidly and leave the old stumbling. Again, he thought of Merlin telling him that he had only ever used his magic for Arthur. “I may be the king,” he said then, feeling a little ridiculous, feeling like his words were straight out of some tired story. “But I am a servant to Camelot’s people. I could never forget goodness and loyalty like your father’s, I will only try to be worthy of it.”
The girl took a big breath in, her head rising, and there was that hope filled look again.
Arthur inclined his head, making a decision then, hoping he understood her use of the sword and her resolute nature enough, that he wasn’t missing the mark. “I saw that you wielded the sword well, Kayleigh. I know someone who would love to train you. When you feel old enough, come to Camelot.” Arthur wasn’t sure then if he was referring to Gwen, who would surely adore her, or himself.
Her eyes lit up and she agreed, thinking nothing of shaking his hand vigorously in her excitement. “You can just call me Kay, if you’d like,” she told him, grinning.
***
This was how the knights and Arthur found themselves at the round table long after sunset. Candles burned between them but did little on this new moon night; their faces were all rendered softly in the meagre flicker and the stained windows of the hall had lost about half of their colour. Changed out of their armour and in plain clothes, all of them were tired and bruised, a few injuries among them. Leon’s wrist was bound having been bent and sprained with the force of the over-strong bandit’s sword against his own and Percival just now lay in Gaius’ office, bandaged but recovering.
“I should like to prevent something like that happening again, I’m open to any ideas,” Arthur groaned into his hands.
“I’m with you there,” Elyan agreed, whose eye was swelling where a flailing fist had landed.
“What about Ealdor?” Mordred began after a pause, but seeing Arthur start minutely he added hastily. “Ah, I-I spoke out of turn, my apologies.”
“No, there is no speaking out of turn here, Sir Mordred, go on,” Arthur said, relaxing, secretly schooling himself, he hadn’t meant to let the tiny shock he felt show at the mention of the town.
“No, sire,” Mordred began to refuse. “It’s not a matter I’m qualified to discuss, I shouldn’t really-”
“If you have ideas I’d like to hear them.” He leaned back in his seat. “This is the round table.”
“Alright,” Mordred tamped down a sheepish smile. “I was just thinking, I guess… We posted guards in Ealdor because they had been the target of bandits in the past. I know there are patrols and guards placed all through the kingdom but what about posting them in the towns and villages as a rule? Protect every outpost, however small.”
The young man was referring to a change in borders that occurred two years ago, borne of the battlefield once Arthur’s army gained the upper hand, the preliminary details shouted over the clammer of weapons as a condition of truce. An unusual start to an agreement to be sure. In the tense formal proceedings that had followed (though how formal it was with both parties actively bleeding, he wasn’t sure), Arthur made sure Merlin’s hometown of Ealdor was included on the official parchment. The warlord (one of many who had scrambled to seize power after Cenred’s death) had raised an eyebrow at that, unable to fathom why the King of Camelot might want a nowhere place like that.
“Mordred’s right,” Leon added. “We’ve long discussed expanding our outposts, but it might be time to post men in all outlying villages first, more permanent stations can come later.”
“When it comes time to think about outposts proper, we could start with the old towers, they’re dotted all over, tend to be close to villages and the like,” Elyan offered.
“Are they sound, structurally?” Lancelot asked.
“Some of them, I should say,” Arthur answered thoughtfully, the flow of the conversation, the simple system of the round table at work reviving him. “We’ll assess them when the time comes. Thank you all, we can commence discussions starting tomorrow once we’ve all had our rest. On to the next order of business. Sir Leon, I understand you requested some well-deserved time off-”
Just then the doors were flung open and two guards came in hurriedly, their capes almost horizontal behind them with their speed. “Sire!” They said in unison.
“What is it?!” Arthur rose from his seat just as the bells began to toll.
“Th-the dead, sire!”
Everyone at the table startled. The dead?
“Some march from the villages,” one guard shouted shakily. “We think the rest have come from the Empty Kingdom. The patrol you posted, they saw-”
Arthur cursed, thinking of the strange well and the bandit who had cried Morgana’s name as the sounds of the struggle outside started to reach them. “They’re using the wells for the spell,” he guessed. “Tell me, the village in the hills, are they safe?”
“They’re safe, the army went straight through, though a few were felled by a girl with a sword, they say. But how did-?”
A second set of guards came stumbling in, panting and bleeding, interrupting the first. “My King! Camelot is under attack from within! They came hidden in wagons and amongst the people, they’re not human!”
It had been a bit of humour on his sister’s part to have them fall for the same trick twice.
“Men, at the ready!” Arthur commanded, thinking quickly. “We must fight those that have breached our walls and work to close the gates. Bring the citizens inside and secure the citadel for battle, if we lose the town we must fall back to safety with them inside. In order of priority those working close to the castle should protect the people first and secure food and water second, but know that both are essential. Spread the word. Rally anybody willing to help.”
“Yes sire!” they all cried.
“My knights, with me! We-”
Then the third interruption came. A mighty shattering above them, pieces of coloured glass flew far, some of it showering over them in a glitter. A large white form careered into the hall on wide wings, and with a great whoosh of wind almost all of the candles were blown out. It landed powerfully upon the round table, and knocked Arthur back into his seat.
It was a dragon. Its eyes, cold like a lizard’s and contracting like a cat’s, found his and there was a flash of intelligence, recognition there. Then its eyes settled above him, where Excalibur was slung over his chair in its scabbard. It stepped slowly forward among the thin plumes of smoke from the extinguished candles, its wings flexing as it let out a high growl.
The table had moved and trapped Arthur, Leon and Lancelot in their seats, but the others rose and rallied around. It was briefly distracted by the movement and Arthur used the opportunity to raise his arm toward Excalibur. Its head snapped back, eyes narrowing and slitted pupils widening when it noticed. It came ever forward and Arthur inched slowly slowly up, he opened his hand to grab the hilt… The monster snarled and lunged for him, the impact hard and immediate, his arm smashing with great force into the wood of his high-backed chair. He shouted in alarm and pain but was still reaching for it even as the creature reared back for a second lunge. The initial stillness broken, the knights crowded in or stepped up onto the table, shouting. Dodging the swords swiping at it, the dragon leapt up, mouth open. All at once Arthur ducked, its claws dug into his chest and the chair splintered in half above him, and he saw as he toppled to the stone that the dragon had Excalibur caught in its teeth. It landed behind him, growling again around the sheathed blade when the knights barrelled toward it. Arthur made to scramble after them without a plan and with only the dagger at his belt, but Leon was out of his seat and helping him up. Arthur clutched his aching arm as the knight supported him and held him off at once, clearly knowing that the king had planned to rush recklessly into the danger. Across the room the other knights had formed a semi-circle around the creature, but it quickly sent half of them flying with the sweep of its tail. Stepping almost upon the prone men then, the thing kicked off from the ground and it was suddenly airborne, out of their reach and escaping out of the broken window where there was now a patch of night sky. A stream of alarmed shouts followed it outside over the sounds of battle.
“Quick, arrows!” Arthur winced, trying to break away from Leon and into action as the deep pain of the blow turned into a relatively manageable ache.
Leon left him against the round table and was moving and shouting, “Arrows!”; “There’s a dragon!” and “Excalibur has been stolen!” Ensuring that the messages travelled from mouth to mouth, faster than he could run.
“Are you alright, sire?” Lancelot said, coming up on his right and examining him.
“Don’t worry about me, protect Camelot!” he told him, using the table to push himself properly to his feet to show he was alright.
Lancelot nodded once and he was gone. Arthur wasn’t too far behind him, exiting the hall with his men and quickly becoming part of the throng, the ordered chaos that was a castle preparing for siege. He headed for the ramparts, though helping and giving commands where he could it was some time before he got there.
Up in the open air now and under the stars he could hear the clash of metal, smell the smoke. Below Camelot heaved with activity as streams of people came toward them, citizens heading to the safety of the citadel walls. His red caped men kept the strange attackers at bay to ensure their safety. These were misshapen and unnaturally moving things clad in dark, blue-cast steel that had no real gleam in the fires that had been set around the town. Arthur could see that some wore helmets, strange horned things protruding visors, giving them an animal quality. Their weapons were a mismatch of swords, hooked axes and maces. There was a great clattering without the expected cries as they were cut down owing to the unnatural silence of the dead. He felt much relief at this particular sight, knowing that they could be cut down after his past encounters with similar beings. He walked along the rampart, seeing all of this play out below. Then he squinted beyond the walls, but he could make out little behind the line of torches on the battlements and the barbican. The night was simply too black. But what he did manage to make out was a hint of the scattered masses emerging from the trees and converging upon the outer gates, far in the distance.
He shook the shoulder of a guard, a man by the name of Lamorak, who had been gripping the embrasure and staring. He startled and bowed when he saw the king.
“What news?” Arthur asked him.
The old guard gave him a look that said, where do I start? This man had lived through similar attacks before, Arthur knew, and gave his report with a steady voice. “The dragon left toward the north, sire, with not a single arrow in it. Some should have landed but they could not pierce its scales.”
The king gritted his teeth. “And the town, the people?”
“Sir Lancelot is leading the efforts to get the citizens inside. We’ve so far been unable to secure the gates to the city but Sirs Elyan and Mordred and the guards are cutting down the dead that stole into the citadel, they’re guarding the way in so that the people may enter.”
“Thank you. I want all of you to have crossbows at the ready should the army breach the citadel and come to our door.”
“Of course!” he said, bowing, then having the king’s attention he asked, “is it true, does the army come from the Empty Kingdom? Does Morgana lead them?”
“I do not know,” Arthur answered honestly. He clapped him on the back, forgetting about his bad arm and wincing as he did it. “Better focus on what’s at hand.”
“Aye!”
He was about to speak to some of the other guards, when a dart of movement, like a black spear, sliced through the main thoroughfare in the town below, sending the night muted red and steel of his men and the mixed colours of his citizens flying, or worse, trampling them underfoot. Unsure what he was seeing, Arthur all but threw himself against the stone to get a better look. They were three black armoured warriors on horseback riding hard in an arrow formation through the street, swords swinging.
“Part! Part!!” he shouted down through the air, but no one could hear him. He watched helplessly as a swathe of people were cut down.
Then at the convergence of roads they spread through the town and out of sight, wreaking havoc where they went. Something in their incredibly economised movements told Arthur that they were not human, or rather, no longer human. They were different to the foot soldiers too. Wraiths, he thought.
Arthur ran back, retracing his steps, leaving the ramparts and jumping down the steep steps of the tight spiral staircase two at a time despite the danger.
He blundered straight into Sir Leon, who was heading up, thankfully neither man had his weapon drawn.
“Sire, where are you going?” he asked.
“I have to get out there.”
“You can’t, sire! Your sword arm... you will be lost,” his knight told him defiantly, blocking his way.
“I’m better with my off hand than most men are with their sword arm,” Arthur argued in a flash of his old, boastful nature.
“Sire, please listen-!”
Arthur shoved him to the right, the wide side of the wall, in anger and stepped passed. An uncomfortable sense of Déjà vu came over him, in his mind he heard his younger self tell Lady Seren not to go to her prince and preserve her own life instead. Having tried for many years not to think about that night and the many pains it had wrought, he understood over six years too late why she had targeted him before his father.
“I suppose I’m coming with you, then,” the man groaned just a few steps behind him.
Leon tried to pull him toward the armoury, but the castle was heaving with people, still Arthur thundered through the lower corridors, a torch in his hand to light their way, making for the tiny side entrance out to the side of the castle, where the walls are high and the paths lead to the gardens.
But at the last moment the knight pulled him back by his good shoulder. “I don’t understand, why are you so determined to go unarmed?!”
“This entrance is secluded,” he tried to explain rapidly while his heart was pumping hard. He placed his bad hand on the wood of the door. “We can bring more people through it and into the castle.”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” the knight said, pithy. There were few people who would talk to him like that, Merlin had been one, and Leon, only when very necessary, was another. Arthur had grown level headed with age; it had been a very long time since his first knight had to be the voice of reason.
“The sword has been stolen. There are three people on horseback in the town I’m certain are wraiths cutting down all who stand in their path. Wraiths cannot be defeated by an ordinary weapon. Our strategy must be to save as many as we can.”
“But you defeated a wraith once before, I witnessed it.”
“I’m sure I had assistance then that I no longer have,” Arthur said meaningfully. He had realised some time ago that the sword he had used that day and the one he pulled from the stone were likely one and the same, though as with many things about the sword, he had shared this with no one.
Leon frowned, his next words were slow, and the king knew he was trying to calm him. “You may have lost the sword, but you have not lost your head. If the army sees us we are very literally letting them in through the back door.”
Arthur couldn’t deny the truth of it, without his sword he had lost all sense when he saw the wraiths. Lamenting the wasted time, he was about to relent when the sounds of a struggle came to them through the door, a familiar voice cried softly with effort over metal striking metal.
Arthur placed his torch on the wall and fumbled for the keys on his belt. Once they were in the lock Leon, the better armed of the two, went first.
They burst into a scene of Gwen on the path by the batter, fighting ox guard to avoid the disadvantage of her height relative to her two opponents. These things were terrifying up close, their armour doing little to hide their half-skeletal nature. She didn’t falter despite their intrusion, and with a wide swing she took off the head of one dead soldier, the bones exposed and brittle. She adapted once the two joined her side and soon the second thing fell headless to the grass.
“Gwen! What are you doing here?!” Arthur asked.
“Shh shh!” she flew at him, silencing him. She gestured for both of them to crane in as she whispered. “I was following that .” Then she pointed up and upon the alure, the lowest part of this side of the castle, Arthur could see the tips of white wings, the ridges of a spine in a panel of light cast by the windows.
Then movement beyond the light, and only through sound and because the black of the armour was a void where the stars should have been, did he guess that one of the wraiths had stepped forward to join it. Had they breached the castle already?
The trio tiptoed toward the wall, extremely cautious not to make a sound as they lay against the stone of the batter to watch and listen.
The creature made a frog-like croaking that Arthur understood to be words when the wraith stopped before it. He was startled to find he could even understand some of it when the words were repeated enough, hearing ‘Excalibur’ and ‘forest’ clearly. The sounds petered out, the dragon seeming for all the word like it was scared or unsure.
There was the click of armour and Arthur recognised the sound of a helmet being removed. “Say… that… again,” came a voice, it was unnatural and as dry and rustling as paper or autumn leaves, but it managed to have a feminine quality. It can speak, he thought.
The croaking started up again, but the wraith had clearly never intended to listen for suddenly she was in the light with the dragon, holding onto one of its horns and shaking it as the creature growled in fear and protest. “How... could you have lost it! Worthless beast!” The wraith screeched.
A horrible hunch suddenly came over Arthur in that moment, and knowing the wraith had divested herself of her helmet, he craned his head to see, and see he did. Though her skin was grey and peeling and her eyes were milky, her hair was still long and her expression still filled with rage -Arthur knew he was looking at the Lady Seren. The other two would surely be her parents. He tried to remain still even as this revelation had his head spinning.
Seren let go of the dragon and it stepped back, grumbling. She stepped forward with it, threatening.
“Where is this Tìr nan Cailleannach? Who is Kilgharrah?”
The dragon responded, repeating the word forest again.
“You’re saying another dragon did this? You lie!”
There were more desperate inhuman noises, the words ‘fight’ and ‘sky.’
“You will fly to Queen Morgana… Tell her what you have done,” she rasped angrily, when the dragon didn’t respond she screamed, and the sound was an unholy scratching inside Arthur’s very ears. “Take me down, then go!”
Arthur felt Leon relax beside him, knowing this meant she had not breached the castle. Gwen was the next to relax though only somewhat as they went out of sight and there was the sound of wings leaving.
Without speaking they all stepped to the door and locked themselves inside.
“That was... oh my God that was Lady Seren!” Gwen gasped, falling against the wall, her face ashen.
Arthur nodded, feeling hollow-headed as he too processed it. Gwen was still wide-eyed across from him. He pulled her into a quick hug.
Leon’s hand went to both of their shoulders to shake them out of their stupor. The three had formed a tight triangle, he looked between them. “Do either of you know where this forest is?”
They shook their heads.
“Gaius will know,” Gwen said, regaining herself. She took the torch and they started running.
As in the last sieges, the infirmary had spilled from Gaius’ small office into other parts of the castle, they needed only to follow the moans of pain and the stream of people exiting bandaged to find it. They found the physician had just finished tending to a citizen with a thankfully shallow slash across her stomach, though there was a great deal of blood.
“Sire?” he asked, noticing them as he cleaned his hands in a bowl of water, and then this was taken away by a page who had clearly been assisting him. He was frowning at Arthur and the king only then realised that this cheek had been cut by the glass earlier and he was holding himself strangely, protecting the arm the creature had lunged at. He couldn’t think about these things now.
“We must speak with you, we’ve learned a great deal more.”
He looked shiftily around at his patients, seeming to decide from the king’s manner that this was not a conversation to be overheard by those already in distress. “I have to retrieve supplies from my office, come with me and make it quick.”
“The Lady Seren, a wraith…” Gaius trailed off once they were in the office speaking in a circle that included Percival, who was sitting up in bed and listening in. The familiar office looked off kilter, the shelves having already been swept clean of healing draughts and bandages. “She must have sworn an oath of revenge while she was still living, in fact I’m sure of it.”
“Her parents too,” Arthur added grimly.
“The rumour is more than likely true then, these forces come from the Empty Kingdom,” the old man said in quiet horror. “Morgana has been hard at work.”
Arthur had never seen the Empty Kingdom, but in his mind it was always a place that the wind yawned through, where nothing grew and the dead were left unburied where they had perished. He imagined now his sister’s gruesome work. Were there big, open wells there too? Did she drag them all into the waters, one by one? Did they claw their way out and, finding themselves wretched, that all gods had abandoned them, did they pledge themselves to her as their queen?
“Seren spoke, Gaius,” Arthur shuddered, finding no reprieve as he moved from mental image to recent events. “They’re powerful, the way they cut through the streets. The dead too, they are many... What kind of hellish magic could Morgana have employed to achieve all of this?”
“I can’t be sure, but it may have been years in the making.”
“Seren and the dragon were speaking of a Tìr nan Cailleach, do you know where that is?”
“Tìr nan Cailleannach ,” Gaius corrected, though his expression was immediately fearful, he looked left and right before leaning in, like it was a secret. They all leaned with him. “It’s a forbidding place, I only know that it’s protected by magical forces beyond my comprehension. It is rarely spoken of.”
“But you’re a sorcerer, surely you know more?”
He winced visibly, rarely had anyone said it so openly and plainly in these past thirty years, Arthur guessed. “And you’re a man,” he countered testily, giving him a disapproving eye. “Do you know all the places where men have tread?”
“No, I suppose not,” Arthur relented, apologetic.
“Mm,” Gaius grumbled before continuing. “Why do you ask about this place?”
“The creature dropped the Excalibur there, it was attacked by another dragon.”
He raised an eyebrow but still looked grave. “The dragon from this very castle, no doubt. These two are the last of them.”
Unsurprised to learn that the huge beast still lived, Arthur remembered how it had almost laid waste to his kingdom and his task suddenly seemed even more immense, impossible even. Still he said, “I must go after it.”
“I’d advise against that course of action, sire,” the other warned, but then he sighed knowingly. “But I know you have to.”
Gwen, Leon and Percival all startled, looking for all the world like a pack of odd and frightened rabbits stilled before some danger. “You can’t be serious!” Leon gawped, ambassador to their collective bewilderment.
Arthur stood straight, knowing he could finally put words to his long-held secret, to the thing that had driven him for all these years. “On the night he escaped, Merlin told me never to let the sword fall into enemy hands, if it’s been dropped in the forest there’s a chance I can retrieve it.”
“ Merlin told you-?” the knight intoned, looking around at the others to see if they had the same reaction, finding all but Gaius were just as confused as he was.
Arthur nodded, though he couldn’t help the tiniest hint of a smile at their incredulity, yes, that Merlin . “It was a prophecy, about me, the sword and a future of peace for all of Albion. The sword can fell these wraiths, no other blade can. You must know I would never abandon Camelot unless I had good reason... Are you with me?”
Leon peered into his eyes as if to see whether he was sound of mind. “Fine, if it’s Merlin who said that, I trust him.”
Arthur didn’t know he was holding so much tension but when he breathed out, it was pure relief.
“I’m going with you,” Gwen told him. “At the very least to get you through the town unseen.”
“Gwen, please you-” and it wasn’t Arthur but Leon, her friend since childhood, pleading with her.
“I followed the dragon, didn’t I? I know these streets,” she reasoned. “If the wraiths cannot be defeated with a normal sword we should retreat, someone will need to spread the word. But more than that I need to find Elyan and Lance, if I know my brother and my husband, and I do, they’ll try to face them. They’ll die, Leon.”
“I will stay and defend the patients,” Percival promised beside them as he rose carefully from his bed, finally taking his chance to speak when he heard that no one would try and argue with Gwen any further.
“Would that it not come to that, but thank you, Sir Percival,” Arthur said, patting the large man’s arm. “Have weapons brought to you here.”
Percival nodded.
“Gaius,” Arthur said, turning to the old physician and bowing his head. “Thank you, you’ve been more loyal to me, more of a friend to me than I deserve.”
“Oh! Hush! No need to write either of us off just yet!” He chided loudly, flapping his sleeves at him. “Now get going!”
“Use every means to keep yourself and your patients safe, Gaius,” Arthur implored, gripping his frail shoulders, dead serious. “Do you hear me? I mean every means.”
“I do, sire,” Gaius said, the gravity of it obviously clear to him.
“You are all my witness to this,” Arthur addressed the small group.
They all nodded gravely.
The way to the forest as told by Gaius memorised, they left the castle through the same secluded tunnel and edged along the batter once more, making their way through the quiet training grounds along the backs of the tents there and on towards the stables. There were rough ladders and siege towers now at the very citadel. The dead did not have the fear of the living and they climbed, headless of the arrows that came their way and the heights below them. Cries came to him as people were cut down and fleeing all over. Camelot was well and truly in the throes of battle and Arthur almost hesitated, almost turned around, but Leon was behind him and his determined steps in the dark reassured him that this path was the right one.
They made unfamiliar turns from grass to cobblestone as they kept to the edges of familiar ground. Upon the stone they found there was blood below their feet, shining black in the distant fires, the sick smell of iron enveloped them as they stepped through it. The next thing to reach them was the smoke, the heat, the frightened whinnies of horses. Rounding the last corner, they saw that the stables were on fire.
White heat issued forth from the building as they arrived, smoke escaping out of the open doors. Arthur was about to steel himself to run inside when a lanky figure came stumbling out coughing, and the flames whooshed as animals began pouring out. The person was knocked prone and Arthur dove ahead, snatching them away and rolling them both to safety before a hoof could bash in one or both of their heads. When they righted themselves he found it was the young stable hand, covered in soot but otherwise unharmed.
“Are you alright?” he asked him quickly, the boy nodded. “Are all of the stalls open?”
“Yes, sire,” he coughed.
“Well done. Go to the castle, be careful you aren’t seen!” he said to him, pushing him in the right direction. “Leon, Gwen, with me!” he shouted as they bolted after the horses.
Riding through the back streets, just a few dead came toward them through the dark and smoke, the fighting now concentrated on the citadel, but Leon and Gwen cut them down. They had lost visibility as they left, leaving the fires at their back, Arthur managed to catch sight of the black disk of the new moon amongst the stars and he cursed it as their horses stumbled and reared over things unseen.
Then a wide and many armed form was before Gwen on the road. Rider and horse seeing the thing too late, Gwen’s horse went up crying onto its hind legs and Arthur’s went into the back of it.
“Halt! Halt!” shouted a familiar voice. “It’s us, Sirs Mordred and Lancelot!”
The hooves of Gwen’s horse hit the cobbles and it whined and snuffed. “Lance! Mordred! What-?!”
“Gwen,” came Lancelot’s weak voice ahead, Arthur still wasn’t able to see them clearly.
“Arthur and Leon are here too. What happened?!” she hissed quickly.
“I found him, he’s injured. I think he faced one of the black armoured knights.”
“Oh, of course he did!” She groaned, love, exacerbation and worry combining in her words. “I’m taking him back to Gaius. Mordred, help me.”
“Yes, m’lady,” he said, and Gwen hopped down so they could both struggle him onto the horse quietly.
“Elyan, do you know where he is? If he’s alright?” She asked as they worked.
“I don’t, I’m sorry, I haven’t seen him.”
There was the barest noise from behind them, the hoof of an impatient horse, just grazing the ground.
Before Arthur could look Leon came up beside him, his voice low, even and urgent. “Move. All of you. Quickly .”
He dared to glance over his shoulder. Silhouetted on a little rise against the teeming citadel was Lady Seren upon a black steed.
She did not move.
“Mordred!” Gwen whispered urgently and the youth quickly helped her back up so Lancelot was at her back.
He moved around and vaulted onto the back of Leon’s horse.
Arthur tugged at his own horse’s mane, bringing her to a walk as the group started their cautious getaway.
Risking another look, the king caught the moment the wraith brought her hooked axe forward like a lance and began to charge.
“Go!” Arthur barked and all of them broke into an immediate gallop. They broke through small market stalls, their horses tripped over what he knew could only be bodies and leapt over makeshift barricades his men had set up, hoping against hope that there weren’t spears or stakes set up on one or the other side.
“Lance, hold on to me!” Gwen shouted to her husband, who was no doubt slipping.
Then ahead were torches, the gates! His men were finally securing the gates! There were still fights happening here but in the town the tide seemed to be clearly turning.
They caught sight of him.
“Move!” He commanded as loudly and clearly as he could as he rushed forward. “Do not try to engage the knight! No ordinary blade can fell her or the other two like her! Spread the word!!”
And then they passed under the gate and were outside the walls and riding into the woods.
Leon knew these woods as well as the castle and, leading them in wide circles, the thundering of her horse’s hooves soon left in the wrong direction. They were safe for now but they spoke low, listening carefully for signs of her approach in the dark. Arthur could tell they were on high alert because when a roe deer cried from somewhere unseen he heard everyone jump a foot off their saddles, especially that it had sounded so much like Lady Seren’s inhuman screech.
“We’ve lost her. You can’t continue with us,” Arthur said most particularly to Gwen and Lancelot, though the latter had gone worrying silent. “If we part now we can throw her off. There’s a tower to the west of here, you can hide there. Gwen, Mordred, do either of you know it?”
“I do, sire,” Mordred whispered in the dark, confused. “But where are you going?”
“To retrieve Excalibur, the dragon dropped it in Tìr nan Cailleannach. The knights we’ve seen are wraiths, I will need the sword to defeat them.”
“Sire, that’s a sacred place of magic! I should go with you.”
“No, I need you to stay,” Arthur went forward and gripped his shoulder as he did with Gaius earlier, relying mostly on sound and the position of their horses to find it. “Sir Lancelot is injured and the dead are crawling all through the woods. If it comes to it, I ask that you don’t hesitate to use whatever powers you have at your disposal.”
“S-sire, are you sure?” the knight stammered.
“You heard me, please , Mordred.”
“I-” he hesitated. “I will.”
“Alright. Don’t take a straight path. Abandon the horse when you can and cover your tracks.”
“Yes sire,” he agreed and he jumped from Leon’s stallion.
“Be safe, both of you,” Gwen sniffed then somewhere in the black.
“You too. I’ll see you all again. We’ll retake Camelot.”
“That better be a promise,” she warned fondly.
“It is.”
Goodbye felt too final, so they didn’t say it. They turned around, his youngest knight leading the way.
“Sir, Leon,” Arthur said when they were out of earshot. He had come to a decision. “Go with them. Better I go alone.”
“That’s absurd and you know it!” Leon shot as quietly as he could.
“There are people heading to that tower that I care about very much. Please, follow them, or if you’d prefer, patrol the area then go back to them.”
“I must refuse, I-!”
“Take my keys,” he unhooked them and pressed them into what he hoped was his hand in the dark but they ended up hitting his stomach, close enough. “Use the siege tunnels if you need to get into the castle… If I don’t come back, Sir Leon, I would like you to rule in my stead.”
“Arthur!” he exclaimed, making exceedingly rare use of his name. “If you’re right about the wraiths, there won’t be a Camelot to rule if you do not return.”
“And there’ll be no Camelot either if it loses its people, I need you to protect them.”
They stood in tense silence for a moment. “Here,” his knight relented finally, handing him his sword within its scabbard. “Then take this.”
Arthur accepted it and gave him the dagger from his belt in exchange.
They gripped each other’s arms to the elbow.
“You will retrieve the sword,” Leon told him with conviction.
“Let’s hope for all of us that I do.”
Arthur rode into the night with the dead behind him, never evading them for long. The world lightened and he was still riding. His pursuers followed him all the while, he had hoped that they would hide from the sunlight like so many terrible bats, but they did not. The day went on and on and the sun dipped again. He left his horse behind, sorry for what he had done to her. It was dark again by the time he saw the shape of the woods across a wild, gorse-covered landscape.
Notes:
Here we go lads.
Chapter 7: I Share My World With No One Else
Summary:
Arthur very literally falls back into Merlin's life. These magical woods seem to do as Merlin asks and Arthur finds out his wayward friend is more powerful than he could have ever imagined. Arthur tries to ask him for help, it doesn't go too well. The two find there is too much pain between them still, for a straight forward reconciliation.
“Something’s wrong,” he said, looking to the sky. “He should come when I call.”
“He? Is this the dragon my father had locked up below the castle? That attacked Camelot?”
“Yes, that dragon. We’re… kin of a sort. He always comes when I call, he’s compelled to do it.”
Arthur felt dizzy. “What?”
“This isn’t good.”
“Did you say kin?” Arthur gaped, stuck on the word.
Notes:
This chapter was the first thing I wrote of this fic. I had this AU idea suddenly when I was supposed to be working and had to quickly note it down on my phone to get them out of my system. That was March on this year. It's wild to me what a huge project it turned into. My draft is over 140k now. I love this and the coming parts so much and I hope you will too!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Like every tree stands on its own
Reaching for the sky I stand alone
I share my world with no one else
All by myself
I stand alone
“Merlin?!”
“Do you know how long it took me to make that net?” he asked fractiously.
Arthur was dumbfounded and remained sitting in the slimy pool, the silt that he had kicked up earlier already settling around him.
“Well?!”
“Merlin! I-It’s me!” having enough of this net business and finally shrugging and ripping himself free. He waded ungracefully toward the muddy bank with its exposed roots.
“So, this gives you the right to destroy my things, does it?” He bit.
“Merlin, I-?” Arthur hesitated, gripping a root near his feet almost beseechingly. He didn’t know what to say, this was absurd. Had he hit his head? Was he just now unconscious and sinking to the bottom of this pool?
Merlin for his part appraised him with a raised eyebrow, giving him an expression that would be at home on Gaius’ face, and then abruptly turned away and out of Arthur’s view, his staff striking the ground regularly every few paces. His voice sounded out as he went, “go home, Arthur.”
“What do you mean ‘ go home ?!’” Arthur scrambled over the bank after him, his clothes heavy with water. But grabbing for his next hand hold the roots shifted even as he watched, he decided he couldn’t think about that now, and he managed to get himself out without them. He took cautious steps forward, expecting the soft ground to try and hold onto his feet as it had earlier.
“This forest isn’t like any you know,” Merlin said ahead of him, his back turned as he walked in and out of sunbeams, going this way then that, wading with an uncharacteristic grace through the bracken. “It will chew you up and spit you out eventually. Save it the trouble and remove yourself.”
And sure enough around the king’s feet tiny creatures had sprung from the mud, as numerous as grass seed, several tiny eyes were suddenly on him. He yelped and had to dance away from them, he was grateful for all of his years perfecting his footwork in sword training, rightly fearful of what might happen if he squashed one of them. These creatures he couldn’t contemplate now either, he tucked them away in his mind for later. “I’m well aware! It’s tried the chewing part already, believe me! I’ve been running for my life!”
“Then run home,” Merlin said into the trees.
“I can’t!” He called, half-breathless and unable to catch up, there was always around twenty feet between them no matter how quickly he stumbled after him. “Half of my knights are too injured to fight or are stuck in a tower outside the castle. Camelot is under siege!”
He could swear he saw the other man’s back twitch and his shoulders tighten as he walked away. “And you come to me?” he shouted back, still not turning around, his staff hitting the ground harder. “Camelot is not my problem anymore. You’re not my problem anymore.”
“It’s not you I’m here for, stupid! It’s Excalibur. Excalibur’s in the forest!”
That made him stop. “Why? How?” he demanded.
“The how is Morgana... and her bloody dragon,” he panted as he finally closed the distance. “The why? It’s Morgana… I’m sure she’d be happy to give you a list of whys.”
“Aithusa?” Merlin’s tone changed then, it was softer, and he tipped his head down and to the side, he almost looked back at him.
“What? Is that its name?”
He growled, regaining himself and resuming his steady walk away. “It doesn’t matter.”
“What, so, you aren’t going to help?” Arthur reached for the back of Merlin’s shoulder, to put his hand there, to break this strange exchange between them and have them finally face each other but he flinched, dipping away and out of reach and he was moving again, involuntarily taking Arthur along with him as though the king had attached a rope to him. He saw some familiar sights and realised that he was leading them in a circle, damn him. Circle or no, Arthur resolved to keep pursuing him even if he collapsed with exhaustion.
He threw up his hands, looking like he was arguing with the trees. “Are you really that self-important, that stupid, that you expect me to? After everything?”
“No, of course not but, I thought-?”
“You thought what? Go on, why do you think I should help?” he snapped and he pulled back a thin branch of a leaning whitebeam as he passed so it whipped Arthur in the chest just as he was getting within arm’s reach again.
“Urgh!” Arthur growled and pushed through it. “I know you have plenty of reasons to turn me away, God knows you should, but didn’t you say it was my destiny? That it shouldn’t fall into the wrong hands? I’m sure you’d agree Morgana’s are the wrong hands,” he stopped talking briefly to kick away a vine that he was sure had been creeping toward him. “What happened to all of that?!”
“I did my part,” he half-sang, sounding almost playful, still not turning around, still charging forward. “You shouldn’t have lost it!”
“I didn’t. Lose it. Merlin, would you-?” he said, labouring. But the air left him completely, with what happened next.
Ahead of him Merlin tapped the grass beneath his feet with his staff and it rose up below him impossibly, rising to meet each step he made into the air so smoothly that he never broke stride. It brought him neatly to the prone trunk of a fallen tree which he went along so lightly and airily it seemed his feet weren’t touching it. Another tap tap and a neighbouring elm bent to pick him up in its branches and he twisted away into the woods. Arthur, realising that he hadn’t moved since the spectacle began, was suddenly all action, climbing angrily after. Merlin seemed to have set the forest to thwart him at every turn, every move was hindered by grabbing vines and swinging branches that halted and tripped him. All the time he yelled the man’s name, punctuating it with increasingly creative profanities. Merlin, unshaken by all of this, wasn’t too far ahead, his back was never out of view for long as the low boughs passed him from one tree to the next. He’s goading me, Arthur thought as he made a painful leap to a new branch to avoid being winded by another. He’s making me go through all of this because he knows I’ll follow him, the bastard.
He saw him leap nimbly down to the ground, and without really looking Arthur followed-and plunged straight down into green water that surged immediately down his throat as he opened his mouth in surprise. Through the bubbles and the murk he could see the waving pondweed suddenly burst into action below him. He kicked and flailed for the filmy, leaf littered surface, frantic to get away from it and to get back to where the air was. The weeds wrapped around his ankles but instead of pulling him down, they pushed him up. When he breached the water he let out a stray of algae filled liquid, coughing and gasping. Merlin was standing above him on the carpet of green. He was-
Arthur reeled, he almost stopped kicking and sank back down in shock. He’s standing on the water.
The sorcerer bent and held out a hand to him, blocking out the sun of the clearing as he did so.
Arthur took it and was hauled up onto solid water. Solid… water.
“Sorry,” Merlin said, stepping back. “That was a dirty trick I played on you.”
“Really?! You think?!” Arthur snapped, sending dirty water out in all directions with his arms, but he recoiled as a jolt shot through his injured limb, unable to help the pained sound he made.
The other sighed, something more familiar seemed to click into place within his expression, a galena of concern over the stoniness. “You’re hurt.”
Arthur didn’t say anything, he focused on the strange feeling of the water, still somehow moving gently below him, but this made him dizzy. He gave up and nodded wearily.
“Come on,” Merlin said then, meaning for him to follow. He moved as confidently across the pond as though it were grass.
“Oh, so it’s only now you’re suddenly being nice to me, and after you attempt to drown me!" He spat but all the while he was taking highly cautious kitten steps after him. “Will you help me find Excalibur, or not?”
“If I asked it, the water would let you sink at any moment,” Merlin leaned back, grinning.
“Threatening me? Who does he-?” Arthur muttered.
“What was that?”
“Nothing!”
Somehow Merlin’s dwelling place was made of living trees, because of course it was, the trunks twisted together artfully, forming a cluster of greenery above it like a hat. It had even grown to accommodate a few small windows and a door. This place, like the first body of water he fell into (Arthur was still getting over that it happened twice, not to mention the bizarre miracle of his one-time servant walking on the surface of the second), felt like a grove, it was quiet, recessed, flanked on two sides by tall root lined earth and dwarfed by massive and ancient trees. In front was a small verdant plot where he clearly grew his food. Huge pollen drunk bees moved slowly among the rows. A blackbird sang out sweetly somewhere nearby. They travelled up the oddly untrodden line bisecting the garden, and came to the plain door topped with an impressive pair of antlers.
Merlin whispered something to it and it squeaked open.
He turned to the King and hesitated in the doorway. This was the first time Arthur had been able to get a good look at him. The beard was new, the dark hair was thick but clipped to frame his face, it gave him a more mature look, but, Arthur supposed, we’re both older now . His hair was longer too, not six-years-longer, but long enough to mostly hide his ridiculous ears, and not a little wild, the curls he had always suspected to be there running riot now. He was just as skinny as the day he left, as far as he could tell, so he was probably feeding himself alright -which was to say, barely adequately, no change there. He was dressed in highly simple clothing, a beige and stained linen tunic, well worn hide breeches, a leather belt and… no shoes to speak of at all. He gripped a staff and Arthur recognised it as being very like the ones he remembered Sophia and Aulfric had when they visited Camelot, the wood clutching a blue stone, the depths of it looking almost black in the scant light of the forest. The strangest part for Arthur, somehow, was that he was missing his signature neckerchief, instead there was just his bare skin and collarbones.
He ducked inside, beckoning Arthur to follow.
Inside there was already a fire going in a wide stone inglenook, casting the bottles, books and bedding that immediately characterised the space in warm orange. Arthur was reminded immediately of Gaius’ office. It was quiet too, the tight weave of the trees shut out many of the sounds of the woods. He looked up and the ceiling was the same, branches rose to a peak together at the centre and let in no daylight.
Merlin went ahead to kneel by the fire where there were two wooden seats covered in sheepskins. Two seats, Arthur thought, making him question the immediate assumption that he lived here alone. Though, casting his eyes about at the small bed and the utter Merliness of the space, there was no other sign it was occupied by another human being. Arthur remembered suddenly that he was soaking wet and smelling like a pond, or, two ponds, and followed, closing the door behind him. When he reached him the other man was on his haunches whispering, the flames lighting his face and his eyes- no, the light there was his own, flaring around his pupil. The fire sparked and grew like he had set bellows on it but the flame was oddly naked, with no wood or coal as its fuel. Of course, the fire had to be magic. Arthur shivered despite the heat.
“Dry off however you need to,” his enigmatic host said quietly before breaking away to tinker with his bottles.
Arthur hesitated before stripping, but shook his head at himself. Nothing he hasn’t seen before. He peeled off his tattered jacket and let it land at his feet with a wet splat. His breath hitched as he raised his arm to divest himself of his tunic, Camelot red, with a sleeve all but shredded in the attack. He lay both on a clothes horse within arm’s reach. He inspected his arm for the first time, holding it out against the light, bruises in purple and yellow showed the pattern of the creature’s lunges as he reached for Excalibur.
“You can rest here, I can give you salve for your wounds,” he heard behind him, before the man came forward again into the circle of light. “But then I need you to leave.”
“You would really send me anyway, with no regrets?”
“None.”
“That’s a lie, surely.”
Merlin didn’t answer, instead he threw him a small jar, Arthur barely caught it, his reflexes clearly not all they should be in his exhaustion. He earned an eyeing up from the other man for it. His gaze seemed to snag on the large stretch of shiny pink scar tissue on his bare chest, he didn’t make a particular attempt to look away.
The jar was labelled “Arnica, Comfrey, Mugwort” in Merlin’s familiar handwriting. He opened it, the smell was like pungent greenery at the end of the Month of Weeds. He dipped his fingers in and rubbed it gently over his arm for a few moments, finding it was painful even to touch. Finished, he frowned at the chair behind him, the one on the left. “May I?”
The other nodded.
Arthur settled himself down. At first he was stiff, but his aches had their way and soon, somehow, he felt heavier than when he had when he sat down. The chair creaked beneath him, the sheepskin warmed below and around him. The fire was warming him too, bidding the prickling goosebumps of his naked arms and legs to settle down and his shivering give away to stillness.
“You can sleep,” Merlin said on his right, he was sitting in the seat to his right now.
“No,” he mumbled between involuntary tips of his head. He startled, realising he had forgotten to warn him. “Morgana… she brought them back.”
His host sat up in his chair. “Brought who back? Arthur?”
“I-sorry,” Arthur’s eyes were fluttering closed even as he feared they would find him. “That night, the family Lord Dalfan, the Ladies-”
“Llenwi and Seren,” Merlin breathed.
“Seren followed me to the forest, the others are in Camelot. There’s an undead army too from the Empty Kingd- the Kingdom of Astyrex. Some are dead from the surrounding villages.”
“They won’t reach us, we’re protected here.”
“Promise?” He asked before he could stop himself, needing to know that they were safe, too close to the edge of sleep to moderate his fear.
Merlin paused. “I promise. You can sleep,” he said, softer than before.
“Mm,” and then after a beat. “I could do with some water… if it’s not too much trouble.”
A dizzy few seconds passed and a clay tumbler was pressed into his hands. He drank but his good arm felt just as heavy as the rest of him, the tumbler lowering. It was pressed to his lips again, he drank another few gulps. He was vaguely aware of the fingers over his, easing the vessel from his hands. He just needed to close his eyes for a little while, not for long, not-
His eyes were crusted and swimming when he opened them again, with no sense of urgency at all he took in the room, the bunches of herbs hanging over the inglenook to dry, a mobile of charms crystals and feathers overhead, the suspended pot over the fire, the rugged floor, a loom shoved into one corner – details he hadn’t seen earlier. He felt lighter and the pinched headache between his brows that he hadn’t taken proper stock of was largely gone. The hair at the front of his head had dried while the back, the part that had been pressed into the sheepskin, was still a little damp. He started to move and a pocket of warmth quickly vanished as a rough blanket, that he knew he did not have when he fell asleep, slid to the floor. He blinked at it, then noticed the figure in the chair opposite, scratching the stumble on his neck casually as he watched him.
“You must have enchanted me,” Arthur accused through a sleep sticky voice.
“Really. For what motive? Tell me,” Merlin all but sang, leaning toward him and resting his cheek on his fist in a show of mock curiosity. “I’m truly interested to hear why I, evil sorcerer, would need or want to enchant an exhausted man to sleep.”
Arthur frowned at him.
“No magic was needed, trust me.”
“Fine, I do. And don’t call yourself that.”
Merlin scoffed and looked away.
“We’ve lost precious time, with or without you I need to leave,” he said, getting up.
“For where exactly? Do you know where it is, Excalibur I mean?”
“Deep,” Arthur answered with more confidence than his words deserved as he reached for his trousers, which he noted vaguely were clean now. “Deep is all I know.”
“And how did you expect to find it? Do you realise how huge this place is?”
“Well, that’s where I’m hoping you come in, see you have magic and-”
“Right, yes,” he said, getting up and circling to the back of his chair, gripping the back of it and gesticulating as necessary. “You didn’t expect to find it, as always it comes down to me to save the day.”
“Oh no,” Arthur said honestly, as he pulled on his trousers, a ridiculously difficult task with his bad arm and his body still aching as it was. “I stumbled on you quite by accident. The plan changed swiftly from wander around in a cursed forest and probably die to something involving you and my hopefully not dying... And what do you mean by ‘always’ and ‘save the day?’”
Merlin groaned and clawed at his own eyes. “Gods, if you haven’t worked it out in five years you’re far denser than I thought.”
“Six years, well over it in fact,” Arthur corrected, moving on to his belt. “As I was saying, you have magic-”
“The thing I was almost executed for? Yes, what of it? Useful to you now, is it?”
Arthur flinched at that, he hesitated, taking a moment to pinch himself that Merlin was truly before him after all these years, and that they had fallen right back into arguing. “Merlin… You said yourself this place will chew me up and spit me out. But with your magic you seem to have command over it. I’ll need that if I’m to find the sword.”
“I don’t have command over it,” he said, offended. “Everything I do is within the rules of this place, you wouldn’t understand. Or care.”
“Try me,” Arthur said, ceasing all motion.
Merlin glowered at him and then threw his hands and started to pace. “I wouldn’t make anything behave in a way it wasn’t already willing to do.”
Arthur folded his arms and nodded, pretending he understood.
“This place is neither good nor evil, just like magic,” he elaborated, as though this helped.
“And would it, if it wanted to, defend itself with your help? Because you can be sure Morgana will rain magic and dragon fire and whatever else she has at her disposal on the place.”
The sorcerer groaned. “You don’t understand, it’s ambivalent, it will do whatever it wills, I can only nudge it, see if it will go with me.”
“I’m not hearing a no.”
He didn’t respond, his pacing only increased. He was biting his fingernails now.
“ Mer lin.”
Merlin gave up and collapsed limply back into his chair. He threw his head back and closed his eyes, breath hissing through his nose as he tried to breathe deeply. He sat like that in silence for a while, the wind in the trees, the blackbird singing into the early evening outside and the ever present ring of Arthur’s ears were the only sounds.
Arthur cleared his throat. “I have just a single clue as to the sword’s whereabouts and, you knowing this forest so intimately-”
“Get on with it, clotpole,” he sighed, eyes still closed.
Arthur, hearing the old insult, had the threat of a smile on his face even as he spoke seriously. “The sword was knocked out of the sky by another dragon.”
At those words the man beside him suddenly sat up, like a rag doll coming to life.
“I can assume then, you might know where we can find this second dragon?”
“There’s only one other dragon!” He exclaimed, and with a mad look in his eyes he shot out of his chair, his face inches from Arthur’s. “And I’m a dragonlord !”
“A what?!” The king said as he watched him pivot toward the door, all while thinking, he’s been alone for too long, he’s gone mad.
“I’ll have this resolved in no time, sire!” he called over his shoulder as he all but pirouetted out.
Arthur grabbed his socks and boots and hurried to follow him.
The light and warmth of the day had mostly faded when he went outside, his chest still bare. He looked around the grove, seeing again the garden, the towering trees to one side, the hint of the miniature lake he had fallen into through the flatter landscape on the other -but he couldn’t find Merlin. Then movement in the trees above, and very high up in an ancient black poplar he was walking from one branch to another, each tipping slowly toward another to ease his way. Then he was out of sight.
A voice boomed out, making the king stumble back. This was surely Merlin’s voice but -the strength of it was nothing like he could have imagined, far more powerful than he had heard on the night six years ago. The sound stopped and echoed like a clap, startling birds all over as they suddenly took flight from their perches.
Silence.
Silence.
The words came back again, with even more command.
Again, nothing happened.
He did it again and Arthur noticed the words were slightly different now and the tone more desperate.
The seconds ticked by and then the leaves started to move in the canopy and Merlin made his way down, sliding along a smooth branch the last few feet. He climbed down the hill of exposed roots and came toward him, paler than usual.
“Something’s wrong,” he said, looking to the sky. “He should come when I call.”
“He? Is this the dragon my father had locked up below the castle? That attacked Camelot?”
“Yes, that dragon. We’re… kin of a sort. He always comes when I call, he’s compelled to do it.”
Arthur felt dizzy. “What?”
“This isn’t good.”
“Did you say kin?” Arthur gaped, stuck on the word. “And no… I imagine not. Could Morgana have wounded or captured him somehow?”
“No, she couldn’t be that powerful...”
“My father managed it.”
Merlin’s eyes suddenly darkened at that. “He threatened and coerced my father’s people to do it before he killed them all, he wouldn’t have been capable of it himself. And Morgana certainly isn’t either.”
“Your father’s-? Like Balinor?”
Merlin gave him a meaningful look, exactly like Balinor, it said.
Arthur’s world shifted by a few degrees, he felt hollow and ashamed at the realisation, remembering his words to his friend that no man is worth his tears. He opened and closed his mouth like a fish.
Merlin stared at the ground.
“What will you do?” Arthur asked then, finding his voice.
But deep in thought Merlin brushed past him toward the cottage.
“Merlin!” he called after him, following.
Inside the other man was already brooding by the fire.
“Will you go after him?” Arthur asked, joining him but keeping some space between them. He should ask more questions, he knew, there was so much he needed to know but it would have to wait.
Hesitation, then a nod. They were quiet again for a while, until something shifted in his expression. “You aren’t wearing armour, you don’t have a pack or anything either.”
“Well, I’m not even wearing a shirt for the moment. But no, I wasn’t prepared when it happened,” he said, he raised his good arm on the beam of the inglenook so he could lean into the heat, his body still aching all over.
“And what was that?”
“Oh, interested in events now, are we?”
“Just tell me,” Merlin said, suddenly very serious.
“It happened night before last, during a meeting at the round table,” Arthur noted the other’s lips quirk up briefly when he said ‘round table.’ “It was what I always thought would surely happen eventually, a direct attack. None of this sneaking around. The dragon broke through the window, went straight for Excalibur. It must have flown over Camelot undetected.”
“No one was looking up,” Merlin added redundantly and without a hint of humour.
“I had the sword strapped to the back of my chair, I tried to reach for it but-” he said as he half-raised his heavily bruised arm in the way of explanation.
The other nodded.
“Toss me my clothes, would you?” he asked and Merlin threw Arthur his shirt to him in a ball without complaint. Expecting his tattered tunic he instead found a repaired one, plain patches had been sown into the shoulder and arm where claws had ripped it. The stitching was a little uneven, he had done it by hand. “Did you repair this?” he asked, amazed.
“May have,” the other answered.
“You’re an enigma as always.”
“I try,” Merlin said hoarsely, the playful tone of their old back and forths absent. “What happened next?”
* * *
“I’m a coward for abandoning Camelot.”
“You were right to go after the sword.”
“You’ll help me then? Injured and alone as I am?”
He was quiet for a moment. “So you really just ‘stumbled on’ me?”
“I did. I had no idea where you were all this time. I think you’ll find that under all of this pretence of royalty I’m quite the ordinary man, unlike you with your magic. I couldn’t know where you were.”
For some reason Merlin was shaking his head quite vigorously at his words.
“There wasn’t a single sign of you, you know? Not even at home in Ealdor. We thought you must be dead.”
“We?”
“Everyone! Me, Gwen, Lance, Hunith-”
He cast his eyes down suddenly.
“She’s doing well, she’s in good health... There may have been a border shift, let’s call it...”
Merlin’s brow furrowed, questioning.
“Ealdor is under the protection of Camelot now, it has been for two years or so.”
“And what, may I ask, precipitated this?”
A thank you to a friend. “Oh the usual skirmishes, changes of allegiance. Political stuff. Guards are posted there now, no one will take advantage of its people while I remain king.”
Merlin laughed wetly, startling him.
Arthur gave him a moment before saying. “You should know that you’re missed.”
“Don’t,” he warned, going very still, pain in his eyes.
“It’s true.”
“So I’m just ‘missed?’” he said, quickly wiping at his eyes with his sleeve, his expression suddenly stony again. “It’s not like I chose to disappear. Not like I could go home anymore, or back to Camelot, would have been executed on sight, especially now, with your ‘border change.’”
Arthur opened his mouth to reply, but he didn’t have any words worth saying.
“We can leave in the morning,” Merlin said curtly, cutting him off, extracting himself from the hearth and going to a table by a wall with some vegetables laid out on it.
“Why not now? We can cover more ground, make camp in a few hours.”
“No, not here. You need your wits about you here and you’re exhausted. Even I’d prefer to travel during the day.”
“So we’re going together?”
“Your quest and mine are likely to have the same destination, that’s all,” he answered, splitting a turnip a little too efficiently with a cleaver.
“Mm, right, and what is it you’re doing there?” Arthur asked, not sure quite why he was pushing him when he knew he was only making things worse.
“Arthur.”
“Hm?”
“Just shut up. Please.”
And when he saw the pain in the man’s eyes, for once, Arthur did as he was told.
Dinner was a savoury pancake, wild garlic, turnip and goat’s cheese curds, all eaten in silence. Arthur saw no animals around the cottage other than birds and wondered what poor wild goat had let Merlin milk it. After they finished, a draught to promote healing was pushed churlishly in Arthur’s direction in an equally quiet exchange.
The insects sang here at night, it reminded Arthur of being on the road, when the two of them would spread out their bedrolls close together and talk low in the dark until one of them fell asleep. This would be no such night.
It was utterly black in the cottage when they retired. Seated back in the chair, blanket over him again and his feet propped on a wooden chest, Arthur found that whether he closed or opened his eyes the darkness was the same. He could have been cast from the cottage into some horrible void and he wouldn’t know the difference. A hollow feeling crawled into his stomach and clutched at his sternum as it bedded down for the night. He thought of that night six years ago, the dark was just as it had been then. He remembered being curled up in bed while his friend awaited death at dawn.
“Merlin?” he called out experimentally.
Nothing.
“Merlin?”
He heard the sound of a body turning roughly in a bed.
“I’m sorry,” he said into the black.
Notes:
This is the start of our crazy fantasy romp, I'm so happy to finally be sharing it!
Comments are savoury pancakes and cheese curds to my soul.
Chapter 8: All By Myself
Summary:
Six years ago Merlin saved Arthur's life and was sentenced to pay for it with his own. A Merlin POV flashback about Merlin's night waiting for Arthur in the dungeons and his goodbyes to Gwen and Gaius.
Notes:
There'll be a few flashbacks throughout this story from Merlin's POV. We'll learn about how he came to the woods and what he's not telling Arthur.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Something was wrong, Merlin could see something was gnawing at the young Lady Seren from the moment she entered the courtyard. Later, still ill at ease, he kept to the edges of the hall and watched, pitcher in hand, ready to serve any one who asked. No one would notice a servant keeping watch.
Then he saw it, the daughter tipping her ear toward her mother, small nods, small changes in expression crossing their faces though their lips remained shut. A silent conversation. It must be hard to lose the habit of tipping one’s ear toward a person with whom you’re speaking. He tried to tune into it, but heard only the shapes of the words, like voices in another room.
He stepped in the shadow of a plinth, away from the view of most of the guests so that he might have a chance to deal with trouble unseen, cast a spell if he needed to. Despite all of his vigilance, despite Lady Llenwi’s speech that told him an attack was imminent, he was still not fast enough.
The spell cast on him had so completely paralysed him that he wondered if he was being turned to stone. He could not move his lips to utter a spell of his own as Lady Seren made her way in the dark, like a ghost, toward Arthur. Panicking, he tried to use his will alone, but his magic was as locked in place as the rest of him.
The silhouette of Lady Llenwi went toward Uther, a hand raised; Merlin fought against the hold on him. A blade was being driven into the guards, one after the other; Merlin screamed at himself to move move move . He felt his magic move sluggishly within him. Lady Seren spoke words of horrible power, a true death sentence, and a shout like he had never heard was ripped from Arthur; Magic slammed into Merlin’s extremities, a great force held back and unleashed with twice the power that had held it. He broke free. He unfroze everyone and threw the invaders, retinue and family alike against walls with such force he heard skulls crack. His magic, both crackling and drumming painfully under his skin, picked up dropped blades and embedded them into their still gasping forms. He dodged the guards who made a grab for him and he froze Uther and anyone who might try to stop him in place. He scrambled toward Arthur, his hand flying to his friend as he screamed and screamed. His words of healing failed, they always failed. Then finally, summoning all of the strength he had, he removed the curse, the death sentence on him, knowing and not caring that he had earned one of his own in the process.
Looking down at Arthur, the wreckage around him was of no consequence to him, nor was what awaited him in the next few seconds. Arthur’s heart was beating, he was alive, and that was what mattered the most, (there was a small part of him, he knew, that would burn everything if it would only keep this golden man from harm). But just as his power had slammed into him like a wave off of a storming sea, he felt it pull away from him equally, like an ebbing tide. He felt his hold slipping. Merlin smiled through tears at the bleary-eyed look the prince gave him as he slowly came back to awareness, as he leaned into the hand that cupped his face -before he was slammed bodily into the floor. A fist connected with his temple and his head connected with stone.
“-hereby sentence you to death-” he heard Uther say, as he faded in and out, hanging between two guards.
And he had just enough presence of mind to mutter. “It was worth it.”
* * *
“Gwen,” Merlin said, rising, the straw of the dungeon floor falling from him as he went to the bars. Her hair was dishevelled and her face was wet as she rushed to stand before him.
“Merlin,” she said softly, her voice and expression cracking at once, affection and pain mixed on her face.
“Thank you for- It’s good to see you.”
“You’re my friend, of course I’d-” She glanced back at the guards and seemed to decide something. She reached out for his hand. After a small moment of hesitation he took hers. “Oh Merlin, this has to be a nightmare, surely?”
He shushed her. “I’m sorry, I’m afraid it’s very real.”
She doesn’t ask about his magic, he appreciates it, but she’s shaking her head all the same, unbelieving.
“What’s happening?” He asked her after they had a chance to just breathe together.
“I- I don’t know.”
“Arthur, is he alright?”
“He’s alright, he’s… after he spoke to Uther he wouldn’t hear any of us. He’s locked himself in his chambers.”
Merlin opened his mouth, closed it again. “Are you sure he’s alright, he’s conscious?”
Gwen nodded. “He told me to leave. He wouldn’t say any more than that. The knights got together to petition for a lighter sentence but… I’m sorry Merlin, it didn’t work. Uther is set on this, I fear only Arthur could persuade him but he’s….”
“It’s alright,” he said, soothing her again.
“No, it’s not. You don’t deserve to be here.”
“I do.”
“Don’t you dare say that!” she warned immediately, cross, horrified.
Merlin’s shoulders slumped, he wasn’t sure why he was trying to convince her.
“They’re questioning Gaius,” she said eventually.
“He doesn’t know,” he lied hurriedly, his heart seized in his chest, all too aware he could be the death of the beloved man. “I care about him too much to ever put him at such risk.” And yet I did.
Gwen put her forehead against the bars, her mouth twisted as tears flowed. “We both know Uther doesn’t forgive ignorance.”
“Gaius has proven his loyalty a hundred times over, he’s turned people in-”
“No! Not you,” she cried at the thought.
“He would have, if he’d known.” He didn’t know, believe me, he didn’t hide me.
“No… No,” she sobbed, refusing.
“The very fact I haven’t already been sent to the gallows should be proof enough. I just hope Uther knows.”
“I’ll tell Arthur he has to-”
“You’ve had enough time,” a guard interjected cruelly, coming up to stand behind her.
Gwen’s hands flew out to him once again in panic.
He gripped them.
“I love you Merlin. Not like- Oh, you understand, I know you do.”
“I love you too Gwen,” he said quietly, calmly, but he couldn’t help the trembling of his body.
And with that she was taken roughly away, with every coerced step she craned to keep her eyes on him until the last possible moment.
* * *
“Oh... my boy,” Gaius said, his voice cracking with heartbreak and his mouth open in something between shock and a sob as he reached out his hand shakily through the bars.
Merlin couldn’t deny him. He abandoned his plans to make some kind of convincing display for the guards, to play out a scene wherein he was remorseless in the face of Gaius’ shock and betrayal. Instead, he gripped his hand as he had Gwen’s earlier, and Gaius’ placed his other hand on top.
“Gaius, are you alright?” Merlin asked softly, looking him over for injuries. “No one hurt you, did they? Gwen said they were questioning you.”
“Gentle boy… In all of this you ask about me? How could- how could anyone think you’re-?
“But I am,” he said, the guards not entirely forgotten.
“But a threat to the kingdom? No, not you, not good Hunith’s son.”
Merlin winced at the mention of his mother’s name, he hadn’t thought about how this could reach her. He prayed that she would be safe being outside Camelot’s borders as Ealdor was, and there would finally be a single virtue to being a half-forgotten corner of the largely lawless Essetir. Going to her would only endanger her, however, if it came to it, if he escaped, he could not go home.
“You’re really alright?” Merlin asked, adding a final hand to the pile and squeezing.
The physician's lips quivered, but he nodded.
“What’s happening? Gwen said that Arthur has been shut in his room since he spoke to his father. Is he hurt?”
“I examined him myself, he’s in rude health as usual,” he said, allowing himself a smile before it slipped away. “He was in shock, in body and mind both as can only be expected, and I should imagine he’ll be left with a scar, but you saved his life… Why he’s shut in his room I cannot account for nor fathom, I can only guess that Uther has-”
“I used magic,” he interjected quickly, lest his old friend say something treasonous. “Arthur must uphold the rules of Camelot.”
Gaius, even in his grief was able to raise an incredulous eyebrow at his young apprentice, his expression said that there was surely so much more to it, that the strength of the bond between Merlin and the prince could not be overridden by the mere rule of law.
“He’ll be here,” Gaius said, sure, wrong.
“He won’t, and I’d rather he didn’t,” Merlin said, but he was palming away tears as he said it.
“Don’t lie, boy.”
Merlin saw the guards shifting and he knew they had only seconds left.
“Thank you, Gaius, I meant it when I said you’ve been a father to me.”
“And I will always consider you a son.”
The guard stepped toward them.
“Tell mum I love her, so much, and that I’m sorry.”
As he was led away his voice came to him in his mind.
Don’t wait too long for him.
Take care, Gaius. He back said silently.
* * *
It being a winter’s night, it was a long, long, cold wait ‘til dawn.
He waited, running through the events over and over again in his mind, finding the hinging points where fate was two paths.
Be discovered, remain hidden.
Save Arthur, let Arthur die.
But was there any point he could have acted early, discreetly, prevented all of this? It reminded him of other times he’d failed to act as he should have.
He waited, propped against the wall, eyes taking in the details of the cell he could make out in the dark, thinking about the ghosts he must be sharing this space with.
He waited, hours behind him now, curled up on the meagre layer of straw, cold and pain having long made their home in his bones.
As the shadows lightened to blue, a lone blackbird sang somewhere outside, its voice bounced around the stone walls of Camelot, and Merlin followed its call.
Notes:
Our boy had a bad time :( More bad times ahead, but also good times.
Chapter 9: Hand Upon Hand
Summary:
Arthur is determined to reconcile with Merlin. The two finally talk. Arthur learns about the kind of company Merlin has been keeping. They embark on their journey.
Notes:
Small TW: Merlin briefly refers to his own mental health in unhealthy ways in this chapter.
For more about Myrddin, wildmen, blackbirds, stags and ruined weddings, see the notes at the end.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Arthur’s mind span on the halls of Camelot, on gatherings and feasts and assassination attempts and death sentences, melding kaleidoscopically as the drone of voices, laugher, alarmed shouts and life shattering pronouncements rose discordantly until he woke to a face full of sheepskin and the blanket from yesterday thrown almost in the fire. All of it drained away quickly though as he jumped to rescue the blanket. He draped it over the chair and appraised it passingly, it was an inexpertly woven thing of earthy colours with occasional stripes of red, Merlin’s handiwork, he guessed. Light was coming in at an angle into the odd little dwelling, highlighting the dust motes in the air and giving transparent shadows to the bottles that lined some of the surfaces. Arthur was alone. He hesitated at the door and decided, as he tied on his bootlaces, not to take Sir Leon’s sword.
Outside the air was cool and the colours lighter, all was dewy and water droplets caught and refracted the light. Birds flitted through the towering trees above and called to one another. Going on instinct, he skirted the cottage and strolled through the light woods behind it. Thankfully this particular copse of silver birches was impassive and didn’t try to attack him, the only movement here was caused by the wind. He found Merlin beneath a short waterfall of yet another pool, standing with his back to him on the rock, naked as the day he was born. His shoulder blades moved as he scrubbed at his face with his hands and opened his mouth to catch water that fell from the ferny overhang above. Arthur wasn’t sure if he should announce himself or not, but eventually he went forward to the pebbly water’s edge and cleared his throat loudly. Merlin glanced in his direction and resumed his scrubbing. Arthur found a rock to sit on, resolving to wait. He hoped they had not carried the horrible disquiet between them into this new day, although if Merlin wished to it would be perfectly within his rights.
“Morning...” Arthur said tentatively, when the naked man came toward him, arms swinging along with- Merlin made no attempt to cover himself as he passed in front of him in all of his skinny, and somewhat scarred, Arthur noted, glory. “Merlin, have you no shame?”
“None, s’my woods,” Merlin answered, his wet feet slapping the stone. He tossed him something as he went by, a small block of wood ash lye soap. “Your turn.”
The exchange gave nothing away. Arthur threw his eyes and huffed, trying to look exacerbated, but really he could already feel the deathly cold spray of the water and he was trying to steel himself. “Fine,” he said as began taking off his clothes stiffly, still sore all over, and hanging them on a nearby branch.
Merlin took his seat on the rock and started to squeeze out his hair.
When Arthur got down to his smalls he hesitated, then gave up and they were pulled off too. Unlike Merlin however, he spared the other man a full-frontal view and kept his back to him while he moved carefully over the rock.
He toed the stream of water, it came down heavily, frigid. Determined, he ducked into it. The shock of it had his breath coming out in short sharp gasps. His body was having none of it.
“Ah!” he shouted, craning away from the water. Forgetting all about making a display of bravery, or trying to make peace with the man, he looked back over his shoulder, his palms up in askance and bewilderment, “you’ve gone mad! How can you stand this?!”
“You answered your own question!” Merlin called back in response.
Mad it is, Arthur thought, facing the water once more.
He dove back under and breathed deliberately now, controlling every exhalation and willing his heart to slow despite the shock. It drummed on his bruised shoulder painfully but he pushed through. When he looked again Merlin had left the rock. He spied a glimpse of him, his wet black hair and wide bare shoulders between the trees as he walked back.
The door to the cottage was open when he returned, a silent invitation, he hoped. He entered pulling at his clothes all the while, they were a little uncomfortable over his half-wet skin. Merlin, himself blessedly clothed again, was squatting by the fire. There was a large black pot suspended over the flame now, Arthur fancied it looked like a small cauldron. He ladled something steaming into a clay bowl as Arthur approached and handed it to him, making only the briefest eye contact.
“What is this?” Arthur asked, taking it and looking at the pale contents.
“Rye and seed porridge, there’s some eggs stirred in there too,” he answered, spooning more into a second bowl.
What poor forest chicken...?
He passed him a wooden spoon that looked like it had been hand whittled. They ate in silence in what were rapidly becoming their respective places by the fire, Arthur on the left and Merlin on the right.
“You’re not complaining,” Merlin observed aloud suddenly, looking at him properly for the first time that day.
“Why would I be complaining?” Arthur asked, meeting his eyes and trying to tamp down any hint of delight or relief at their progress.
“I’m used to you complaining about food like this, you know, stuff that’s not roast capon or something.”
“How can you still be used to anything like that anymore?” he countered as casually as he could, blowing on his spoon and taking another mouthful. “Anyway, it’s no-tha-bad. M’hungry.”
“Don’t tell me you’ve changed that much. It’s just strange, that's all.”
Arthur buried his spoon in his breakfast and put the bowl in his lap. Thoughts came to him change, of all of the hard decisions he made as king, the sleepless nights when sleep had used to come so easily to him, the day that he looked in his handheld mirror and noticed that frown lines had long made their home in his cheeks. In six years his life had been transformed, almost everything in it seemed to have turned a shade darker, but he pushed that all aside in favour of searching for something of their old rhythms, if they could ever be found. “Ah, so of the two of us, I’m the one who’s strange.”
Merlin only shrugged and stirred his food.
Please Merlin. Arthur tried again. “I admit I may be a little different, as much as anyone might be,” he picked up his spoon once more and pointed it at him, food slopping off of it and back into the bowl. “But then there’s you , my former servant, and a sorcerer at that, living bearded and naked in a magical forest in some kind of house made of a tree-”
Merlin was staring at him strangely, and Arthur wondered inanely for a second if he had read his thoughts, but then he too snapped out of it, suddenly looking a hint mischievous. “Warlock. And it’s a few trees, actually, five to be exact.”
“Fine, several trees… He makes plants move, walks on water and oh and he says he’s a dragonlord now too?! And what even is a warlock?”
“I don’t go around naked!” he argued, though he was a step behind. “Not all of the time anyway… And what about me having a beard is strange?”
Arthur gave up and threw his hands up, pretending to relent, though he felt light-hearted .“Come off it, it’s all strange.” He took up his bowl again, paused. “Fine, there’s nothing wrong with your beard.”
“Nothing wrong with it?”
“Alright! It suits you.”
“Is that a compliment?” he asked in false surprise.
Arthur sat back, smiling and playing with his porridge. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Merlin laughed a little wryly and the tension in the air cleared by increments.
Arthur suddenly found it a lot easier to breathe.
“You know, you talk of strange,” the other said. “But you didn’t see the early years.”
“Oh?”
“I spent about two years riding around on a stag.”
“A stag?”
“Yeah,” he said, lips curling. “I did all sorts of things. Chased away hunters and the like doing that… You should have seen the way they ran. I interrupted a wedding once, showed up on the stag, made a mess of things.”
“Whose wedding?” he asked, not missing that he clearly still grieved for this animal. He wondered how much human contact Merlin had over the years.
“Haven’t the foggiest!”
“What?” Arthur mouthed, looking away and trying to imagine it all.
“He was a dear friend,” he continued, his tone suddenly sad. “He’s gone now.”
“I’m sorry,” Arthur found himself saying. He wondered if the antlers over the door belonged to this late ‘friend’ of his.
“Don’t be, s’how things are meant to be,” he said very quietly.
“Mm,” the king agreed solemnly.
The quiet of the cottage took over, like it had been part of the conversation all along. The little transparent shadows were gone from the room, the sun no longer touching the medicine bottles in its upward progress. The interior was left in a pleasant half-dark, the small fire before them throwing soft orange into the scene. Arthur had the feeling of being softly cocooned by the place. If Merlin had indeed been alone here with only animals for company, he was glad, at least, that he had been in this strange little dwelling.
Merlin was chewing on his lip.
Arthur waited.
“I had a bad first winter,” he said eventually. “You’d think where I’m from I would have been prepared, but Ealdor is a community, we all do our part, we have our shelters and our hearths. By the time it was over and the spring properly arrived I had sort of-” and with this he made a screwing motion at his temple.
Guilt twisted Arthur’s insides as he remembered the snow and storms of that winter, how spring seemed like it would never make an appearance. He had to be careful with his next words. “I know Camelot still isn’t…” safe for you , he thought, “but you could have lived elsewhere, a village far away.” He could tell him about his stopping the prosecution of druids, he could tell him that he was learning, that he overlooked minor magic of the household and the field, but suddenly it all felt too small; there was nothing of substance to stand between Merlin and the pyre, he may as well have done nothing at all.
Merlin shook his head. “What was it Lady Llenwi said that night? ‘Even outside of its borders Camelot’s influence is strong indeed?’ I could never live as who I truly am anywhere else.”
“And this is who you truly are?” Arthur asked without really thinking, more occupied with trying to steer the conversation in a direction that wouldn’t invoke the Lady Llenwi.
“Yes, it is,” he intoned, a faraway look in his eyes all of a sudden. “I’m more than just at home here, I’m more a part of all of this than I could ever have been a part of that, I’ll always be more magic than…”
“Than what?”
“Than anything else,” he said simply, but when he turned his expression had gone vulnerable and Arthur could feel the weight of the admission.
“I… I admit I don’t know what that means,” Arthur said with as much respect as he could.
“Took me a while too, but I think I understand now.”
***
They had finished packing supplies in a set of Merlin’s seemingly hand stitched hide packs and they each had one of his woven blankets about their shoulders, pinned at their chests (Merlin seemed oddly insistent that Arthur take the badly made earthy and red one). They shut the cottage door behind them, but there was just a singular thing amiss.
“Merlin,” Arthur said, pausing to think of his next few words carefully again, he was stepping on proverbial eggshells today. He looked down at his companion’s bare feet, dewy grass was poking out from his long toes, he swore too they weren’t quite touching the ground. “Do you, ugh, have shoes?”
“No,” said companion answered.
“That’s fine then,” he said, walking off- before realising he didn’t know what direction they were going in and Merlin wasn’t following him. He turned and saw behind him, against the backdrop of his garden, the man had a bird, a blackbird, on his shoulder. It was tipping its rounded body into his cupped palm and accepting a gentle stroking.
He was speaking low to it. “-you’ll guard the place won’t you? Beautiful boy...”
In reply it made little squeaking noises at him without moving its beak, a little area in its throat puffing intermittently.
“Are you talking to that bird, Merlin?”
“He’s old, very old, mightn’t be here when I get back.”
Arthur saw that his shiny feathers matched the black of Merlin’s hair and beard, they looked like an odd pair but a pair all the same. The details of his life here were starting to take shape in the king’s mind and moving forward Arthur asked. “What’s his name?”
“Aodhán,” he answered, fondness in his eyes as Aodhán flicked his tail and readjusted his long scaly feet.
“How old is he?”
“About seven years, I think. He’s very very long lived for a blackbird. Used to ride in the stag’s antlers and everything. He’s been with me since the beginning.”
That he wasn’t truly alone all of this time gave Arthur more than a pang of relief. “What a terrifying visage you all must have created.”
“It was something,” he said to Arthur proudly, and then to Aodhán. “Wasn’t it?” And with this his eyes went gold and he suddenly had a palm of seeds for him.
Aodhán pecked messily at them, occasionally holding one in his beak and flicking glances at Arthur with his orange rimmed, beady black eye before resuming. Arthur felt like he was being evaluated. Maybe he passed because Aodhán was abruptly uninterested in him, or maybe that meant he failed? He bounced to the bony ball of Merlin’s shoulder, his wings spread out and he glided to the ground where he hopped around a little, his tail up. He came upon a worm by Merlin’s cabbages and proceeded to pick it up and roll it around on the grass, as though to clean it before eating it.
Then he took off, calling in a warbley way as he disappeared into the trees behind Arthur.
“Bye, old friend,” Merlin said and looked for a while in that direction, gripping his staff. Arthur waited so he could have this moment.
They started walking, side by side, leaving the safety of the grove, going past the waterfall and up a rocky hill. They turned then at a right angle and Arthur saw below that the cottage, garden, waterfalls and pools were all in a kind of peaceful looking basin. Ahead of them however, the forest was dense and, if anyone were to ask Arthur, quite menacing. Lichens and vines hung from the criss-cross of living and dead branches alike, not a little ghostly. He could smell it too, both life and decay, with an unmistakable note of pungent, and no doubt poisonous, things. He couldn’t see too far inside, the morning sun did little to light the place.
“Excalibur,” Merlin said suddenly beside him, breaking the silence and stopping. Arthur was sure there were tears washing over his eyes. “So you trusted me.”
“Always did,” Arthur answered without a second of hesitation.
And yes, those had been tears because they spilled now, down Merlin’s checks and over his wavering smile.
“I’m sorry for my moment of doubt,” the king continued, his thumb playing nervously over his sword pommel for need of something to do with his hands. He turned his head from the woods and looked at him steadily. “I promise it was just a moment, I know that didn’t make it any less life changing for you.”
“Arthur-”
“I’ve thought about it every day since, not that it helps you or absolves me.”
“Would you pleas-?”
“No, I betrayed you.”
He huffed and wiped his face of tears, though they kept coming. “No. You couldn’t go against your father, you were duty bound.”
“I was a coward , Merlin,” Arthur told him emphatically, turning fully now and manoeuvring him by his shoulders, so they were facing each other. He kept a hold of him and looked into his eyes to be sure his words were getting through. “You saved my life and I should have tried to save yours. God knows we were always saving each other, that night should have been no different… I’m sorry.”
“Come on, clotpole,” Merlin laughed wetly, patting then gripping one of Arthur’s hands briefly before breaking away.
And the two turned back toward the forest, shoulder to shoulder.
Notes:
This chapter hints at the strange things that have gone on with Merlin in the intervening time.
Merlin having made a habit of riding around on a stag and having randomly crashed a wedding comes directly from the Welsh poems in the Black Book of Carmarthen and the Red Book of Hergest. The wedding Myrddin crashed was his twin sister Gwendydd's. In my story poor Merlin was a little too far gone to work out just whose wedding he ruined, but I wanted to add it in purely for the absurdity factor.
Merlin also turns into a stag himself in later stories, I think its implied in Vita Merlini but I'll have to fact check that! The magic of Merlin is generally wacky as all hell, I've been really enjoying reading about him, lots of shapeshifting and general weirdness.
There's an association with Myrddin/Merlin and blackbirds that I'd like to chat about when I'm not actively trying to fall asleep. Though separately, I've named his blackbird after the falcon who is the friend/helper of Garret, our hermit figure in QfC.
Lastly Merlin being more a part of the woods/nature and magic than anything else is a feature of these wildman archetypes (Myrddin, Buile Shuibhne, Lailoken) who become very at one with nature.
Chapter 10: There Is So Much I've Never Seen
Summary:
Arthur and Merlin travel through the woods together, they learn that they have both changed and not changed at all.
It was strangely intimate to speak these surely mundane truths without first dressing them up and sending them off to war.
And besides, it was worth it to watch Merlin squirm, and squirm he did.
Seeing him pinken, he had the urge to wrestle him off his haunches and tumble with him in the clover, dandelions and daisies, as surprising as this urge was.
Notes:
For why I removed chestnut trees from the story and more on wildmen see the notes below.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The perplexity of the sprawling ancient yews, long collapsed below their own weight, parted for Merlin like- actually Arthur wasn’t sure what it was like, he had never seen such a thing before. The movement was accompanied by great, foreign creaks and quakes. To say all of this made him shiver was too light a description for the effect it had on him, it was a primal tremble at his witnessing something so deeply supernatural.
He was going to put on a brave face for Merlin though, and he tried to stop himself from being cowed by it all. He decided conversation might distract him. “If these woods fought me,” he asked his magical bearded hermit friend, “would they fight Seren and her men three-fold?”
“Are you talking about the ‘chewing part’ you mentioned yesterday?” His magical bearded hermit friend answered his question with a question, his now long curls falling forward a bit as he inclined his head toward him playfully.
“I was almost a meal for a cairn of all things,” Arthur admitted, shoulders hunched.
“Mmm, ground king.”
Arthur gave him a look to say he wasn’t amused.
“What makes you think it would fight them any more than you?” he quizzed, his hand on a passing crumbly barked bough as both he and it moved.
“They’re... evil? They have ill intentions?”
Merlin suddenly whacked his staff down on a little mouth of moss that had formed by Arthur’s feet and had attempted to gob at his boot. “I don’t know, Arthur, it really doesn’t seem to like you too much. Might like the others better.”
“Well unless they’ve found a wildman to guide them like I have, they’re probably worse off.”
“Who’s to say they haven’t?”
“Many of you, are there?”
Merlin smirked at him. Arthur had to admit, he was an impressive looking figure these days with his staff and the trees bowing for him as they did, he couldn’t imagine that there was another person out there like him.
“I suppose it won’t be too long before Morgana arrives here,” Arthur sighed.
“She’ll certainly have fun when she does,” he chuckled as he whacked yet another moss creature in passing. They were both getting used to this rhythm of walking and thwarting these things that seemed to have it out for his boots.
“I’d pay to see that.”
“Don’t jinx us, I was hoping for a relatively peaceful journey.”
“She’ll have a fit if she sees you doing all your magic and comman- asking of the forest… I’m sure she still thinks of you as my very unmagical servant.”
“Let’s hope she doesn’t see me.”
A thought struck him that made him stop briefly, but Merlin had clearly been relying on their continuous motion because Arthur almost received a heavy branch to the temple.
“Sorry! You stopped!”
“Does she know?” the victim of the near miss asked, too interested in the answer to be perturbed. He continued moving.
Merlin resumed his pace too. “I almost told her once, but no. Unless Lady Seren has told her already, which is quite possible,” he shook his head at that, clearly not wishing to entertain the thought. “But Morgana she ugh, knows me by another name and another... form I guess.”
“Another form ?”
“I can… transform. It’s come in handy in the past. I used to have to use potions, I’m a lot better at it these days. I’ve had a lot of time to practise.”
“Meaning you can do it on command?”
“Yeah, but not for too long. I’ve a trick up my sleeve though, helps me do it longer,” he explained cryptically.
Arthur contemplated this, thinking about a certain inelegant old wizard who had occasionally made an appearance. He decided that might be a conversation for later.
The two emerged out into a bright wood of tall beeches all standing apart from one another. Below and all over there were bluebells, chickweed making up the shadier parts and light green leaved white flowered wild garlic all over, making the place stink. The long hoarse trills of blue tits and the repetitive song of an unseen cuckoo completed the sensory experience. It was very different from the dark place of tangled yews, or silent mossy stretches he had stumbled through the day before; there were woods like this not far beyond the walls of Camelot, so similar he half-expected to look through it all and catch a glimpse of the white castle walls. All told it looked benign; Arthur would not be fooled so easily.
They fell silent for a while as they began treading through. Merlin bent to pick up some garlic occasionally on his way, no doubt for a meal later. Great, now he’ll be stinking of garlic all day. Arthur looked all about him as they went, not wishing to be caught unaware when the other man was on his haunches picking at plants.
“You seem… tense all of a sudden,” Merlin observed, looking over his shoulder as he foraged, eyes falling on Arthur’s off-hand where it hovered over Leon’s sword.
The king retracted the offending hand self-consciously and kept moving, watching his own feet crush the bluebells between his wary glances. “We’re out in the open and the dead are stalking about. Oh and it’s not as if this place has tried to kill me recently, remember, ‘ground king’ and all that?”
“Yeah, it does that, trying to kill you I mean... Don’t worry though, your majesty, I’ll protect you,” he winked and smiled, doing his best Gwaine impression.
His majesty rolled his eyes and scoffed. “I’m sure.”
“You should be sure,” he said smugly, rising with the help of his staff and tucking his spoils in his pack. “You’ll just have to get used to it.”
“I’m not unaware, by the way, about all your ‘saving the day’ you probably did when my back was turned,” Arthur said when what he really meant to say was thank you.
“Your back sometimes wasn’t all that turned, there were plenty of times I had to do it right in front of you, every time I did it I thought I’d finally been caught,” he admitted sheepishly as they passed under the chilly shadow of one of the beeches.
“Are you calling me thick?”
“Your words not mine,” he said quickly, hands raised in a show of innocence. “You should get your eyes checked though.”
Arthur feigned a swipe at him.
He danced away from his reach. “And your ears!” he added.
He mimed throwing something at his head.
They eyed each other for a time.
“Thank you,” Arthur said aloud eventually.
The little intake of breath from the other was immediate and he dipped his head, laughing a little like he hadn’t expected to be thanked at all.
Then Arthur noticed something and his suspicions were finally confirmed. Merlin was not crushing the flowers underfoot like he was, his footsteps were unnaturally light, leaving nothing in their wake. He stopped, his mouth falling open briefly before he caught up.
They went in silence, birdsong their only accompaniment, until a moss creature, far larger than the ones before, rose out of the ground before Arthur, toothless mouth immediately around his ankle. Having flashbacks to the day before, he kicked at it, hopping backwards a few steps once he was free. He saw Merlin boinking it with his staff and it became one with the forest floor again. He was about to start forward again when there was yet more shifting at his feet. He looked down but there were no more mouths. Then something stirred the air behind him, sending his hair up briefly. He turned around, hand close to Leon’s sword again.
It happened again but this time he caught sight of a twirling green thing before it was out of sight in the canopy. He stepped backwards, vigilant.
“Merlin…” he called for him quietly, hoping for the wildman’s aid.
Suddenly there was a rush of green, white and air all around him. Like a flock of startled birds the garlic at his feet lifted off the ground, leaves whirring, taking the smell with them. Once he stopped shielding himself he saw that it was happening all over the woods, even Merlin’s pack was rising before he bid it calm down, though he didn’t look too concerned.
“What was that?!” he stumbled through the remaining foliage and back to the other’s side.
“Wild garlic,” Merlin answered over-simply, scratching his beard.
“Oh, alright, that makes sense!” he yelled, raising his good arm into the air. Suddenly he felt something brush against his back and he stopped. Clearly this place was not done with him and would never give him rest. He moved a minutia to try and see over his shoulder. He felt it again but there were only the trees and bluebells behind him.
“Wait, there’s something…” he went stock still and reached back. His hand touched something and he flinched away, then tried it again and grabbed on. In his hand were long soft green things -it was cleavers, lots and lots of sticky cleavers. It seemed Merlin had been playing a child’s trick on him, one that even he had played on Morgana (and she had played on him) when they were young. He tore at them, finding a few even on the backs of his legs. He held them out to the laughing warlock beside him. “How long have you been putting these here?!”
“Um… Since we left the yews?”
“Really, Mer lin,” he groaned reproachfully, attempting to throw them down but some had stuck to his sleeve, and to each other. He made frustrated noises until he had rid himself of them.
They started walking again, but Arthur remembered his tells and the tight-lipped shifty-eyed look he was trying to hide from him was one of them. ‘There’s another one, isn’t there?”
“No, I’d tell you if there was. Especially if it was in that spot on your back you can never reach.”
“Take it off.”
“Yes sire.”
It was clear he had tried to suppress it, but when Merlin did smile it was an utterly feral one.
It took longer than he would have liked to pass through, but they came safely to what he hoped was the end of this open wood, a natural hedge of blackthorn, still holding on to the last of its blossoms though the light green growth had long taken hold. He didn’t want the embarrassment of Merlin, no longer his manservant, sewing his clothes for him twice in a row. The man beside him seemed to understand something in his slightly hesitant steps and these parted for them like the yews had. On through woods they went.
The land ceased to be flat and he found that there were cliffs ahead rising out of the trees as their own path rose and dipped, speaking perhaps to small hidden mountains and sure enough there was one, its reaches rocky and evergreen with Scot’s pine, with a necklace of gorse and its buttery yellow flowers. They skirted a collapse of rock to the right, huge boulders of dark grey limestone had fallen at some point, some had been split entirely apart. When his bruised hand alighted on them for balance once or twice, he noticed white rings and segmented shapes on their surface here and there.
An animal track had formed beneath their feet, following the same line they followed around the rock. He noticed deer, fox, perhaps badger prints, it was the closest thing to a path Arthur had seen since he arrived here. His feet slid a little, beside him Merlin wasn’t so much as making a dent in the mud. He realised now, picturing it in his mind, that there had been no real paths around Merlin’s cottage, other than the natural line between the two halves of his garden but even that had not looked especially trodden. He wondered when it was that his friend had started to thread so lightly that he never really touched the ground.
The animal path was leading them to water, if the roaring was anything to go by. The air had also grown a little colder and mistier, a mist that soon turned to spray as the roar increased. The rock beside them started to form an overhang that covered a portion of the path. He noticed there was noise above them now too so the half-tunnel was filled with bouncing sound, and they had to shout to each other if they wanted to speak.
The deeply strange geography only grew stranger when they rounded a turn, the overhang dropped off and suddenly there was a wall of water in front of them. A waterfall that fell from the rock above, so abounding with water that it was as blue as the sea and he couldn’t see through it to what lay beyond. The tracks in the ground led, with no apparent evidence of hesitation in the animals’ steps, straight through and on to a massive greened tree trunk that still clung with its huge roots to the edge of the drop off and seemed to span whatever terrible gap lay ahead.
Arthur stopped, wary, but Merlin kept moving. He stepped onto the trunk and tipped his staff into the powerful stream. The waterfall parted and draped over it just like a curtain. He held it there and half-turned back to him, urging Arthur forward with his servant’s smile. Beyond, Arthur saw that the tree was truly massive and that it bridged a huge drop into which many waterfalls feed. The distance between them and the opposite side was around the length of Camelot’s training ground. Other trees were leaning into the edges of the drop, their roots exposed and clutching the large stones that protruded from the earth there.
He hesitated, watching the unnatural way the waterfall flowed around in a curve and down when it met Merlin’s staff.
“Are you coming?” the wildman asked slowly, so that his lips might be read, his voice almost swallowed by the din.
“No tricks this time?” Arthur shouted, because he had to.
“Sire, do you expect me to play a trick on you?” he shouted back in mock offence.
“Yes, in fact, I do!”
Merlin simpered. God, this man’s smiles. “Well I’m not sure what gave you that impression.”
Arthur folded his arms.
He relented and made a mollifying gesture with his free hand, “no tricks, I promise.”
“Damn warlock,” Arthur grumbled at him as he stepped through.
As wide and as seemingly secure as the tree was, Arthur was exceedingly cautious in his steps. He found himself not happy that he was now walking in front. He looked down and, again to use the familiar as measurement, the drop was almost as deep as the castle of Camelot was tall. He spied through the white foamy spray below some peaked rocks within the turbulent waters and he hoped that the algae covered trunk below him wasn’t about to become slippery, or worse, wouldn’t decide to suddenly shift underneath him. There were two other waterfalls here, a hint of a rainbow in the mists they created. There was a layering of sounds too, the thundering of the falls accompanied by the pattering of the cool spray. He spied some exclusions in the ferny rock that looked like caves. He imagined this place in the evening, bats teeming out to make their meal on the abundant gnats.
Arthur felt Merlin’s hand on his back, he dared to turn around (the whole scene was making him a little dizzy), to find his brow furrowed. He pointed down and to the left at the source of his concern and there upon a small pebbly bank below was Seren, the young dragon, a group of four dead soldiers and Morgana, unmistakable even from this angle, her hair, dark and wild.
Merlin pressed a finger to his lips and started to lower himself down, Arthur carefully did the same, his breeches were made instantly green with the algae. With all the noise of the waterfalls, the king wasn’t sure if silence was really necessary, below he could see that they were speaking but heard no words, he imagined they would be equally unable to hear them. Merlin seemed to be thinking, then he whispered a spell and their voices came to them as though they were mere feet away, their voices cutting better through the noise than either of theirs could.
“I swear I’ll burn this place to the ground,” Morgana was saying and Arthur could see that she was plucking twigs from her hair and washing her arms, which were no doubt as scrapped up as his, if not more.
“What a sight that would be, my queen,” Seren hummed, her voice still oddly girlish between the papery rasp, the combination unnerved Arthur. “Though I’m sure it would retaliate somehow.”
“I’m sure you’re right. But you don’t seem too bothered by it, why is that?”
“I save my rage to end the Pendragon line.” At this, Arthur and Merlin exchanged a look, their suspicions confirmed.
“Don’t lie, I’ve seen plenty of your rage. A little more wouldn’t go amiss here to help us on our way,” Morgana laughed.
“If my lady wishes,” Seren said, a smile on her strange voice as Arthur saw her bow her brown head a little, her alabaster hands came out in mock curtsy.
His sister got to her feet and circled Lady Seren. “Oh and I do wish. You know, in the past I might have said that Arthur was mine alone to kill, but I cannot deny my favourite henchwoman,” Morgana said, tripping the other woman's nose with her index finger, except Seren largely lacked a nose.
“I won’t disappoint you.”
“You could never! But… you won’t leave me when you kill him, will you?” she asked with sudden vulnerability, and although Arthur couldn’t see her expression, he imagined her face falling, her eyes going wide. For the majority of his life he hadn’t known she was his sister, but he realised now how utterly he knew her, how totally familiar he was with the array and speed of her emotions, even with many years of estrangement between them.
“You know I’ve pledged to serve you, my queen, even after my revenge is exacted.”
“I won’t deny you then, my sweet,” she giggled, brightening. “I know just how brutal you can be, I look forward to it. Come on, we have a forest to slash through, and maybe burn, a little, for fun.”
And with that they disappeared from sight, the last thing they saw of them was the dragon’s tail.
Merlin’s spell seemed to end and the sound returned to normal.
“They’re… Close,” Arthur remarked, still on his belly.
“I knew it,” Merlin said to himself beside him, what exactly he knew Arthur wasn’t too sure. But as he waited for an explanation he caught a haunted look that passed over his features, there and gone in a second. Then, shaking his head he jumped rather fearlessly to his feet. Considerate of Arthur’s only increasing aches and the treacherous drop below, he offered him a hand and helped him up.
They resumed their walk and left the mists and the roar of the waterfalls behind them.
“You know, they never do look up, do they?” Merlin observed just as they finally stepped back onto solid ground, the animal path continuing here too.
“No, they really don’t.”
“Well, we don’t need to keep asking ourselves if Morgana has arrived yet. Best avoid her as long as possible. I’ll try to cover your tracks.”
Arthur noted he didn’t say our tracks. He looked back to see his lone footprints in the mud were vanishing one by one.
The evening sun was low now in the trees and there were gnats, gnats everywhere, and biting horse flies too, most particularly in the stray sunbeams but also in random swarms and up his nostrils, gnawing at his face at every opportunity. Merlin seemed to be enjoying that Arthur was slapping himself every few minutes to be rid of them.
“Argh! Don’t you have a spell or something to keep these things at bay?”
“You’d like me to spell you?”
“When you put it like that...”
“It’s up to you, sire,” Merlin sang and shrugged.
“Fine. Do it,” Arthur said decisively, stopping.
“You’re sure?” The warlock tipped his head at him, dragging this out.
“Merlin.”
“Alright alright,” he said as he raised his hand. “Wiþdrífeþ stūtas.”
Arthur remembered a little late that the last time he had been on the receiving end of magic in such close quarters (for he had been cursed and thrown into the air by sorcerers plenty of times in the interim) was a little over six years ago. All told he hadn’t meant his audible swallow and small backwards steps when Merlin’s eyes alighted on him and lit up.
“Arthur?”
“Just uh-felt odd,” he recovered. Then feeling a tingling on his skin fade, he raised his hand at the swarm ahead of him and they moved gently away. He made a little noise of exclamation. “It works.”
“Of course it works,” Merlin snorted.
They kept going. By this point Arthur knew the heels of his feet were bleeding and maybe some of his toes were too. His muscles were so sore that his movements, particularly in his legs, had gone a little jerky and he found himself holding onto things to better navigate slopes and rises. At this point, every step was pain. However, it took him another hour to admit defeat.
“How far are we from your dragon?” he asked, he had started to fall behind Merlin a little and was contemplating that he had rarely seen the other man’s back on their travels, lagging behind had always been his servant’s lot.
“Where I think he might be?” he guessed, looking at the sun through the trees no doubt to gauge the time. “Two days more, maybe a little less.”
“I should have liked to have covered more ground by now,” he grieved, doing a mental count. It had been three nights and three days since Camelot was attacked and they had a further two of each ahead of them before they reach the dragon. Even if they arrived, found the sword and turned right back around, without taking into account their inevitable need for rest, he will have been gone for ten days or more.
“We would have covered more if we didn’t have to avoid Morgana and her dead. We’ll try to make up for lost time.”
“No, we’ve walked all day,” Arthur stopped, stretching out his aching lower back. “We should rest.”
“There’s still some daylight left,” Merlin pointed out, indicating the sun as though Arthur hadn’t noticed.
He grimaced, “I meant I need to rest.”
He found himself being scrutinised and he knew what Merlin was thinking. He was thinking the Arthur he had known would walk until he collapsed if it meant saving his kingdom, but Arthur was old enough now to know there could be a dear price to pay for stupidity. Besides, he had already walked himself to exhaustion, pursued as he had been, and it was only through the miracle of finding Merlin that some tree had not swallowed him up or he didn’t have Seren’s axe embedded in his stomach. He needed rest, as much as he knew the guilt and worry would gnaw at him.
Merlin suddenly looked very decisive then and he marched off, following the sound of water. Arthur went stumbling after, and soon found he was approaching a river with a thin rocky bank, no doubt one that had fed one of the waterfalls from earlier. It was covered and shady over the water, but the light that was here brightened the leaves above as much as it lit the ripples below, the glitter and shine of it against the brownish depths was a little dazzling. Merlin waded in, kicking water with his shins gracelessly before Arthur could stop him.
“What are you doing?” the king chided, bewildered, coming to stand at the bank, his quick assessment of the huge bending willows and downy birches that hung and made shadows over the water telling him they were likely safe and covered from view here.
“Catching dinner! Now shush!” the other said, the moving water up to his knees.
“‘Shush’ he tells me,” Arthur muttered incredulously, finding a willow bend to sit on. He felt instant relief, though his legs and feet buzzed painfully with the pressure gone.
In the river the warlock took a wide stance and readied himself. A few minutes went by. Then Arthur could see that his eyes were on a silvery movement below the water. He grabbed for it and with little difficulty he lifted a hefty salmon threshing from the river. A few more powerful thrashes from his catch however and he was all thumbs, hands trying to keep purchase on the slippery creature. In this gawky display he lost his footing on the rocky riverbed and suddenly both he and the fish were in the water.
It took a bit of splashing before Merlin was standing up again, soaking wet, his hair plastered to his face. It took him longer to look at Arthur in the eye, thin lipped with suppressed laughter in his tree.
“I thought you could walk on water? Ask it to help you,” Arthur called to him as loud as he dared over the gentle sounds of the river.
Merlin didn’t do that. He tried again, this time he held on.
“You know, I find it deeply reassuring that you’re still clumsy,” Arthur told him, standing up stiffly as his companion waded back to shore with his catch.
“Shut it,” he bit as he kicked water again. He laid the fish on the stone of the riverbank. It gasped rhythmically, the gradient of its grey to pink scales gleaming like dull metal. He took out a paring knife. Merlin had never relished this and the king saw in the set of his shoulders that he still didn’t, despite so many years of surviving alone here. Arthur came forward with his palm out and the other passed him the knife without argument. He bent to make the cut behind the gills, finding himself reassured again, Merlin is still Merlin.
“ Thanks,” he said, a little chagrined.
Arthur had never known strength and gentleness could be so combined.
“What about the smoke?” Arthur asked, watching a recently spelled dry Merlin build a fire for the cooking, speaking quiet words he didn’t understand to assist him. He was sitting in a grassy, wildflowery patch just above him, a soft little slope that was doing wonders for his aching bones.
“I can spell it away,” he replied casually, feeding sticks into the growing flame. “They won’t see it.”
“Handy trick,” Arthur remarked, thinking about all of the times they had foregone fires on the road for fear of being discovered. There were many nights that he might have been warmer and had food in his belly if only Merlin could have used his magic. Though, he contemplated, Merlin had shivered and half-starved alongside him despite all his powers just to avoid detection. He watched as he tossed the offending garlic from earlier into the pan with the fish, Arthur didn’t complain.
Merlin squatted by the fire and poked at the food at internals. Minus the beard, the strange clothes and the barefootedness, this man could be transported to one of their evenings in the woods years ago and Arthur and his knights would be none the wiser; he cut just the same figure as he used to, the way he was sitting, on his haunches, wriggling and bouncing because he couldn’t keep still, hands just resting over his knees as he held whatever utensil he was using. It was a familiar scene for other reasons too, seeing as Merlin was cooking and Arthur was doing nothing.
“Can I, um, help?” Arthur offered awkwardly.
“ Help ?” emphasising the word like he didn’t understand it.
“You have no reason to cook for me anymore.”
“No,” the other tilted his head to the side, curls following suit as he pretended to consider his words. “Other than making sure it's edible and we’re not poisoned.”
“I’ve never cooked for you, how can you know it won’t be edible?”
“Exactly. And I distinctly remember an episode with a chicken at Gwen’s? You ended up making me fetch food from the castle, ring any bells?”
“That was years ago,” Arthur countered, expecting him to rise to it again and respond with his own retort.
“Kinda nice, really, to be doing this again,” he said instead, looking wistful as he flipped the fish over.
Arthur squinted. “Are you admitting you enjoyed cooking for me?”
“I’m admitting it’s nice to be doing it again.”
“You did like it!”
“Only when you appreciated it, which you didn’t, most of the time.”
“You always did make things too salty.”
“Exactly what I mean,” he glared.
Arthur listened to the sizzling for a time, his stomach growled as the food smells reached him. “For what it’s worth, it’ll be nice to have your cooking again… I appreciated it a little more than I might have let on, back then.”
Was there really a need to say these things aloud, the things they had once said purely through the pretence of their arguments, what they used to tease each other about? But the answer when he asked himself was yes ; for avoidance of any doubt after their time apart he wished to be as plain as possible. It was strangely intimate to speak these surely mundane truths without first dressing them up and sending them off to war.
And besides, it was worth it to watch Merlin squirm, and squirm he did.
Seeing him pinken, he had the urge to wrestle him off his haunches and tumble with him in the clover, dandelions and daisies, as surprising as this urge was.
Merlin joined him on the little rise when the food was ready, and Arthur made no secret of enjoying it.
Arthur lay down, his feet were washed and preventatively bandaged against further damage and his stomach was full for the first time since breakfast.
Propped up on his elbows, Merlin looked back at him briefly in askance, then he too flopped down, sending up a few slumbering moths and a cloud of dandelion seeds, some of the latter settling in his hair. He folded his hands over his stomach, breathed in and closed his eyes.
Arthur stole a long look at him and his heart sped up. He wasn’t too shocked that he found him beautiful, because he was, achingly so, especially now with him lying in this bed of flowers, sylvan, framed by yellow, white and lilac and unconcerned by the activity of the bees around him.
With a pang he realised there was something not a little funerary about this scene. He was glad then that both of them were alive, that they had survived, and could meet again like this.
Merlin’s lashes lifted, his arm went up to shield his hyacinth eyes from the evening sun, and suddenly Arthur had been caught staring. He decided to make no secret of this either and it earned him another simpering look, but this time he didn’t squirm.
It was Arthur who broke the spell. Feeling more restored than he expected to, he stood up, tested his feet before he offered Merlin his hand. For once the man’s hand wasn’t cold, having been warmed in the sun. “I forget how close to the solstice we are,” Arthur said when they were both upright. “What would you say, is there about an hour of daylight left?”
“More than that, I’d say,” he guessed, biting his lip at the sky, seeds falling from him.
“I’d like to cover just a little more of that ground.”
Merlin looked a little proud of him, and maybe as oddly relieved as Arthur had been earlier when he saw his reluctance to kill the fish. They were both proving to each other, it seemed, that they had changed and not changed at all.
As they readied to set out again Arthur caught sight of where Merlin had been lying on the rise.
Not a single flower had been crushed.
He felt the tickle of goosebumps all over.
His feet skimmed the over the grasses so lightly he never unsettled a dew drop and all that day he was hurtling visitant of plain and field, bare mountain and bog, thicket and marshland, and there was no hill or hollow, no plantation or forest in Ireland that he did not appear in that day.
The Frenzy of Sweeney, Translation by Seamus Heaney in Sweeney Astray, Section 12.
Notes:
I wrote this at exactly the same time as the narrative is set and I was literally taking notes on my walks lol. Got me out of house to go touch some grass I guess.
The scene with the beech trees and the bluebells originally had horse chestnuts and I talked about the froth of white flowers on them around that time of year. Turns out though that they weren't introduced to this part of the world until the 1600s. Obviously as this is a very serious thing we're writing here I had to remove them. None of the characters get a chance to play conkers with each other. Sad times. Hilariously I also originally published this with wood pigeons, which also hadn't arrived by this time. The pigeons were shown the exit, again, because this is a very serious fic.
The waterfall scene is a little nod to a visual gag in QfC where Garret holds up a waterfall with his staff, only for it to collapse over Kayleigh. He does this while singing about how well he knows the forest and how he's a dramatic and lonely lonely boy but that's how it should be so could she please leave.
The fish scene is a little homage to Excalibur (1981). I also feel a kinship to clumsy Merlin.
At the end of this chapter I added a quote about Suibhne's transformation. Buile Shuibhne, the wildman figure from the medieval Irish poem likely has his beginnings around the Battle of Moira AD 637, so it's VERY old. Suibhne is cursed to be a "demented flying creature" after this battle following his poor treatment of a saint. He seems to reflect the natural world as much as he is enamored by it, his curse of madness having taken an unexpected turn for having brought him so close to nature. The fact this is from so long ago just amazes me, its very situated in place and feels like a love letter to the land. Suibhne is beautiful, tragic and ridiculous. The translation I quoted above is also by a late poet I love very much.
Chapter 11: And I'll Do Great Things
Summary:
Their journey continues. The two come face to face with their enemies and Arthur learns what happens in the woods at night. Merlin admits a few things about their time apart. On the watch as the morning draws near, something has Arthur scrambling to the aid of his travelling companion.
They said little, but the air was thick and tense. The disquiet was broken only by the alien rattle of nightjars and the hoarse screams of a barn owl that seemed to be stalking them as though mice might spontaneously fall out of their pockets.
Notes:
So, a friend (hello friend, you know who you are) was listening very kindly to my ramblings about this fic and pointed out that without being able to use the people close to Arthur against him, that my Morgana was "basically Skeletor running around outside the castle." In the spirit of QfC with its excellent villain and as a thank you for this beautiful observation that may or may not have influenced the narrative in a big way, I dedicate my slightly cartoonied Morgana to them.
This chapter has some sexual themes.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Merlin’s spell held nicely against the gnats concentrated in the last of the sunbeams. Before long however they were gone with the sun. There was still brightness left and through some breaks in the woods Merlin pointed to Venus, having appeared as it always did, early against the violet of the fading day. They walked on and more, less bright objects started to join it in the sky.
The temperature had fallen quickly for there was no cloud cover to hold in the heat. Merlin readjusted his travel blanket and the reed blanket pin at his chest. He was generally getting a little fidgety.
“What’s eating you?” Arthur grumbled as they hiked, finding his movements distracting.
“We should make camp soon,” he explained.
“You’re worried about travelling at night.”
“Might be, among other things.”
“What other things?”
“Doesn’t matter right now, we just need to find somewhere,” he said after some hesitation, which in Arthur’s experience was Merlin speak for ‘ it does matter and I’ll probably blurt it out later when I’m ready or else crack when you apply the slightest pressure.’
“Alright then,” Arthur said, putting the matter to bed for now. What a mystery he was.
“What about here?” The king suggested when they came upon a little bowl-like area, the short rise to one side would offer them a little bit of cover but it was not too high as to blind them to enemy approach. It had been a welcome break to a journey that had been thick with rapidly shifting dogwood and tall, stalking brambles. Another positive was that it had vantage over a fold of land where two hills met, containing a veritable fortress of aforementioned brambles that would no doubt deter the other travellers.
The warlock examined the place, eyes going everywhere, to the foliage, to the heavily mossed branches above and swallowed. The day was ending in a haze and they could see little beyond the fold but the other man clearly found something he didn’t like about their surroundings. “Not here,” he said enigmatically as he started to move on, his nervous gaze falling on the deepening shadows where indistinct bushes lay. “Won’t be safe in a few hours.”
“You know you really need to let me know what goes on here at night,” Arthur bemoaned, catching up to him on feet long deserving of rest. “I need to recognise the danger, two eyes are better than one.”
“You mean four, you dull spoon,” Merlin derided, almost stopping to snort.
Arriving at his side again Arthur scrunched up his nose. “Don’t be daft, all spoons are dull.”
“Well, you’re an especially dull one then,” he declared affectionately.
“What does that even mean?”
“It means-” his companion started, titling his head and clearly preparing to explain it to him in as patronising a tone as possible when Arthur dove for him and clamped his hand quickly over his mouth. “Mmpfr!” he exclaimed, startled and indignant before he clocked the seriousness in the king’s expression.
Arthur tentatively let go of him and pointed.
There was a lone dead soldier stalking below them at the lip of the furrow, patrolling. It looked a little swallowed by its armour, like a child in its parent’s clothes. It wore no helmet and Arthur could see the thin scalp that still spread over the skull, rank strands of hair descending from it. No doubt Morgana would be close. He started to step slowly and quietly forward to the cover of a tree, wishing now he had Merlin’s light feet. Said light footed man stopped him with a hand on the back of his shoulder. ‘Let me ,’ the touch implied. He took Leon’s sword from him with his cold fingers, leaving Arthur little time to realise he was being gently disarmed. Beside him Merlin held the sword low, levelling it with the thing’s neck like it was a crossbow. The blade left his grip and with only a swift upward tilt of his head, it sliced through the air and the dead soldier’s neck in one straight movement. A quick whisper brought the body down to the ground slowly and silently, and a second returned the sword, gore slipping from it so the blade was perfectly polished when he returned it to Arthur’s hands.
As awed as he was by the utterly clean violence, Arthur wanted to ask how many times he’d used that last trick in the castle when he was supposed to be polishing his armour and weapons by hand. He tried not to think of how Dalfan, Llenwi and Seren had been felled by the former trick.
The soldier’s head had landed so that it faced them. This was the first time he had time to properly examine one and he forced himself to consider the loose teeth within the dry peeled back mouth, the rotted hole where a nose had been and the last of the unnatural green glow in its eye sockets. He hadn’t given himself time to consider the horror of Morgana’s acts; here was a person that deserved their rest, only to be brought back into her service. Lady Seren and her family, despite their apparent sentience must have truly lost their humanity when they came back and joined her cause, for it was for these people, now horribly dishonoured, that they had first sought their revenge.
Merlin had been looking too. They exchanged frowns.
Then there was shuffling in the thorny mess ahead and they each flailed at the other to urge him get down and remain quiet.
“Cursed forest!” Arthur heard Morgana wail. He peaked carefully around the curve of the wide tree they were hiding behind and there she was, navigating the fold and clearly labouring for their clearing. Her hair was wilder than before. She had clearly taken the hard path, or more likely the woods had led her that way. Bramble stalks followed and hindered their every step even as she and her entourage emerged from the worst of it, twinning around their arms and holding them like bonds until they were summarily and angrily severed.
During just such a display Seren hacked at the offending thorns for her but they knotted ever tighter and seemed to redouble their efforts before her long axe, a weapon clearly not up to the task. The sudden increase in activity was Merlin’s doing, if Arthur could guess from the satisfied glint in the other’s eye. Seren shrieked in frustration as she struggled to release this sorcerer she called queen.
“Well?” Morgana asked expectantly, turning around to the other dead when she was mostly free and indicating the serpent-like encroachment of yet more brambles. They were a crew of diminutive crossbow and sword wielding figures, with similarly ill-fitting armour. She had not yet noticed that one was missing and lying headless not far from her. “Do something!”
They looked between them in an odd show of what Arthur hoped wasn’t residual humanity and then joined in.
“Fools, the lot of them,” she grumbled, stepping foot on the beginning of the rise. She was coming straight for them. Arthur tensed and felt Merlin do the same, there was little chance they could slip away unseen now, they had to be ready.
“We should stop for the night,” Seren suggested by her side as her fellow dead chopped at the train of enemy plant life behind them.
“You’re right as always, sweet,” the witch sighed. “Hack a little more for me and maybe this hell pit will let us.”
Neither Arthur nor Merlin made a sound, but Seren stilled all of a sudden, her head turning. “We’re not alone,” she announced.
“Where?” Morgana said low at her side, scanning the trees, her gaze went right over them and she saw nothing.
Seren pointed straight at them, milky eyes levelling with Arthur’s just before he could move out of her sight. “Pendragon and another.”
Morgana must have given a silent command because the sounds of armour and footsteps spread in the semi-circle around them. They were being surrounded.
Equally as silent Arthur raised Leon’s sword, still unsheathed, and Merlin’s raised his hand in readiness. They couldn’t flee into the trees, the bank above that had at first seemed defensible now denied them a quick retreat and they were forced to go sideways first, directly in front of the encroaching dead. With eyes alone they quickly conferred on their strategy.
Suddenly Morgana yelled in surprise and Merlin used that as his cue to run for the next tree. Arthur was behind him, he forgot how fast he could be. Fully animated now, thorns were reaching and wiping out from the bushes, roping around their would-be attackers, tripping them up and dragging them back into the thicket. Morgana herself had turned her attention to the immediate threat and hadn’t seen their quick dash. They kept running, diving from one tree to another as poorly aimed crossbow bolts flew after them, the soldiers clearly trying their hand even as they were held back and bound.
But the advantage was short lived when, with a shout and a blast that cast the trees in orange, the foliage was suddenly set alight. The small army advanced on them quickly, their aim suddenly a lot better as the stalks curled away, burning. Arthur was midway through his next dash when Merlin shot out in front of him, hand raised. A bolt whistled passed on a strange curved trajectory, mere inches from his neck, embedding itself deep into a beech behind them, redirected at the last second by magic. Arthur grabbed the warlock by the blanket and hauled him back for cover before launching both of them into the forest, finally able to run in the opposite direction now that nothing was in their way.
“You’ll get yourself killed standing around like that!” he hissed as they stumbled and looked over their shoulders.
“That bolt was coming straight for you I’ll have you know, as always-!”
“I know, I know, you have to save the day,” Arthur finished for him. “Now stop babbling and run!”
Bolts came at them from many angles, the semi-circle their attackers had created still in place as they ran ever toward them. Merlin sent a few swinging branches and vines their way, but Arthur knew they would be upon them soon.
The two rolled for a boulder and said boulder ground at its seams and moved to provide them more protection. Merlin’s hand was suddenly on his shoulder, his expression was wide eyed, as vulnerable as it was serious. “Arthur, promise me you won’t-” then he winced, looking like he was about to take a great risk. “Oh just...” he relented, seeming to come to a decision. Then to Arthur’s confusion and dismay he thrust a hand into his pack, took out a small yellow crab apple and bit into it audibly. As his face screwed up at the sourness his features deepened and sagged, his hair whitened and grew long, as did his beard. His travelling clothes too shimmered away and were replaced by impractically oversized slate blue robes. When it was done, despite their critical situation, his old eyes were braced for a reaction, for hurt.
Arthur tossed his head and rolled his eyes. “How do you plan to run like that?!”
Merlin’s newly ancient face was slack before he caught up. “I don’t,” he croaked indignantly. “I plan to fight!”
“No,” Arthur told him, hands trying to stop him from rising. “There are too many of them and I’m-”
“I didn’t say you’d be the one fighting,” he responded as he got shakily to his feet and raised his head pridefully. Arthur rose too, somehow the difference in height between them was more apparent now, even with the other’s back bended as it was.
He stepped out from behind the boulder before Arthur could stop him. He brought his staff down hard, like he was announcing himself.
“Witch!” he called, oh no, Arthur thought in horror, he really is announcing himself.
“Idiot,” Arthur muttered at him through his gritted teeth. He was caught in the light and shadow of the fires Morgana had set, from her vantage it must have been quite the dramatic entrance if the sharp intake of her breath, loud enough for him to hear though there were still many paces between them, was anything to go by.
“You!!” he heard his sister exclaim in a snarl as all sounds of motion ceased briefly.
“Aye!” Merlin mocked, though Arthur wasn’t sure if that was ‘aye’ or ‘I.’ He raised the staff and the bolts that came his way stopped mid-air, spun around and screamed back in their direction, faster than any crossbow could send them. A clatter told him he had felled one more of the soldiers, two left now not including Lady Seren.
He went out of Arthur’s sight, the rock blocking the action. There were words from both sides and unnatural flashes that overtook the cast of the fires and sent slumbering birds speeding away.
Arthur suddenly wasn’t sure what to do, his sword was no good for fighting at a distance and leaving his cover would put him in the line of fire, he craned carefully to see. Merlin was going against any and all combat training that Arthur had ever had, standing dead on with Morgana, entirely open, his stance wide with his lit staff raised. But he saw quickly that this was intentional, one hand held his staff balanced partially over his arm so it was pointing at his target and the other seemed to be his protection, casting the silent spell that stopped and redirected the crossbow bolts and blasts that came his way. A sparking brightness (Arthur could not quite tell the colour, whether it was white, blue or purple) seemed to build and crackle around the stone of his staff before it shot from it and landed just where Morgana had been, though some of the force knocked her away. She rolled quickly to her feet, the traditional combat and recovery he knew her to be well versed in making an appearance, sure his own moves would be exactly the same, step for step, if their situations were reversed. She shouted her own words and Merlin was thrown back onto the boulder, though he too recovered quickly. He stepped away, drawing fire from Arthur’s hiding place, he realised.
Arthur’s eyes had been so trained on the sorcerers’ battle that he almost missed Seren, standing in the shadows behind her queen, wretch a loaded crossbow from a soldier’s hands. He ducked just in time, or perhaps it was the stone that had protected him, for he was sure it had moved a few inches once he righted himself again.
“Get down!” Merlin shouted, his old voice cracking, he had clearly also been focussing on Morgana. This time, his attention was on all of them. His left hand confidently deflecting yet another bolt, he took the time to crack his neck loudly and breathe some readying breaths. Arthur was sure the red squirrels that raced down the tree trunks and scurried away across the ground knew somehow what was about to happen. That horrible quaking Arthur was growing used to sounded out and then Merlin was engaging the forest, literally weaponising the environment, and to great effect. The trees here, mostly tall beeches growing straight into the sky, though there were a few yews bent and twisted in their shadow, could offer little help with their branches so instead did so with their roots. There was an eruption of earth as they burst forth, ugly, hairy, heavy and tapering. Swift and low they knocked all who did not jump prone. Relentless, the roots came back after their tripping attempts to slam and whip down upon the group. Morgana was pinned by her leg and was kicking and digging at the ground below just as Arthur had done before he fell into Merlin’s grove. A heavy, earth laden root was preparing to come down upon her. Arthur found himself bracing, sure he was about to witness her death, when she freed herself and tumbled away to the feet of Seren who quickly helped her up. A root came up below a soldier and sent it flying. It landed on its neck, though to his horror and frustration it rose again and rejoined the ranks, neck bent at an unnatural angle. Merlin too was frustrated and more roots sprang up, churning the ground. Even Arthur’s hiding place started to undulate like waves at sea. He saw Seren disappear into a long trench and wondered if he would too.
Then something strange started to happen. Many small structures, pale red and if Arthur was honest, not a little phallic, rose from the disturbed soil. Merlin started to retreat backwards, eyes not on Morgana but on the new arrivals. A soldier fell into the mushrooms and strange red dust, spores, he realised, sprayed from them. All over they released these spores and Arthur saw that Morgana, who had miraculously stayed above ground, had started to droop, fighting to remain upright.
“Emrys!” she slurred, falling back, her hand dropping. “What…is-?”
“Run!” Merlin shouted over his shoulder, his robed arm going up to cover the lower half of his face.
Run and don’t breathe , Arthur understood and side by side again they fled. Some bolts went after them but Merlin half-turned to shield them from every one that came their way, robes flying, whip quick in a way Arthur never imagined he could be, let alone in this strange body of his.
Still, on his feet he lacked stamina and Arthur had to grab his thin and wizened arm after some time of running. Eventually he slumped, panting, to the ground, his wrinkled and liver spotted hands in the dirt. Arthur went to pick him up when he heard him gasp out a spell and those hands regained their youth and his hair darkened and shortened. Though when he looked up his beard was still very long.
Arthur indicated his own chin and neck and Merlin, still breathless and on the ground, didn’t immediately understand. He sat up and copied the movement. “Oh,” he realised when his hand fell on the hair, and it quickly shrank to its former shape.
He got up and dusted himself off, a gesture which, with the lighting of his eyes, somehow rid him of all dirt. He looked tired and was still a little slumped. He stretched and every one of his bones seemed to pop and crack as he returned to his former posture. “Taxing, that spell,” he explained.
“I don’t doubt it,” Arthur said slowly, noting the deep purple that had appeared below his eyes.
He turned, surveying the darkening woods they had come through, his breath mostly back. “They won’t be able to follow. She’ll probably be out for the night but we should put distance between us.”
“Are you sure the dead won’t be immune to it?”
He thought about that. “Alright, maybe a bit more distance.”
“I’m going to find out what happens when we travel here at night, aren’t I?” Arthur guessed when they started moving again.
“What usually happens when you travel at night?”
“Are you asking? Well for one you can’t see, leaves one ripe for ambush and the like... Some animals hunt mainly at night,” he answered, humouring him, though it gave him memories of being a squire. “Fatigue is a problem.”
“It’s the same here with a few additions. We got a taster earlier.”
“Oh?”
He pointed to a colourful bush by their feet and they watched as a flower snapped shut over a large hapless moth… and looked for all the world like it had swallowed it, something bobbing in its stem just like an Adam’s apple.
Arthur swallowed too. “Oh.”
“Just stay close, don’t touch anything, even if you feel compelled to, what comes out at night here won’t listen to me so readily,” Merlin warned him as he conjured an orb of light in his palm.
It was only because there was a high chance he’d meet an unfortunate end that the king didn’t gripe about being ordered around.
Odd flowers started appearing as the dark pressed in, the likes of which he had never seen, some were shaped like pitchers, others toothed mouths and others still looked like bulbous fruits. As Merlin’s light passed over them their shadows gave Arthur the impression that they were moving, or perhaps they were. They were striking too in their impossibly bright yellows, greens, pinks, reds and blues; their colours reminded Arthur of the occasional rare caterpillar he had seen in the castle gardens, coloured like little else he had seen in nature and no doubt poisonous.
These otherworldly things started to crowd their path, spiked mouths drooled sweet nectar close to his face and more than once Merlin had to wrench him out of the way, his reflexes lacking in his tiredness. The sleep-inducing fungi made an appearance again and even Merlin almost stumbled right into them before Arthur caught him, too occupied with the larger plants and the unidentified shadows hanging from the trees to look at his feet.
They said little, but the air was thick and tense. The disquiet was broken only by the alien rattle of nightjars and the hoarse screams of a barn owl that seemed to be stalking them as though mice might spontaneously fall out of their pockets. So far, these things had caused them less trouble than the forest’s daytime residents, but Arthur knew when something was poised for attack. He raised his sword and stayed behind Merlin, though as he had warned him he had little power over these things, as evidenced by a few failed attempts to part them.
And there all of a sudden was the sweetest smell he’d ever smelled. It was delicious like something baking, simple like turned earth and tantalising like the warm skin of another. It set a small, very secret part of him trembling -a part that wished to be gentle rather than brutal, to receive gentleness in turn and to know peace. He wished to know what thing could create such a smell, it wrapped him in comfort, it gave him lewd but tender visions -a body moving over his, a head thrown back exposing a neck ripe for licking. He had to find it. He broke away just as the barn owl screeched, masking any noise that might have alerted Merlin that he had left. There was no need to let him know, he would be back as soon as he found the source of the smell.
At last there it was, not far from the circuitous path they had been taking to avoid all of the various nocturnal dangers. It was a huge bulbous thing taller than him, magenta in Merlin’s quickly retreating light and sitting upon broad emerald leaves that lay every close to the ground. He stepped on them to get closer, the smell everywhere now, somehow calming him and exciting him in a way he hadn’t been calmed or excited in a long time. Static drops of some kind of sap glistened on its surface along some seams, he reached out to touch it and his fingers came away sticky, he wished to taste it but was briefly startled when the whole structure unfurled and he was faced with a gigantic flower of the same bright colour, with a shadowy circle at its centre and a large stamen protruding from it. He should have been reminded about the wells in which Morgana had raised the dead, but he was not. The smell was overwhelming him now, making him weak at the knees. The stamen moved a little, sizing up to him like a very tall serpent, he watched it in fascination. The light, almost gone, was suddenly swinging around, making all of the shadows turn. He heard his name being called in panicked tones but found he didn’t care. The plant rose up and went taunt and Arthur was rapt below it. It shot forward.
The light went out and someone tackled him hard to the ground, rolling away with him. He was held down though he found he was too dazed to really fight back. The light appeared again and hung in the air, he flinched away from it like some nocturnal animal, Merlin’s concerned and irate face came to him from behind it.
“Those paralyse you, then digest you!” he cried, shaking him to fuller wakefulness. “What did I say about sticking with me?!”
“That smell-” Arthur murmured, craning weakly in the direction of the plant.
“Is whatever would attract you the most,” Merlin finished seriously.
“What?” he asked as he was hauled bodily to his feet and away. “Then what do you smell?”
“Arthur, focus!” Merlin implored, tugging him. “You were lured in, do you understand?”
“I- Yes.” Feeling drunk and embarrassed, he realised that his breeches were a little tight, he hoped he had been the only one to notice.
“Alright, good,” the other said with no hint that he had. “Let’s get out of here, but you’re holding on to me this time.”
For the second time Arthur didn’t argue, though he dragged his feet a little as they left the range of the smell.
That was only the first of their troubles. They were snapped at, acid dripped on them from wet maws and once Merlin was almost hung by vines before Arthur cut him down. By the time they came to the clearing, almost an overhang for the slope that went down one side of it, they were exhausted to the bone. The plants were not here, as though they only resided in the very darkest places, away from any light or potential of light. They all but collapsed together at the foot of a stone near the centre. Merlin set his odd little magic orb behind them, it reminded Arthur of the one that had guided him in that cave years ago- Oh , he thought in realisation.
“Thanks for saving me from that, uh, thing,” Arthur said eventually, trying his hardest to banish the things he had imagined, but sticky, it wouldn’t quite leave him. Whatever would attract me the most…
Merlin accepted the thanks without any teasing or resistance. “I’ve had experience with that particular plant,” he explained, a little pained.
“Well, as far as I can tell you’re alive to tell the tale.”
He went a little quiet at that, he was worrying at his hands again like he had when the sun had started to go down.
“What were you worried about earlier?” Arthur found himself asking, his reeling thoughts overridden by the other’s clear stress.
“Sorry?”
“What were you worried about earlier? You said you feared the night, is there more to worry about besides-?” he pointed his thumb at where they had emerged.
Merlin grimaced. “It’s just, it was getting cold, is all,” he explained, shifting uncomfortably and playing with his fingers in his lap.
“It won’t get that cold, it’s almost summer,” Arthur dismissed immediately, though he knew sometimes these late spring days had surprisingly cold nights.
“I… I had a bad first winter,” he flinched, repeating precisely the same words as he had in his cottage.
“Oh.” Merlin was scared of the cold. He had survived this place and its treacherous nights and it was the cold he was scared of. If that was the case then he would do something about it.
His companion was silent beside him.
“We’re far enough away from danger, or maybe danger is far enough away from us; a fire wouldn’t be a bad idea.”
They should probably have gone straight to sleep but Merlin agreed, docile, and they rose again to collect some firewood, though with magic they needed little and it needn’t necessarily be dry.
The fire was quickly lit. The foot of the stone was the only viable place to sit so Arthur had no need to make an excuse to sit right beside Merlin, where he might catch the worst of the light night breeze.
Both of them seemed to be in a talking mood and it would do no good for them to try and retire when there were things to say.
“About Dragoon...” Merlin started, kicking the whole thing off.
“I’d long suspected it was you,” Arthur told him without hesitating.
Merlin looked surprised and, incongruously with his earlier displays of power over this magical forest, not a little red.
“It was something Gaius said once about Dragoon. I worked it out not long after you left.”
“I-”
“You did it to save people we both care about,” he stated, cutting him off.
Merlin nodded once affirmatively, wary.
“I’m grateful then, though you were truly insufferable.”
“Only time I got to speak freely, I guess,” he laughed nervously.
“What are you on about? You always spoke freely, you could never quite grasp the whole ‘servant to the prince’ thing, it was a miracle if I could ever get you to shut up.” He remembered Merlin’s outburst before he almost married Elena, saving him from the unhappy path his father had set for him, ‘ you’re mad, I think you’re all mad,’ and many more strangely sage words besides.
“Well, maybe I needed a little bit of an outlet, y’know always saving said prince, and the woman he loves, and his knights, and his father…”
“I know you protected him from me once.”
Merlin shrank away a little. “I-I didn’t want to lie to you then. I did that for you, n-not-”
“Oh stop looking like a frightened mare, Mer lin. Relax,” Arthur said testily, pulling him back. “I was mad with rage, you did what was necessary.”
There was a heavy pause, then Merlin let go of his held breath. “I never expected to have this conversation. Or… uhm, see you again, ever.” Arthur caught the quick, nervous way he said that last part and got the impression that he had expected to, or maybe wanted to.
“I’m glad I could surprise you then, God knows you’ve been surprising me plenty,” Arthur smirked good naturedly and bumped his side a little, though he paused and his expression darkened as his tired mind presented him with a host of missed opportunities, a brighter past. “How different that night would have been if I’d only worked things out sooner, your magic, what you did for me.”
“Don’t dwell, Arthur.”
“A little hard, given the circumstances, don’t you think?”
“Gods you’re right. It really is her, isn’t it?” Merlin gasped then as if he was waiting to talk about it, referring to Seren.
The king nodded, looking into the fire. “She swore vengeance on my life, enough that it brought her back from the dead.”
“Probably won’t be too pleased to see me either.”
“You having killed her,” Arthur added, stating the obvious.
“Yeah, me having done… that,” he trailed off into disquiet. He stared into the fire too.
They left a lot of what could be said unsaid but even in this silence Arthur could feel that their conversation was meandering, looping off and coming back upon itself like a slow river. He decided to go with the current, sure that it would lead them to where they needed to be. “I’ve had too many years to think to misunderstand what you did for me,” Arthur said softly, every word of it was a renewed apology, a reassurance. “ All that you did for me. I know you went against your heart that night, when you killed them.” You're gentle, not brutal like I am.
Merlin sat on his hands and went tight lipped, fighting some emotion or other. His eyes were glazed as he looked into the heart of the fire.
Arthur was fighting with his own, there had been some things he meant to say since his ‘you are missed’ blunder in the man’s strange cottage the night before. He felt acutely as though he had him cornered, still he spoke what he felt needed to be said, to be sure he knew the truth of it. “I said yesterday that you were missed. You are. But what I meant to say was I missed you.”
“You have Gwen,” he replied immediately to Arthur’s surprise, and suddenly they were on a different course.
“And she has Lancelot,” Arthur countered, surprised at his graceless tone and trying to make sense of this new direction, at what he was not saying, thinking with a little jump in his heart that he might know what he meant. “They married, you know, last summer. Took them long enough. They were always an excellent match.”
Merlin was quiet again, looking suitably embarrassed as he drew his knees up.
Sensing he should tread carefully Arthur tactfully shifted to the left. “And my knights, the ones that stayed, they have each other. It’s duty that keeps them with me.”
“They respect you.”
“How could they?”
“They stuck around, didn’t they?”
“Not all of them.”
Merlin breathed at this, nodded but continued. “But they do respect you, you are destined for great things, to unite the lands of Albion, they can feel it, I know they can.”
“But beyond... prophecy, how would you know? You haven’t left the forest, except, apparently, to ruin someone’s wedding.”
“I know them, and I know you.”
“You can’t know, you don’t know how it all changed after you-” Arthur cut himself off. He didn’t have words for the freezing over of Camelot after Merlin left, the warmth that vanished between them all.
The feeling of his soul reaching out for something that wasn’t there.
Then he realised Merlin had just sent him on a wild goose chase, taking his little tactful redirection of their conversation and running wildly with it. He got back to the heart of the matter. “This has nothing to do with Gwen or anyone else, Merlin, I told you I missed you. ”
The other man winced but didn’t respond. Arthur had a second of creeping, sickening worry that he had gone too far, that he was forcing something unwanted on him, an ugly snarl of emotion Merlin didn’t need or want. Maybe he should never have said all the quiet parts aloud, maybe they were never meant to be given voice. But then he saw the other was chewing on his lip like his life depended on it, watching the fire.
“I know that look,” Arthur said, calming down. “Out with it.”
“What look?”
“You have something to say, say it.”
“How can you still know anything like that?” he teased, echoing Arthur’s words from earlier that day, but he was visibly nervous. “Fine. I need to show you something.” He reached for his pack and started digging inside. He took out a light pink crystal with many points and set it between them. He glanced at the king as if to gauge his reaction.
“I’m not magic Merlin, tell me what I’m looking at,” said king said testily.
“This is an instrument for scrying.”
Arthur’s eyes widened but he waited for the warlock to elaborate.
“This was given to me by the druids who live here, it uh, has other uses but sometimes I… oh Gods , alright, I checked up on you! The sword too, I was able to warn you sometimes through it, you know, when there was danger. But, but-!” he panicked, his voice high, his hands doing a lot of speaking for him the way they were raised, sometimes as if to placate Arthur, sometimes as if to shield himself from him. “Not all the time! The sword will do that on its own too, just when things are particularly dire… So what I’m saying is- I didn’t leave, Arthur, not completely.”
“You sent magical suggestions though the sword?” Arthur asked evenly, trying to understand and not betraying anything while he did it, certainly not betraying the joy that had inexplicably leapt into his heart at such invasive acts as these.
“I used it to advise you,” he explained quickly, wincing and sliding away bit by bit, hands still raised like he was afraid. “Nothing so strong as a suggestion.”
Then Arthur laughed, a high choking thing, his mouth hanging open in awe. “God Merlin! We even managed to argue, I threw the sword down over it!” His hand went to his own forehead, he had flushed hot. “Later you’re going to have to tell me what problem you have with poor Mordred.”
Merlin blinked and he was starting to smile too. “That’s- What? You really aren’t angry?”
“I might have been dead tens of times over if you had not done it,” he shook his head, still amazed but his colour and body temperature were returning to normal.
“Not the reaction I expected, if I’m being honest,” Merlin said cautiously.
“A few years ago I might have accused you of spying on me, but I’m starting to understand what you said to me.”
“Um, you’ll have to be specific, I’ve said a lot of things...”
“Mm, and don’t I know it… When you said you used your magic for me, it’s that I’m beginning to understand.” It should anger him, it should. But knowing all of this filled some of the empty spaces of the last few years, and so much of it had been horribly empty. “It’s a revelation to be sure, but I’m glad you never stopped. It’s good… it’s good to know you were still there somehow.”
Merlin’s shoulders relaxed, he looked a lot more tired all of a sudden. He let his head fall back softly onto the boulder behind them. “Then I’m glad too. But I think it’s my fault you never cast it away as you should have, and now we’re here.”
“No, it was one threat after another, I could never find the opportunity. We’re here because we’re here.”
He frowned but looked like he agreed.
They were silent for a while, this time it was Arthur’s turn to wrestle with a confession. He lost. “I’m king now, though you seemed to have guessed that already. My father died in the spring the year you left… The day of my coronation I was… I’m not sure what I was, I didn’t feel much of anything… empty, I suppose, and I was sure I was going to feel the same way maybe for as long as I lived.”
Merlin took this in for a few beats, his eyes searching the air before him as though reading something there before casting them down and nodding, like he understood.
“I must have been mad because I found myself wishing for you,” Arthur admitted, his voice so uncharacteristically small and quiet he noticed Merlin was craning to hear. “I wished that you could be there. Even after what I did, or didn’t do, not trying to rescue you like I should have. It was absurd.”
“I was there,” he heard him say.
“No, you-” he started to counter but he stopped short as though cut off by the snap of the wood in the fire.
Merlin met his eyes. “From where you were standing, I would have been on the right, far down towards the back,” he waved a hand over himself and a plain looking brown haired young man shimmered over his form, a familiar look of tentative hope in his dark eyes. He had a white tunic with a line of red embroidery around the neck, brown breeches and practical boots. A person that wouldn’t stand out from the crowd. Arthur was right, the river looped back around again and they were where they needed to be.
Arthur breathed out a small laugh and shook his head as the stranger disappeared. “Of course,” he huffed and laughed some more. Then the laugh took over. He flopped his head down onto the other man’s shoulder, almost heaving with it.
“Stop it, cabbage head,” Merlin muttered, but his arm came around the back of his shoulder, his hand at the back of his head, ruffling and then lightly stroking his hair.
“I don’t think you could ever stop surprising me,” Arthur raised his head, recovering.
“I try to keep you on your toes,” Merlin chuckled, smirking at him with a sidelong glance, looking very like he remembered him.
This very man had told him to rule with his heart and that lesson had too long made its home in Arthur’s every action for him to change it now. “I mean it,” he said earnestly, looking into his eyes. “You said you were more magic than anything else. I’d like to understand what that means too, with time.”
“Alright, it’s bedtime for cabbage heads!” he announced loudly, cutting into the moment and bouncing to his feet. “I’ll take the first watch.”
But as they worked to make a single meagre bed and bring the fire down to a warm smoulder respectively, they glanced over their shoulders at each other, sometimes laughing and sometimes just watching.
Trying to sleep, the other images he’d been fighting, of Camelot burning, of wraiths slicing like arrows through its streets, came to him. He thought again about the time he would spend away. He thought about Lancelot, silent as he bled in the dark, he wondered if Leon had got back to them, if Mordred had healed him or had to defend them with magic, he wondered if Gaius had to do the same. Had Gwen had to use her sword, had Percival? Where was Elyan in all of this? Last he had heard he was fighting to secure the citadel. Anxiety clawing at his chest and his stomach, he turned over and saw Merlin’s sidelong silhouette not far from him. He was looking up at the stars and the crescent moon and the two bright stars, no, planets, Mars and Venus, flanking it. He saw with little shock that his eyes were lighting up at intervals as he looked from object to object. He wondered what strange magic he was doing, he decided to ask him in the morning. Suitably distracted without trying, he was quickly asleep.
“-rthur, wake up, early bird catches the worm, let’s hav-’”
“Let’s have you lazy daisy?” Arthur chorused, groaning.
“Yeah,” he whispered, a smile on his voice, though it was impossible to see it. “That. S’your turn to take the watch.”
He groaned again as he rose to a seated position. He felt dehydrated, he’d been sweating in his sleep and his hair was wet at the back of his neck. He reached for his water and tried to restore himself.
“Alright?”
“Yeah, yeah, just waking up.”
He felt a clumsy touch on his shoulder, arm and then Merlin was offering him his hand to help him up. Remembering to use his good arm he took it, always a little cold, Merlin’s hands , and they switched places.
“We should leave again at dawn,” his friend said in the dark from the ground.
“That’s probably not very far off.”
“I’ll live.”
He nodded, not that the other could see. “I’ll wake you at first light then.”
Groping in the dark, Arthur found himself a tree that kept Merlin in his periphery, though he wouldn’t be able to see him for a few hours yet. He wanted to face the stars, deciding from his earlier spying on the man’s stargazing that they would prove a worthy distraction. The moon was hidden from him now, though he was grateful of this, every inch the moon’s shadow retreated left was a reminder of precious time lost. Everything had shifted, now he was afforded a view of Lacerta and the famed steed Pegasus. He contemplated that winged horse, technically a monster but celebrated and remembered for his beauty, strength and deeds. It was rare that Arthur had thoughts such as these but in all of these stories it was always the wars and warriors that interested him, so Bellerophon and Pegasus, then Perseus and Pegasus, had managed to stick. Who had taught him these, he asked himself, certainly not his father. It was the servants that had been his nurses, the knights who entertained him as a boy and then, Merlin, it was Merlin who had pointed at the sky and pieced together the fragments for him, always when they were alone or in whispers when they were on the road and someone else had the watch. Strange that he should carry these stories and forget where they came from, who they came from.
A line streaked across the sky, so fast he thought he had imagined it or it had been a fast insect. Then another, a white streak, there and gone in a blink. He felt a little pleased, so he would be treated to a show.
The sky had only just turned from black to navy when the noises came to him, a shifting and a whimpering that had him immediately kicking toward Merlin in panic.
Merlin was convulsing upon the forest floor, his eyelids were fluttering and Arthur could see the shining disks of his lit up irises between the rapid movement of his lashes.
“Merlin!” he shouted, on his knees now and taking the man’s shoulders in his hands to try and rouse him, but he shook powerfully out of his grasp. His muscles were as taught as bowstrings and he strained horribly. He didn’t seem to be aware of Arthur and his attempts to get through to him. “What’s wrong?! Merlin!!”
Briars curl in sideways,
arch a stickle back,
draw blood and curl up innocent
to sneak the next attack.
The Frenzy of Sweeney, Translation by Seamus Heaney in Sweeney Astray, Section 40.
His brain convulsed,
his mind split open,
Vertigo, hysteria, lurchings
and launchings came over him,
he staggered and flapped desperately,
he was revolted by the thought of known places
and dreamed of strange migrations.
The Frenzy of Sweeney, Translation by Seamus Heaney in Sweeney Astray, Section 11.
Notes:
I dressed old Merlin/Dragoon in the robes Merlin from Disney's Sword and the Stone wears just for fun.
The apple thing is fairly vague and comes from a conversation with another friend who read in a botany related book that Myrddin went to an orchard or was given an apple before he became old. I just sort of took this and ran and made the apple into some kind of spell component for reasons mysterious even to me.
There's no more major references in this chapter but next chapter is a real doozy, I sincerely sincerely hope that you like it.
Comments are a night under the stars for my tired soul.
Chapter 12: Looking Through Your Eyes
Summary:
A Merlin POV flashback to his gaining the curse of prophecy, making friends with Aodhán, coming to the woods and learning of his immortality.
The words seemed to be about the artefacts of the seasons’ turnings, “a prize in every unveiling, when the dew is undisturbed, and the wheat is reaped, and the bees are gentle…” He recognised words like berries and watercresses, said in a way that made his mouth water and his imagination fill with jewelly colour. He wanted to get closer.
Notes:
This chapter is the main reason we have the Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts tag. This is the most heart-wrenching thing I have ever written but I'm really in love with it. It also gives us context about how far Merlin has come to get where he is in the present day.
It's about learning to live again, I dedicate it to me.
TW for a very brief moment of suicidal ideation. Other warnings are captured in the tags.
I thought it was better to put the references and discussion at the top this time (these aren't in order):
This chapter deals with Merlin's seerhood and his becoming more like Myrddin. His time with the druids, the cauldron of five trees, their divinations and the song Gwendydd sings are mainly from or inspired by The Chair of Tailesin, the Book of Taliesin XIII.
Gwendydd is Myrddin's twin sister. Her line "has not the burden been consigned to earth? Everyone must give up what he loves" comes from the Dialogue Between Myrddin and His Sister Gwendydd, the Red Book of Hergest in which Myrddin foresees generations and generations of rulers and their fates literally until "the world is at an end", "when killing becomes the first duty" and "there will be no more kings." I borrow her calling Myrddin "far-famed brother" from this. Every few lines Gwendydd prompts him and it seems Myrddin can't help but give her the prophecy. I reuse this very occasionally at different points in the fic when Arthur asks Merlin something about the future.
I learned some interesting astrological things about Arthur, all of it speculation as far as I can tell, about his connections with Ursa Major and Minor, that the round table can be found in Ursa Major, the bear connection also explains his name (Ursa=bear=Artos=Arthur, maybe!) as does the related Draco (Pendragon). I kind of couldn't resist the whole Arthur = Bear thing and therefore neither can Merlin.
The portent of the comet seems a little all over the place in my unprofessional opinion and variously heralds Uther's birth, Uther's name for himself, Arthur's birth and Arthur's death.
The vision involving the boggy ground, stakes and something in Merlin's mouth references the treatment of people thought to be able to come back from the dead in both pre and early/post Christian Ireland. The thing in his mouth is a stone, this is supposed to prevent the soul reentering the body.
Blackbirds do migrate, but sometimes they don't. Aodhán decides to stay put for Merlin :')
Lastly the source for the weaving is me :) I was taught to weave in school and I've been thinking about it a lot recently. The looms I learned on only had four pegs and I had to learn some of vocabulary around the parts exclusively for this, I don't think I ever learned it at the time! Merlin basically makes a plaid blanket here. His blankets are his balm to his fear of the cold and a comfort to him.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Camelot and his red caped pursuers were long behind Merlin when he reached Excalibur. The last time he had been in the forest it was still green, now the trees were bare, and the leaf litter left over from autumn was glittering and frozen below them. It was a testament to the utter seclusion of this place that Merlin was the first to break the fragile curls under his boots and under the staff that had once belonged to the Sidhe Sophia.
Not immune to nature, the sword too was icy, and in the low light of the fading day it seemed to have its own cold light. He circled it, his hand on the pommel. Cast me away, he read on its fuller. They were a pair, he and the sword; he hoped this tool of Arthur’s destiny would not fail as he had. The despair he had been tamping down was threatening to catch up with him, now that he was here it was unavoidable. All at once Merlin sagged and lowered himself to the ground before the sword. He was shaking with cold, with emotion, with exhaustion – Gods, last he slept it had been in a different world, his only worry had been whether he would have a hangover after their night of revelling. He propped himself up against the stone and allowed himself to rest, aware that the task ahead might require more energy than he had to give.
Nodding off to the sound of the occasional heavy drops that fell from the melt in the branches under the meagre evening sun, a flutter and a brush of air startled him awake. He leaned his head back and on the pommel there was a male blackbird, his feathers dark and sleek, looking down at him. It flicked its head and tail a few times and warbled at him loudly.
“Hello to you too,” Merlin greeted it hoarsely. He fully expected it to fly away at his words, as animals tend to when they hear a human voice, but it did not. He had been hearing blackbird song since he left Camelot, and now he wondered. “I’ll be getting some sleep if you don’t mind, but… you can stick around if you want to.”
There was no discernible response from the bird, with rapid movements it looked at him with one eye, then the other, readjusting its grip on the pommel.
Merlin returned to trying to sleep, aware he should probably make a fire, but he was too-
He awoke when he hit the ground, leaves crumpling loudly. He was shaking violently and when he tried to use his fingers they barely obeyed. It was completely dark, though he sensed morning was not far off. Somewhere overhead, if it wasn’t overcast, the moon would be a sliver. He sat up, hugging himself, trying to borrow the fading warmth of his middle for his stiff hands for a moment before extracting one for his spell. Even hours after the ordeal, his magic was still prickling strangely under his skin like a limb he had slept on too long.
“Bærn,” he said shivering, and a fire lit in his palm. He yelped at the sudden shock of heat, too much for his half-frozen skin and it went out. He braced himself and tried again. He cupped it with both hands breathing through the burn. Above him the silver and golds of Excalibur reflected the unnatural flame.
He got to his feet one handed and started to look for firewood.
A fire lit with magical assistance, he warmed slowly and chewed on the rough bread he had taken from Gaius’ office before he left. He had taken a few things, the staff, some clothes, a small collection of basic medical supplies, his spell book and, with much hesitation despite the threat of being caught, the sigil that had once belonged to Arthur’s mother. He used it now to regain the fine motor movements and feeling in his fingers, tracing the round edge and the lines of the cross to the bird in the centre. Arthur had given it to him before they faced the Doracha, when he had resolved to sacrifice himself for his people. When they arrived back in Camelot unscathed and Merlin had tried to return it, the prince made a show of looking thoughtful, though Merlin knew him well enough to know he had already made up his mind on the matter. ‘It will be safer in someone else’s hands,’ he had said, and he knew very well that he meant Merlin’s hands specifically, and not anyone else’s. Merlin wondered if he should have taken it at all, feeling guilty that he of all people should covet something of such importance to Arthur, gift or no. But he had taken it all the same.
He pocketed it, thinking now was as good a time as any to get on with his plan. He took his spell book out and flipped to the pages about protective enchantments. The firelight highlighted the roughness of the paper, making it hard to read.
He stood before Excalibur, it gleamed impassively in the campfire light and against the early morning winter black. Always gleaming this sword, always brilliant.
“Betīehþ…” he paused, this was the word for ‘protect’ to which he would add the words for ‘the wielder’ and an instruction to inform the wielder of danger and malintent, but it was not just a wielder he wished to protect, it was Arthur. He restarted. “Betīehþ Arthur Pendragon! Fēleþ iermðu!”
It was a short spell, he knew, but he had tried to pour into it all of his intention to preserve Arthur’s precious life and his destiny.
He stepped back as though to examine his handiwork but of course the sword had remained unchanged, at least visually. All he could hope was that his work was done.
Suddenly the hairs on the back of his neck stood up and an icy cold raced through his spine. He wheeled about with his hand raised, sure there was some great danger waiting for him but all he could see was the sword, the campfire and the shadowed woods the woods the woods the woods- and somehow in his mind’s eye there was something rushing toward him, or maybe it was something deep inside him that rushed to meet it, and with a cry he lost sight of all around him and his senses were entirely overtaken before he hit the ground and he was in a forest, another one, in another season, dense and green, his staff striking the ground. A blackbird followed him, flying from branch to branch.
A foreign trefoil of three conjoined circles tattooed on the inside of a freckled wrist, not knotted and pointed like the ones he was used to, its owner reaching for him as if offering assistance.
His own hands grasping onto the branches of a black alder that moved impossibly to meet him. The sleeves and the colourful mantle he wore were unfamiliar when he caught sight of his body.
A stag walking tentatively toward him in an iced over landscape, snuffing hot air.
An uninterrupted view of the stars, trees below from horizon to horizon in the light of a waning moon.
A place of red and yellow earth, a smell of sulphur, wyverns circling in the air.
His own hands again, red and blackened at the fingertips.
A hearth where a flame with no wood burned and two sheepskin covered chairs facing toward it.
He gasped awake, a deep pain in his head. He was lying at the foot of Excalibur. From the low yellow light that sent lines of shadow through the trees he could tell it was now truly morning. He realised he must have hit his head and when he brought his hand back, wincing, to where the throbbing was worst, he could feel dried blood in his hair. That was two blows to the head in not as many days. The fire was light grey ash disappearing on the wind, matching the colour of his fingers. Remembering then his visions he backpedalled on the ground, not to or away from anything in particular, his whole being wishing to escape what had just happened.
He quickly went through the ritual of lighting a small fire in his palm and casting spells of warming upon himself, though both failed many times before they worked. He started to flee toward a clearing, leaving Excalibur behind him, but he stopped short at the sound of birdsong and saw behind him that the blackbird was on the sword’s pommel again, a black eye watching him. This was the blackbird from his vision.
“I-I think I’m going somewhere,” he said to him. “You’re welcome to come along, if you’d like.”
The bird flew to his shoulder in a beautiful arch.
Merlin blinked. “Alright then.”
Finding a gap in the trees he hoped was large enough, Merlin called for Kilgharrah. He was still grappling with what had happened but he took comfort in the familiar power that rose from him when he spoke the command, his blood and ancestry singing along with it; the power of a dragonlord so different from the foreign thing that had torn through him just a few hours ago. It wasn’t long before he saw the dragon’s silhouette against the sun and he was landing powerfully before him. The blackbird seemed unafraid and did not move from his shoulder.
“Young warlock!” he boomed, rearing back in the way he did when he was about to deliver some admonishment, perhaps for disturbing his peace, but then his huge lizard eyes traced Merlin’s sad form and his expression changed. “What has happened?”
Merlin opened his mouth but no sound came out, tears sprang to his eyes as he looked away. How could he even begin to describe what happened, all that had happened? He took a breath and tried.
“You made a grave mistake,” the dragon growled.
“I know, I know what I’ve done cannot be undone but you have to understand,” Merlin beseeched, not realising that he was making a clutching gesture over his heart, which had started to ache two nights ago in his cell at thoughts of being apart from the prince. “I needed to save him! Arthur would be dead now if I had not intervened. There can be no great king of Albion if he dies before he can even sit on the throne.”
Kilgharrah eyed him dubiously, and Merlin felt like a failure beneath his gaze, a dud cog of destiny, like he had willingly sheared himself from his side of the coin.
He sighed. “As for your visions, there are some prophecies that speak of Emrys as a prophet in his own right. I took little heed of them, you showed no propensity for such powers and seerhood seemed to be the consignment of the witch Morgana. It may be the events that just transpired have sent you on a different path.”
“What do those prophecies say?” he asked, breathless.
“They are few, I know only that as a prophet you may see the future and the death of others.”
“The death of-?” he thought back to the vision he saw of Uther’s death by Morgana’s hand, remembering that his attempts to prevent it had set events in motion, with one portent after another playing out despite or in spite of his frenzied efforts. It had made him fearful, rash. It had harmed his relationship with Kilgharrah when he forced him to give him the power to reverse his terrible deed. His clumsy response to the vision turned Merlin into the catalyst that sent them all pitching into a dark future, one that might lead to Arthur’s doom by his sister’s hand or the hand of her followers. If he could foretell someone’s death, he wondered if he would see Arthur’s, or the other people he loved. He felt sick at the thought. He hoped Kilgharrah was wrong, foreseeing these things would drive him to madness, he knew.
“In some prophecies you go mad,” the dragon added, reading his thoughts.
“As always I cannot be anything but fate’s plaything,” he spat bitterly, and went to his haunches, folding in on himself like a crying child. The bird diligently readjusted to stand on his back. “What about Arthur’s fate? Can I still bring that to pass on this path?”
“You are the seer now, that is up to you to divine.”
Merlin nodded, finding it odd that he should agree to something so absurd but there was no denying it. “What of my visions? I saw a forest, I think I have to go there.”
“You saw the tri-circle trefoil, the symbol belongs to a sect of druids in the forests of Tìr nan Cailleannach, I believe this is the forest you saw.”
“And then this is where I must go,” Merlin resolved quietly, unfolding and standing again.
“No,” Kilgharrah stamped the earth powerfully. “I urge you, find a means to return. You have the power to bend will, you must-!”
“Bend will? I will not do that to Arthur!” Merlin shouted back, letting some of the power of his dragonlord blood into his words. Again, the bird did not move.
Kilgharrah flinched just a tiny bit before taking a few steps forward, intending to intimidate him. “And risk madness?!”
“I might go mad either way, forcing my will on him like that!” he roared back. “And who’s to say that this new “ gift” will leave me if I return?!”
“It may not, but you risk much by leaving the prince’s side!”
“I know. But I can’t be by his side, not now! Not while Uther is king.”
The other didn’t offer any solution to this, just grimaced at him.
“I could command you to bring me,” he said more calmly now, accidentally echoing the words of the night he asked him to heal Morgana before he realised what he was doing. The flash of naked hatred on the Great Dragon’s face had him backpedalling desperately. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-! I won’t, I won’t make you!”
“Visions are dangerous things, I’ll remind you that you handled them poorly before and it seems you will do so again,” Kilgharrah sighed then, a great rumbling sound. “I will take you. But know this, Tìr nan Cailleannach is unlike any forest you have ever seen, it has a will like you and I.”
Merlin nodded, he had the strange sense that he was the precipice that marked the line between his old life and his new.
He stepped into the unknown and climbed onto the Great Dragon.
“Explain to me, young seer,” Kilgharrah asked before taking off, his neck craning so he could eye up the extra passenger. “Why are you playing perch to a pigeon?”
“He’s not a pigeon,” Merlin said pointedly. “He’s a blackbird. His name is Aodhán.”
“You named the creature?”
“No, he told me,” the seer answered, stroking him with his finger.
Kilgharrah’s eyes widened at that, then he sighed. “I fear we’re too late to prevent madness.”
* * *
True to Kilgharrah’s warning the forest fought him at every opportunity, his attempts to make shelter or gather food were consistently thwarted by clever vines that took away his meagre spoils. The visions did not stop but increased, any time he saw the future, it was in the forest, changing through the seasons.
Then the visions took a turn, and they were no longer fixed to what his eyes would see.
Camelot under siege.
Uther dying, the hunched form of Arthur by his bedside.
Morgana upon the throne.
A pale, round-faced man with a sword, his eyes filled with hatred.
And in the same way the visions had left the boundaries of his body, they seemed to take precedent over his body’s basic needs. Like Morgana, he slept little and when he did sleep he was plagued by them. Exhaustion chipped away at his ability to think but it was the contents of the visions that threatened his already unsteady sanity.
Arthur shot through the heart with an arrow.
Arthur in a dark place, finally succumbing to some awful torture.
Arthur with blood on his armour by the water, asking someone to hold him.
In every vision he was young, there was not one where he was grey, not one where his passing was peaceful.
Merlin collapsed without warning often and twice he had woken to his body on fire, an animal part of him telling him to tear off his already meagre clothing, only the physician part of him preventing it from doing so. He used spells of warming and managed to conjure bandages for the frostbite that was turning his fingers into ugly and unusable things. He knew he would die if he continued like this.
He did what he should have done days ago and called for Kilgharrah.
“You need my help,” the dragon stated.
“I’ve been seeing more of the future, not what I’ll see through my own eyes, I’ve been seeing- I’ve…” Merlin choked on the images, burned now into his mind’s eye forever.
“Go on,” he urged relatively quietly, his voice unnatural as always, never quite lending itself to anything but roaring.
“Arthur’s death,” Merlin croaked. “In so many ways. It’s-”
“What did I tell you about abandoning your destiny!” Ah, there it was, the roaring.
“I can’t go back to him, not now, and not like this. Not after what I’ve seen,” he hung his head.
Kilgharrah said nothing.
“The visions, the forest, the cold. If I don’t freeze to death I’ll starve… I can’t survive… I’ll die here.”
“You will not die, of that I can assure you.”
“I will.”
The beast sighed. “Go to the druids that reside on the northern edge of this place, they may provide you with the tools you need to channel your powers.”
He must have looked exhausted, desperate.
“You are too weak for the journey,” he guessed.
Merlin nodded.
Shivering in the air later Merlin thought about allowing himself to slip off Kilgharrah’s back and fall. He thought about it some more but found he didn’t move.
Colours came into view below.
When they arrived Merlin barely had the strength to slide from the dragon’s back and stand on his feet.
To his dismay Kilgharrah brought his head forward to offer support and Merlin leaned on him gratefully until his legs were obeying him again. At the head of the clearing he could now see the source of the colour he had seen from above -a small brightly adorned settlement cutting a semicircle in the forest and at its head a great promontory rock with a recess.
Walking in a curve toward him emerged a small group of equally brightly clad people. They were led by an orange headed, hook-nosed and highly freckled woman of indeterminable age, her robes a deep blue and lined with grey fur, standing out from her companions in yellow and green. The party of three all had woven blankets wrapped over their shoulders and secured with stiff reed blanket pins. “Hello, Myrddin Wyllt,” she said as she bowed respectfully when she reached him, her accent was lyrical, her voice slow. “We’ve long foreseen your arrival, though it is a surprise that it came to pass at all.”
“Sorry-? No, my name is Merlin… and Emrys,” his addled brain was working slowly, these were druids, they would never mistake him for someone else, catching up he added, “I have many names, this isn’t one I’ve heard.”
“We know you by a different name here, and more besides,” she explained, surveying him with what Merlin knew to be a physician’s gaze. “You have come to us to be healed.”
He nodded dumbly, he was feeling weak, the frigidness of the higher air had not left him and his shaking was strong now. Without anything to lean on, he was wishing he hadn’t walked beyond the reach of the dragon.
“Great Dragon,” she raised her voice to Kilgharrah, looking behind him and up at where Kilgharrah’s head reared back against the sunset. “Thank you for bringing him here. You will want for nothing if you wish to stay.”
“He will call for me when he has need of me again,” the Dragon grumbled loudly by way of response.
“Very well, it was an honour to meet you,” she bowed low, and the others bowed too.
Kilgharrah declined his head in a small bow and lumbered away from them. He braced himself and took off into the evening, the rush of air freezing Merlin all over again.
“Allow me to help you,” the druidess said and she crossed the space between them to offer him her hand. On the inside of her wrist there was the unusual druid mark he had seen in his vision. He took her hand, though it pained him to do so and her skin was fire hot against his. Trying to think about anything else, Merlin noticed they were precisely the same height and had a similar bird-bone thinness.
“Thank you… I should probably know your-I mean, what is your name?” he said clumsily as she led him toward their homes where warm and unnatural lights were appearing against the approaching night.
“I am Gwendydd,” she answered serenely, then her tone going fond she added, “though you may call me sister.”
Merlin stopped breathing, befuddled, trying to match her features one by one to the father he had barely known. Maybe in the high forehead? But with her red hair she looked a great deal more like Hunith, surely she wasn’t-? He still couldn’t tell how old she was, but his parents weren’t together for long, if they had the same parents would that make her his twi-?
“We are not blood kin, Myrddin,” she said plainly, unabashed by the intensity of his expression with just inches between them.
“Oh,” Merlin breathed, strangely relieved and strangely sad. Druids had a very different concept of family and he reminded himself to be warmed by her gesture. “P-please, call me brother then, if you’d like.”
She smiled.
These were a people far from the rule of Camelot and the general distrust of magic, their dwellings were still perennial like the druid camps he was used to but these were comparatively conspicuous structures of wattle and daub. Brightly coloured woven sheets like their mantles marked the entryways, colour too had been worked into the thatch of the roofs in the thin rope that twined around the decorative straw animals perched there, cockerels, boars and dogs lying curled in sleep. It was further evidence that this was a place of peace, that they had the time to make beautiful things.
Even their sacred space, the promontory rock that presided over the dwellings, could likely be seen for miles. It had the look of a giant cairn but for the glow of its inner sanctum, signifying life. It was to this rock that Gwendydd brought Merlin. As they approached, there were steps hewn into the rocky hill on which it rested and the druidess was deeply patient of his slow progress up them.
The space, which should have been entirely rough stone, was softened by mats and tapestries. It also should have been cold, with one end exposed to the elements, but the warmth that prickled at his skin spoke to magical solutions. There was a cot of woven straw and feather stuffed quilts behind a protrusion of rock. Merlin was reminded of the cave where his father had lived and the bed he had healed Arthur in.
At the far end, there was a low but wide structure of twisted bark, knobbly and ancient. There were cracks in the cave floor below it, indicating roots, that this was or had been a living structure.
His new non-blood sister helped him to the cot.
“May I?” she asked, pointing to his hands.
He nodded. She unbound his poorly bandaged fingers and began to wash them with a cloth and a bowl of lukewarm water. He winced even at the gentle touches. “I’ll lose some of them, won’t I?” he said hoarsely.
She looked at him like the notion was absurd, breaking the aloof and benevolent airs, the humanity of it gave him instant relief. “It’ll take time, brother, but you will heal.”
She left him and went to the bark thing at the end of the space.
“What is that?”
“The cauldron of five trees,” she answered, and Merlin watched as she dropped birdsfoot trefoil, the yellow petalled namesake of her people’s sacred symbol, into the mixture, though Merlin remembered vaguely that it was poisonous. She stirred it with a great ladle, her blue eyes lighting as she whispered to it and he knew, trusted, that the mixture had been transformed. “Drink this, it will heal you and dull your pain as I work. There are two warnings which I must give you however, the first is there will be pain still, both coming and in the healing, the second is that the potion will place you in a state between sleeping and waking, it will call visions to you.”
“No,” he said simply.
“You have the right to refuse,” she told him softly. “But know first that you are safe here.”
He looked down at his hands, he was bone weary. He needed help. “Alright,” he agreed, and swung his legs up stiffly so he was lying prone.
She brought a mead-horn to his lips.
Arthur in a village, looking into a well.
Gwen in a wedding dress, smiling under a blue sky.
The shoulders of a person who could not see being knighted.
A round table larger than the one of the ancient kings within one of Camelot’s many halls.
A large man, seeming to injure Arthur greatly with the barest cut to his arm, or perhaps poison him, before running him through.
Lancelot facing a knight in obsidian black armour, Camelot in chaos around him.
Arthur pulling Excalibur from the stone.
A man who he recognised now as Mordred stabbing Arthur on a battlefield.
Then, Morgana doing the same.
When Merlin awoke, he felt the prickle of fever all over. But with his fevers always came restlessness, much to the distress of his mother when he was a child. He kicked down a blanket that had been placed over him.
He looked at his hands and found that there were poultices tied around his fingers. The worst of the pain was gone. He peeked below the poultice over his left index finger, smelling woundwort, and found that the skin was raw and red, but no longer purple-black.
The light coming in from one side of the cave was orange but rather than morning he sensed it was evening. He had slept for a day, maybe more.
He heard music, a sweet stringed instrument and low singing, at times one voice and at others many, in a language he could only half-follow, waving in harmonies and sweet dissonances both. The words seemed to be about the artefacts of the seasons’ turnings , “a prize in every unveiling, when the dew is undisturbed, and the wheat is reaped, and the bees are gentle…” He recognised words like berries and watercresses, said in a way that made his mouth water and his imagination fill with jewelly colour. He wanted to get closer. He tested his feet. He was deeply shaky, but he could stand. Although he was over-warm he grabbed the blanket and wrapped it around his shoulders before he ventured carefully out onto the natural stone balcony of the entrance.
At the base of the promontory Gwendydd was playing the clàrsach to a scattered group, some sitting in attention, others talking amongst themselves and others passing through the crowd heedless of the performance.
Her fingers worked over the instrument and she drew long notes simply by lengthening her movements as she passed from string to string. Merlin knew there was no sorcery at play here, as otherworldly as the effect was. Then her words switched to a language he could understand, those accompanying who could follow suit doing so with a barely pause.
“Who will join together the common people? Worth the nobility of liquor and a load that the moon separates, the placid gentleness of Myrddin. The philosophers of intelligence will study the moon and influence the order of men, exposed to the breeze of the sky.”
‘Myrddin’ blushed, particularly at his apparent ‘placid gentleness.’ A few eyes went up in his direction and they spoke to each other, staring at him openly with curious or neutral expressions. But then it was over, a fleeting spell, and she moved on to other songs.
“What you spoke of, is this a prophecy?” he asked her once she had given another person her seat and it was their turn to play.
“It is, though it is not my own. It belonged to the awenydd and soothsayer Taliesin, but it has formed the basis for our order and the fates upon which we focus our divinations.”
“I’ve met Taliesin, the first time I saw the future it was him who showed me. I understand he was already many years dead when he appeared to me, though he seemed every bit alive at the time.”
“This surprises me little,” she said, her eyes glittering with knowing.
“Kilgharrah says I’ve abandoned my destiny,” Merlin thought aloud, still analysing the words of her song and unable to contain himself with the nervous fever-energy that thrummed through him. “But Taliesin seemed to think I will ‘join together the common people,’ which sounds an awful lot like what I was trying to do.”
“He is of one school, so to speak, and we are of another, that is all.”
“Can I still bring about Arthur’s destiny, even if I’m not by his side?”
“There is rarely such a thing as inaction, you may have left his side, but this is an action that will have its own outcomes and it may bring him closer to his destiny than you think. There are also means you may use to advise or protect him from afar.”
He nodded at that, allowing himself to be heartened just a margin. “And the people influencing the order of men through their divinations, is that you?”
“All divinations have influence over the world.” In her words he heard Gaius’, ‘ the future is as yet unshaped, it is we that shape it.’
“But it is you he’s referring to, isn’t it?”
“If that’s a collective ‘you,’ then yes,” she smiled.
Merlin decided he liked his new sister.
Merlin was venturing out further these days, feeling a great deal stronger. He often spoke with others and was invited to dine with them or help in their tasks. On a short walk he found a man, one of the people who had greeted him and Kilgharrah, kneeling by the river.
“Sylvestris,” he called to him.
Merlin came forward, knowing he could only be referring to him. He saw that the man had his hands in the icy water and was weaving a basket at the edge of the thin ice there, the frigid water pinkening his fingers. “Ugh, hullo. Is that another name I’m known by?”
“Yes, Merlinus Sylvestris is the full title.”
“Merlinus?” he exclaimed quietly, the extra syllable strange in his mouth. “And does it mean anything, this one?”
“I understand Merlinus is close to what you call yourself; Sylvestris means ‘of the woods.’”
Merlin frowned at that, he would rather disentangle himself from these insidious woods, he didn’t like that it had invaded his growing list of names like bindweed in an already heaving garden.
“Please, join me, Sylvestris,” the man asked suddenly. “My hands grow tired from my work.”
He remembered the needle prick pain of his white then black fingers and backed up involuntarily. “I’m sorry, I wish I could, it’s just-”
“It is no matter,” he smiled. “We have ways to warm ourselves. Wearmaþ handa, ferca handcræftas.”
Merlin tried a few times to repeat the spell, but he couldn’t quite get the pronunciation right. It was deeply incongruous sometimes to be the prophesied Emrys, now Wyllt, or Sylvestris, and be an amateur.
“I’ll be happy to teach you,” the druid offered.
Later that night Merlin saw a vision of this man’s death; when he is grey his lungs will fill and a fever will take him quickly.
The druidess in yellow was working at her loom, pointing out the parts, the two beams that tightened the work, the many threads she called the treadles on the movable frames she called shafts, that allowed, after a time-consuming process of setting it up and threading the wool through the treadles, the alternating movement that created a weave.
“You may move the pegs and the pedals thus, when we do this the shafts move and the wool lifts and falls according to the pattern you wish to make,” and with her movements, an arm going up to click two of four pegs down, the shafts rose, taking alternating strands of wool with it. “We pass the weft through with a shuttle thus,” she sent a small light wooden thing stocked with the working end of the wool through the space with a flick of her wrist. “We release the peg or pedals and then,” she reached up and with a clatter, the shafts came down and her work was flat “you use your fingers to bring the thread around the edge of the work, so it is ready to pass through again. Be careful not to wrap it too tightly or too loose or the edge of your blanket won’t be straight. Lastly, you bring the beater toward you,” she reached for the beater, a moveable thing with a comb, close to her, bringing it quickly forward a few times until the new line of wool was flush with her earlier work, “and flatten it to the rest,” she finished, craning back to examine her work.
She repeated the movements and sped up, eventually the small hut was filled with a clattering. Then she stopped.
“Please, try. I have only just started, this can be yours.”
Merlin backed away a little, looking intimidated by the thing, it looked both delicate and monstrous. “My fingers-” he started to say.
“Are healed , Myrddin Wyllt,” she interjected with a reassuring expression. “If we wish to be warm, we make thread and weave.”
“No, no, you’re right. Alright,” he agreed, taking her seat when she offered it. “What do I do next?”
She sat with him and taught him the pattern.
The vertical threads were pale and undyed, but Merlin chose all of the colours he had to hand for the horizontal ones -at first these were earthen colours of thread dyed with mosses and lichens, then he shot it through with occasional bands of a familiar red.
It hung dripping from a line of rope after he washed it in the cold river, the warming spell he had been taught finally mastered.
He smiled at it proudly, admiring his handiwork.
Despite all of their insistence that he should not fear it, despite all of his progress, he still half-expected that he would not survive the winter. He chose to ignore the seers better than he that told him the warmer months were coming, namely the ash trees that had already started to put out their purple catkins.
He and Gwendydd were circling a small lake together, the weather mild enough, just for now, for there to be no ice on its surface. He hoped it would stay that way but she had told him it would not.
“This forest will listen to you and will help you if you only ask it,” his sister told him, using that tone he had grown to know that meant she intended to teach him something. She knew, somehow, that he still feared the harshness of this place, though he had not voiced it. After so many years of hiding in Camelot it was a strange thing to be so easily read, it made him feel raw and prickly.
“That’s not vague at all,” Merlin countered, who had never had siblings but was starting to grasp the push and pull of it, how he wished her to be one way when she would not be, or how she was sometimes exactly who he needed her to be. Here he wished she would stop being so vague and coaxing him to work things out on his own, just telling him what he needed to know for once would be nice.
“Think of it this way, the forest already knows how to move, you must sense the ways it will go and the ways it will not. A branch will move for you but it will not set itself on fire.”
Despite his internal complaints, Merlin did start to understand. He remembered the loom, the treads that lifted according to the set of pegs and pedals he employed. A loom could not move in a way that it had not been set up to move.
He thought of the brambles that tangled themselves around his ankles and bloodied them. A bramble will go in any which direction, he reasoned.
He found a bramble bush and stepped before it. “What now?”
“What would you ask it to do?”
He spied a birch sapling. “Wrap around that tree,” he said.
“Does the briar usually wrap around things in this way?”
“No, not usually, that’s more the domain of ivy… but here brambles uh… like to wrap around my ankles and trip me.”
“Precisely,” she said, smirking a little at that in a way that was deeply sisterly. “Here, nature moves in different ways. Thus…” she stepped back and kept stepping back until she was walking on the water of the lake.
He tried and tried, able to stay outside until it was dark owing to the unseasonable weather. He remembered the early days learning spells in Camelot to save Arthur’s life, staying up all night to practise the same ones over and over, now he was doing the same to preserve his own. Back then, the more he learned the more he found his magic had been eager and waiting all along, here, the tools he was working with were separate from him, they had a will of their own. This wasn’t magic, it was a question. He asked again.
The bramble wrapped around the birch.
The weather did indeed turn and a blizzard was upon them for almost three days without reprieve. Merlin waited to see what mad thing he would be pushed to do next and imagined being asked to participate in some task out in the snow, warming himself with magic all the while, but this did not happen. These people knew how to survive, which meant knowing when to hunker down and stay out of the elements.
Once it was over, the snow melted and the days and nights settled into a constant frigidness.
On the night he was taught to see the future in the stars, there was a glitter of ice over all and not a cloud to speak of.
“Come,” Gwendydd had said, appearing at the door to his temporary dwelling place, a little hut adorned with the fruits of all of his weaving. “The sky is clear tonight and I promised you I would teach you how to divine from the stars.”
He had made friends with one of the dogs and he was sad to have to urge her to leave the bed where she had been laying half over his lap.
He picked up his first blanket and wrapped it about himself tightly.
He followed her to the very top of the premonitory rock.
He knew the stars well enough, he found Polaris and traced down to the back of the Little Bear, and then on to the long dragon circumscribing the sky below him, though these were crowded closer to the treeline, just now in the north, than in the summer. He found he felt a strong connection to the dragon since last he truly looked upon it. Wheeling around then, in the south-east was Orion, prominent and unavoidable, ever the flashy warrior, with his right shoulder winking more than his left like armour shining. There was another warrior north-west of him, Perseus, the two vying for attention in the centre of the winter sky. Drawing his eyes up again and around to other sights, the broken crossbow of Cygnus was just coming over the north-west horizon close to the dragon, followed by the rhombus of Cepheus, which he always fancied looked like a wonky little cottage with a pointed roof, and then the jagged edges of Cassiopeia not far from Perseus’ shoulder, all three caught in the cloudy current that divided the night softly in two from the north-west to the east.
It had been a very long time since he looked at the sky like this.
“It was here that we divined the birth of the Once and Future King when a brightly shining red comet appeared, travelling a short distance from here to the horizon,” she said, drawing a short straight line in the west close to the land. “For a few brief minutes it lit the land red; it was only there for a moment. It’s not often that the heavens give such clear signs, however.”
“That’s… quite dramatic. It uhm, it sounds like him,” Merlin’s mouth was dry but he still allowed himself the ghost of a fond smile. “You have many names for me, no new name for him then?”
“We call him the Iron Bear,” she told him humourlessly, her nose pointing appropriately to the north at the Great Bear, his legs hiding out of sight behind the horizon.
“The-? What?”
She didn’t offer anything else in the way of explanation, her shadowed profile against the sky betrayed nothing.
There was a terrible question on the tip of Merlin’s tongue then and in a fit of bravery he sent it free. “You said ‘only there for a moment…’ Is this a portent of other things? I saw-”
“You must divine for yourself what you saw, on this new path you need not rely on the fallibility of others.”
“You think I’ve been misled to this point?”
“I cannot say how the interpretations of others have determined your path thus far.”
Merlin nodded minutely, thinking quite pointedly about Kilgharrah. But his anger dissolved quickly, not because it wasn’t warranted but because he still felt too weak to hold it for very long. Instead, he felt only an undefined sorrow for the unknowable pathways of his life’s journey. He remembered the lonely night in Camelot’s cells, pouring over his own decisions and trying to find the divergences in fate. He wished for three things then for this new gift. First, that with it he would know more about his destiny, no more bumbling in the dark; second, that he would no longer be an accessory to anybody’s agenda and third, that with it, he could keep those he loved from harm. He realised he’d been silent as he thought these things so he tried to find words to summarise his feelings. “It might be a relief then, once I get the hang of it,” he said eventually.
“Do not mistake this for a blessing,” she warned. “It is a terrible burden to know and face one’s destiny alone. You must remember that the visions and divinations themselves are unreliable and it is you now who will interpret them, or misinterpret them. So few futures are guaranteed, instead the things to come may have a particular shape, or there may be a thing that will come to pass regardless of how the present plays out before it.”
In all of her words, it was that horrible word ‘alone’ that he could not shake from his head. Alone. Alone. Alone. “Your people,” he started tentatively. “They keep pushing me to face my fears and fend for myself, you’ll send me away won’t you?”
“When you’re well enough to go, yes.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“You must and you will.”
He nodded shakily. His mind still spinning on her words, the next ones that struck him had spoken of the fixity of some things, would Arthur really-? But he remembered her warning that he would have to divine things for himself. He dreaded all that was ahead of him.
“The heavens are predictable to a point,” she said, and Merlin knew the lessons were starting. “They follow our seasons and we can understand through maps and knowing what will be within the sky today, or a day several months from now. The planets follow their own paths but they too can be understood. To understand how to divine from the sky you must know that they also move very very slowly upon the higher cycles of the Earth. It’s from their position in our sky across the vast span of years, and the position of the planets within them, that we take our divinations. Everything behaves predictably, but there is much to see.”
“So what you’re saying is that with all these cycles, no one night can be the same as another?”
“Yes,” she said. “A vate may sense it and there may be something there for the knowing.”
“Is that what I am, a vate?”
He heard her smile. “You are many things, Myrddin. There are some here who consider you a seer, others a prophet.”
Merlin didn’t mean to laugh at that, but he did, he held his belly, bent over and gasped through it. After a while he sobered and straightened. “For a moment I hoped that seeing these things for myself would make things clearer. Why do I have this destiny when I feel so incapable? When I’m so in the dark all of the time? I was born into a world far removed from the teachings the likes of you and your kin receive. Surely this destiny should fall on the shoulders of someone... wiser?” Gwendydd’s eloquence is rubbing off on me , he thought.
“I’m sorry, I cannot answer this, I only know that this destiny is yours and the Iron Bear’s.”
“Ah,” and at this Merlin sighed so long he was able to trail his eyes from one end of the Milky Way to the other, almost horizon to horizon. “That Iron Bear and I.”
As her lesson continued there was a thought in the back of his mind. I am so far from Camelot now.
“Can I not avoid seeing, sister?” he asked her later as they shared elderflower tea in his hut.
“With time, far-famed brother, but it will be many years before you master the art. You may channel it by looking upon the stars as I have shown you, and by other methods which I will soon teach you.”
He was terrified both of the burden of his new sight and of the threat that he would live at least as long enough to master it. He was silent for some time and Gwendydd was content to wait. “There’s some things I don’t want to see,” he admitted when he was ready.
“It seems you’ve divined something that you wish to share,” she invited.
“I think… I think Arthur will die young,” he said quietly, surprising himself, tears rolling down his cheeks without warning. It was like both his words and his tears had been waiting for their moment.
“This is known,” she said without hesitation but not without feeling. “This is often the exchange for great destinies such as his, and so it is for Arthur Pendragon.”
Merlin’s heart should have broken at that but he realised it already had. He had known the truth for a while now. He wiped at his face with the back of his hand. “If it’s only the good who die young, I’d pray him corrupted.”
“You would not,” she told him, inclining her head at him, fondness and pity mixed in her eyes.
“No, you’re right, I wouldn’t.”
Over the next few weeks his not-sister and her people showed him how to use pools of water and scrying crystals to see the present and future both. She gifted him a pointed cluster of softly pink crystals, sacred to her people but long meant to be his. Using the crystal and pools both seemed to get a lot of the involuntary visions out of his system though occasionally he still found himself awaking in someone’s hut after they had found him and dragged him in from the cold. He learned too that objects with which he had a connection may be used for protection and suggestion. He had seen Arthur take up Excalibur in his visions. Though he was not sure when this would be, he decided that when it finally happened, beyond just the enchantments he already placed upon it, he would try to reach through the sword to help him.
Although it tired him greatly to scry, he slowly used his new skill to learn things of his friends in the present. Gwaine was going from place to place with Merlin’s name on his lips, trying to find him. Lancelot had done the same and had just finished a brutal stint in Camelot’s dungeons under Uther’s suspicion, but had given up nothing (this had made Merlin cry bitterly and lose days of sleep, that his friend held onto his secret even under the pain of torture, that he came so close to being banished, or worse, put to death for it). Gwen was keeping herself busy and not speaking to Arthur. Gaius was struggling without his assistant. Arthur wasn’t smiling much these days. Then a creeping guilt had come over him at his intrusion upon their lives. He sat with this feeling for some time before returning to channelling the future to prevent his sudden collapsing spells.
Then, he sees something in the stars, or several things. At first he understands them as far-flung futures with people in strange dress speaking strange tongues in strange surroundings he does not always understand. But then the realisation comes over him that he is seeing, will be seeing, these things through his own eyes.
He moves through a crowd of people, women are dressed in wide skirts and men wear dark clothing and rounded hats. He himself is wearing matching clothing.
He hears himself gasping, alive, upon the shore of a raging sea, sees his feet kicking away from the water, slipping on the fine pebbles.
He walks uncaring as a metal beast careers down a path beside him.
He awakes pinned to a boggy ground with stakes through his arms, he makes gargled sounds, there seems to be something in his mouth.
He lays dying in a place of ivy and ruins, a wound in his side and witnesses the moment he goes unseeing, sure that he was witnessing his own death. But he sees light again and slowly all comes back into focus. He looks and the wound has disappeared, only the blood remains. He gets up after some time, apparently unperturbed. He looks up at pinks and purples of an evening sky and sees the crumbling castle that he stands within… and he recognises it.
He understands then, that this is how things are and will always be.
He runs, stumbling to Gwendydd.
“What have you divined?” she asked, knowing already why he had arrived in the cave in such a frenzy.
“I can’t die,” he tells her, his voice and body shaking.
“...This too is known,” she said sadly, though she had not risen from her seat by the cauldron.
“No. No!” he cried, clutching at himself and tearing at his hair, turning circles, gripping things at random for purchase.
“It was decided long before you were born, far-famed brother.”
“Stop! Don’t call me that,” he snapped through his tears.
She didn’t look offended. She watched him pace.
“I’m immortal,” he tried to understand aloud, wringing his hands. “I can’t die while the other side of the coin is doomed. How is that fair?!”
“Fate is never fair, Myrddin,” and then, in her bard’s tone. “Has not the burden been consigned to earth? Everyone must give up what he loves.”
“But I can’t! I…. Oh Gods, how long will I live?” he whimpered, clutching his blanket where it was pinned at his chest.
“You have divined this already,” she said.
“What, I-?”
“You cannot die.”
Merlin collapsed onto the small bed he had been healed in and cried, unable to bear the weight of it.
Gwendydd tried to offer him a drink from the cauldron but he shoved her hands away. All the same, he somehow dropped into a fitful sleep.
When he awoke the light was leaving and he found he was alone.
He went out into the clearing where he had arrived, the things he had made and been gifted secured all about him. She was waiting for him there, her eyes had been on Venus where it had appeared near the horizon before she noticed him.
“Thank you,” he wept when he stopped in front of her, “you have shown me so much and I don’t know how I can repay your kindness, but I can’t- I- I need to leave and-and think..! I- ” he clutched his middle, his whole body ached.
“There is no need for repayment,” she smiled impassively. “We wish only to prepare you for what lies ahead.”
Then he noticed the dog by her feet. He bent shakily and kissed the hound on her head.
“We will see each other again, Myrddin,” Gwendydd said.
He called Kilgharrah, his dragonlord blood of little comfort this time in the face of this particular new found gift.
Flying, he had him circle so he could find the place he had seen in his visions, a grove-like hollow in the forest with three pools of water and the trees that he would eventually ask to be his home.
His days proceed in a blur. Aodhán found him before long, it was a great comfort to him that he had not lost his friend to the winter. The stag arrived not long after, snuffing at his hand as he had in the vision. When Merlin settled on his back he found the very animal coarseness of his hide and the thinness of his body so different to a horse, as was the way his back legs jumped when he reached any particular speed or obstacle. But he was strong and proud, his breast always puffed and his head held high as if on parade. When they went through the forest together, it parted for them willingly.
Heralding, six petalled wood anemones started to litter the woodland floor, but still the season teetered from mild to frosty days and occasionally tipped into storms, of sleet or wind or warm rain or sometimes, somehow, all three.
When Merlin felt ready he stood before the trees and asked them for their help, for their shelter. He watched as the woods that had fought him at every opportunity gave him something beautiful, far more than he could have asked for. He fell to his knees and doubled over, his forehead pressed into the earth as he wailed his thanks into the dead leaves.
And then there were the visions, which still did not cease. Not long ago he had been daunted at the thought he would live long enough to have mastery over them, but now he wished for that long but finite life, unable to fathom the immensity of the purgatory that stretched out before him. In this place in the forest, he heaved himself below the weight of revelation after revelation until he felt his spine snap.
And thus his madness plays out.
It was a single vision that brought Merlin back to himself, at least long enough to break temporarily through the haze upon his mind. He had not felt like a person in what was likely over a season, having spent so long as just a thing with senses sometimes wrapped in cotton wool, sometimes with sharp edges, stumbling through his days and remembering few of them.
Arthur, thinner than he’d been when he saw him last, sitting in his father’s- no, his throne. Was it age or tiredness that Merlin saw on his face? He was presiding over a trial. One neighbour was accusing another of sorcery. For the first time, Merlin did not fight the vision, sound and details sharpened and he saw the moment when Arthur excused a woman for using petty magic in his kingdom.
He scried on the present then for the first time since he was with the druids, needing to understand how far off this future might be. He witnesses Arthur stepping away from his still father. Uther lay dead in his halls, in the kingdom he had once both ruled and terrorised.
Merlin felt only sadness for Arthur. A soon to be crowned Arthur.
He focussed on increasing his strength.
The day before the coronation Merlin had a potion in his pocket. He said goodbye to Aodhán who sat perched high in the black alder singing the song all blackbirds seem to know. He touched leaves and the last of the cattails as he walked. The forest was alive and he guessed, for better or worse (and probably worse), so was he. And just once in the six years of his unofficial exile, Myrddin left the woods.
My dark night has come round again.
The world goes on but I return
to haunt myself. I freeze and burn.
I am a bare figure of pain.
Frost crystals and the level ice,
the scourging snow, the male-voiced storm,
they all perform my requiem.
My hearth goes cold, my fire dies.
The Frenzy of Sweeney, Translation by Seamus Heaney in Sweeney Astray, Section 67.
Gwenddydd, be not dissatisfied.
Has not the burden been consigned to earth
Everyone must give up what he loves.
While I live, I will not forsake you,
And until death will keep you in mind
Your fear is the heaviest blow!
The Dialogue Between Myrddin and His Sister Gwenddydd, The Red Book of Hergest
Let the brewer give a heat,
Over a cauldron of five trees,
And the river of Gwiawn,
And the influence of fine weather,
And honey and trefoil,
And mead-horns intoxicating
Pleasing to a sovereign,
The gift of the Druids.
The Chair of Tailesin, Book of Taliesin XIII
Notes:
This is a check in, you guys good?
A very different chapter coming up next, we rejoin our boys on their journey and things get wacky.
Thoughts and comments are very welcome! This chapter was a real labour of love and I'm interested to know what you think!
Chapter 13: I'm So Bored With Peace and Silence
Summary:
Merlin refuses to talk about the strange thing that happened to him and is a little faraway and dazed for much of their journey. They descend into a place known as Dragon Country where they face Morgana and Seren. Arthur learns about Merlin's history with Morgana and had things to say about it.
“Oh, how I missed our little talks,” she giggled, daring to pace a little, one of the wyvern’s heads snapped at the air near her and Aithusa snapped back at it in turn. She was unconcerned. “Tell me Emrys, why is it you protect my brother? He’s still the son of Uther, still an enemy to the Old Religion.”
“Why do you look as though you were dragged backwards through a bush? Hm?!” he countered inanely, animated. “We all have our questions!”
“Insufferable fool,” she said, face falling in disgust.
Notes:
This is my cartooniest chapter, I had a lot of fun writing it!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“Merlin!” Arthur cried, hands floating above him, unsure, heart staccato in his chest as the man continued his convulsions. This had gone on too long for comfort.
He jumped when the man made a sound like he was surfacing from water. Merlin stopped all unnatural motion and his eyelids snapped open, irises blue again. He raised himself bleary-eyed onto his elbows under the king’s fearful expression in the half-dark. “Arthur? W-what’s wrong?”
“You’re what’s wrong!” Arthur shouted, too close to his face. “What on Earth was happening to you?! You were having some sort of fit, your eyes-”
“It’s nothing,” he said quickly, but he had flinched badly at Arthur’s voice and his eyes went everywhere else but to his. Looking very much overwhelmed, he attempted to rise.
“That wasn’t nothing!” Arthur growled, hemming him in.
“It just happens sometimes, it’s… magic stuff,” the warlock attempted again, trying to push at one of the arms that imprisoned him.
Arthur wasn’t convinced, he didn’t move.
“I’m alright Arthur!” His breath came in and out more quickly all of a sudden he pushed at him some more, this time targeting his injured arm.
Before he could add to his bruises, the king let him go and Merlin rolled out from under him.
He just sat there, still, until his breathing was even again.
“I’m sorry,” Arthur ventured, having not moved either, keeping his distance.
Merlin rose. “Come on, it’s light enough, let’s go.”
It grew rapidly brighter, as it does at this time of year. They passed through sunny woods of ash, oak and hazel, the sun bright behind the leaves in the way of stained glass. Below the exposed roots were mossy and they waded through tall grass. They ducked below the lower branches of the hazel and Arthur saw the green beginnings of husks and the hazelnuts they cradled among the serrated leaves. He started to sweat. This day was already shaping up to be warmer than the previous and so they rolled up their blankets and tied them to their packs. Beside him Merlin leaned a bit more heavily on his staff. He looked like he was a hundred miles away.
“I’ve no water left, give me some of yours until we find some more,” Arthur demanded causally, clumsily breaking the silence and conceiving of no other way to do it than to fall back on old patterns.
“Sorry, what did you say?” Merlin craned his head at him.
“I said give me-”
“Oh, yeah,” he mumbled and with a poor throw he tossed him his waterskin, it was almost empty. “And say please next time, m’not your manservant anymore.”
“I thought you couldn’t hear me. You’re acting even more odd than usual, are you sure you’re alright?”
“Yeah, yeah, I didn’t get much sleep is all.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Arthur eyed him, he took a few gulps of water, then wiping his mouth he added, “You’re angry at me.”
Merlin rolled his eyes, then his neck, his shoulders sagging. “It’s not that. Might be a little angry still though.”
“Well, I’m sorry, for what it’s worth. I was… startled.”
The other seemed to accept this but then a little bit of amusement and incredulity crossed his expression. “That's new, when have you ever admitted to being startled, or sorry?" He asked.
“When I need to be,” Arthur stated, pursing his lips, secretly relieved the tension had finally been broken.
“Pfft.” He shook his head and scrunched up his face at the change.
Arthur enjoyed being the one that couldn’t be fathomed out for once and basked in it for a little while. When he’d had his fill of the feeling and the water both he waved the empty waterskin. “I suppose we’ll need more water.”
“And a little extra.”
“Why extra?”
“Not much water ahead for a bit, you’ll understand when you see it.”
They located the river that ran through here again by the sound of the rapids over the wind in the trees, two sounds that were often hard to distinguish from one another, especially now with the changes to Arthur’s hearing. Seeing the shining water through the trees, he checked their surroundings carefully as he prepared to enter into the open. As part of his check, he looked over at his companion and found he was staring into nothing, gaze unfocused when he should be vigilant. He was worrying at his own lip, a different kind of lip chewing that meant he was thinking. Arthur had been whacked by hazel stems a few times this morning and the moss creatures had returned to finish off his boots, clearly the wildman wasn’t doing a good job of keeping the woods at bay either.
Arthur picked up a short stick and threw it at him.
Merlin startled just a beat after it hit his arm. He scowled at him.
They both stopped.
“We should rest, if there’s something wrong-” Arthur started.
“There’s nothing wrong,” he groaned, throwing his head back a little, eyes to the canopy.
“Sounds like there’s plenty wrong and you don’t want to talk about it.”
“You’re right,” he said curtly.
Arthur waited. A song thrush filled the silence for them.
“I said you’re right.”
“Fine, but we both need to stay alert.”
Merlin relented, seeming to agree. He took a breath, shook himself a little and slapped lightly at his own face.
“Good to go?”
“Yeah,” he said but not before pocketing the offending stick. Odd man , Arthur thought.
Their waterskins and a spare filled, and Merlin mostly restored, they pressed on. Soon however Arthur found something strange (stranger than usual) was happening to their surroundings. The foliage was thinning out to only the hardiest of plants. Of the ones that remained, they were sparse and twisted as if caught in conflicting winds or charred as if from wildfires. Arthur became wary again without the all-important cover. The ground too had given way from the soft forest floor to something oddly red-orange and so compact that he thought it might be stone. And maybe it was stone, and the dust they were kicking up were the sands of erosion. They ascended and descended light hills and the cover only grew thinner, the ground dustier.
There was a strange smell too, increasing with every step forward. “Could you tell me... Why does this place smell of bad eggs?” he asked.
“Dragon Country,” Merlin answered, like it was actually an answer. He had that self-amused expression that Arthur knew all too well.
“Dragon… Country. I thought there were only two dragons left.”
“There are, or at least I hope there still are for the sake of our guest Morgana and her band of merry dead.”
“Meaning if she’s done something to your dragon you’d… What would you do?”
“I’ll have to think about it,” Merlin said a little too cheerfully, staff hitting the ground a little harder.
“So I presume they used to reside here?” Arthur asked, redirecting the conversation.
“A long time ago, yeah.”
“But your dragon is here now.”
“No, he’s further beyond.”
Arthur was trying to keep up. “So we’re in dragon country.”
“Yes.”
“But your dragon doesn’t live here.”
“That’s correct.”
“Why not?”
“Would you be interested in living where your brethren have fallen?”
“I suppose I already do,” Arthur said thoughtfully, looking into the middle distance at a tree so blackened and twisted he was sure now it was a long ago fire that had shaped it. “Depending on your definition of brethren.”
“Oh,” Merlin winced. “Yeah, I guess you do, don’t you? Sorry.”
Arthur put up a placating hand, there was no point in dwelling on that. “They fell here, the dragons?”
He nodded.
“My father? This far north?”
“Maybe not him specifically, but the fight had to reach far if it resulted in… What it resulted in.”
They reached the top of a hill. “I never knew a place like this existed in all of Albion,” the king confessed, not a little bit of awe creeping into his voice as he traced the curving lines of red stone that he could see now lay before them, contrasting with the vivid blue of the day.
“Is that so surprising? It’s a place of magic in the centre of a place of magic and you are the son of the man who started the war on magic.”
“Alright, you make a fair point,” Arthur sighed. “Well, it’s never too late to learn.”
“Wait, really?” The warlock did a double take, almost stopping.
“You’ll teach me, won’t you?”
“Teach you?”
“About all of this? Magic?”
“You really want to know?” he asked, more softly this time.
“I do.”
Merlin paused. “I’ll have to think about it,” he grinned.
The land began to descend at the same time great curves of striated stone like suspended waves closed around them.
As strange and barren as it at first seemed there was some life here, swallows resided in the colourful stone, their nests clinging to the cliffs and their rapid peeping noises the perfect accompaniment to their equally rapid flitting. Occasionally patches of struggling dry grass topped some of the ledges, or plants grew straight out of the rock walls. Merlin became particularly excited when he sighted eyebright and lungwort, which he took a brief detour to a nearby cliff to try and procure.
Arthur watched from the ground as the man lost his grip on his thin hand and footholds and tried again, only to repeat the performance, dust and light scree accompanying his ungraceful slide. The swallows were starting to protest loudly and dive at him in curves, very much in danger of being deservedly shat on.
“Not that this isn’t entertaining,” Arthur called to him when he had slid down the cliff face for the third time. “But can you not, you know, use your magic?”
He stopped, halfway up again. “Force of habit not using it around you, I guess,” he said, jumping down.
“I still worry about you, Merlin,” Arthur shook his head.
“I know,” he replied surprisingly in lieu of his usual retorts as a plant with small, pointed leaves and open white flowers floated down into his waiting palm. He started to examine it but caught Arthur watching and flashed him an impish smile.
Arthur turned, assuming they would be on their way again, but also to hide that his own lips were curling involuntarily.
“Hang on,” he said behind him.
Arthur turned back around, annoyed. “We’ll never get there if you keep stopping to hunt for flowers.”
But he wasn’t hunting for more plants, instead he was tying on some stitched hide shoes.
“So you do have shoes!” Arthur proclaimed, like it was a great discovery. Though he took in the thin, ragged looking things and wasn’t sure if he could call them shoes exactly. “Sort of.”
“Ground’s hot here,” he shrugged.
“And the ground wasn’t other things before?” he asked as the newly shoed man rejoined him. “What, can’t float here? Don’t think I haven’t noticed the floating.”
“Yeah it’s hot, but I can actually float here, as you put it, thank you very much, just not far enough off the ground not to burn my feet.”
Arthur gave up. “Why is the ground hot, pray tell?”
“Volcanic activity?” he said, not sounding sure.
“What-what activity?”
“Never mind.”
The paths curved and narrowed, sometimes the ways split with islands of rock. Merlin with his usual lopping walk sometimes started down one way only to mutter and pivot, choosing the other. Arthur hoped they wouldn’t come upon a dead end or end up going in entirely the wrong direction.
There seemed to be no such thing as even ground any more, the stone curved underfoot now and the slopes grew stepped around them. Arthur had never seen a place so alien and he had only just spent a night among brightly coloured, wet dream inducing flowers.
He was looking up at an impressive red arch as they passed below its shadow when there was an inexplicable upward rush of very hot air. Merlin pulled him back to safety by his clothes. “Careful! Hot air vents!”
His face burned, particularly the inside of his nose. He was mildly scalded, he realised. A few feet in front of him he saw a brief, visible jet of air, a whoosh and a hiss accompanying it. “What?! You’re saying a lot of nonsense words today.”
Merlin rolled his eyes and pointed at the strange small holes and fissures below them in the stone. “Just avoid these.”
“Anything else I should know about?” he prickled, rubbing his face.
As if on cue, the narrow way they had been travelling down became a bowl-like opening, as big as the second largest hall in Camelot. Off-centre there was a perfectly round pool, exactly the size of the round table, that reflected the sky and the stone so well it may as well have been a mirror. It was odd that such a place should make Arthur miss home.
“Here’s an ‘anything else.’ Don’t fall into that one, sire,” Merlin walked forward but remained far away from the edge. He tossed in the stick Arthur had thrown at him earlier in a long arc. It sizzled when it hit the surface, steam curled into the air as it dissolved. He turned back to him on the ball of his foot. “Acid.”
“Delightful, this is a delightful place,” the king sang, losing it a little and pacing. “The egg smell, the hot air, the lakes of acid-”
“The wyverns,” Merlin added.
“-the wyverns… The wyverns?!”
A raucous cry, the likes of which could not be made by an animal, bounced around the walls.
“Shh!” Merlin flew at him, a finger on his lips as he pulled him and pressed him to the cliff wall to minimise their chances of being seen. Arthur wasn’t nearly as offended by the affront to his kingly body as he should have been.
“You know Mer lin,” Arthur half-whispered to him around the finger that was still in place. Their noses were not far off touching. “There’s a lot of things you could have warned me about before we got here.”
“Wasn’t feeling quite myself before we got here,” he muttered distractedly as he examined the sky.
“Clearly-!”
“Shhh!” he backed him further into the stone, as a shadow went over them, the underside of a grey winged creature reflected briefly in the lake before it was gone. Then with a drag of his eyes over Arthur’s face he realised what he had been doing and moved off to stand shoulder to shoulder with him instead.
“Clearly not!’ Arthur hissed more quietly, continuing. “Anymore ‘anything elses’ you’d like to tell me about?!’”
“Um, no, but you might want to know they only half-listen to me,” the supposed dragonlord said into his ear. “A bit like the woods at night.”
Arthur dragged his hand over his face and raised his eyes to the sky. Great.
“Alright, I think we can go. Best to stay close to the walls.”
And stay close to the walls they did, from that point onwards they were ducking and hiding, though they had managed to remain undetected. Merlin told him in whispers that he wouldn’t command them unless absolutely necessary, lest the command slip and put them in danger. They passed over ahead, and Arthur saw more and more of them, the sharp angles of their wings, the long whip-like tail and once, the red eyes, when he was sure they had finally been seen.
They weren’t seen until a little later when a large shadow went over them. Noting something odd about the shadow, Arthur squinted up before it disappeared.
“That one had two heads,” he remarked, raising his upper lip involuntarily in disgust.
“Huh. Not a surprise really, fairly common in lizards, that,” Merlin babbled, his head inclining to the side as he considered it.
Two discordant and raucous calls sounded above and the shadow returned, this time stretched long by the sun and centred in the middle of the tall corridor of stone they were travelling down, its four eyes were fixed on them, its claws out as it descended fast.
“I think it’s coming toward us!”
“You think?!”
Arthur was immediately running back in the direction they came, trying to find something to retreat behind but there was nothing. He glanced over at his companion quickly in the hopes he might have a solution but there was an empty space beside him where he should have been. He turned to find that he was standing directly in the thing’s path. Arthur made to dash forward to pull him away but without warning Merlin was shouting, his body taut.
Above the wyvern screeched and stopped its descent short, its body coming forward to display its belly, wings beating so powerfully they created a small dust storm. Arthur shielded his eyes. From the very cautious distance he maintained he saw that the thing’s heads diverged at the shoulder so they each had a long neck. As far as he could tell, only one of the heads was under Merlin’s command, the other was snapping at it furiously, thankfully it was the former that seemed to be in control of its body, for now.
“We should run, don’t think that one on the right’s going to listen,” he told him, already hurrying.
Passing below the creature was a daunting experience and they made sure to keep looking over their shoulders. Two sets of eyes bore down on them before it dipped its wings, swooping and turning to follow behind them slowly.
“Ask it, ugh, them to do that?” Arthur asked warily, struggling with singulars and plurals as he watched the thing(s) in his periphery.
“Nope. We should find somewhere to hide, quickly,” Merlin muttered stiffly at the side of his mouth, watching it too.
“Can you not command it again?”
“Could do, might alert others if I try it though,” he worried, his pace picking up when the tempo of its wing beats increased, dust billowing at their backs.
There was another area ahead with several acid pools, looking decidedly greenish now in the changing light of the day. Here and there, vents and cracks released quick streams of hot hair irregularly, some of them hidden from sight behind the undulations of rock. These stone corridors and obstacle-filled places were a knight’s, and thus Arthur’s, worst nightmare, there were too many dangers and not enough room for strategy or escape. The peaks here were particularly high, curved and pointy. He surveyed them as they passed and spied other wyverns perched there, shadowed against the sky and observing them menacingly like a pair of gargoyles. He tugged at Merlin’s clothes and carefully pointed them out, both on their left.
They skirted stones and whistling fissures, taking a long curving, descending path around the first of the steaming pools. Ahead there was a thin line of stone between two lakes, Arthur eyed it just as grimly as he had the wyverns above, one of which had taken flight and was circling, like a carrion bird above with none of the poised strategy of a falcon, kestrel or indeed a merlin. Arthur shivered, he decided he would rather feel like prey than dead meat, more honour in it somehow.
All the while the commanded wyvern followed ominously behind.
“Alright,” Merlin whispered uneasily when they reached the thin line, a raised ridge of rock barely a singular foot’s width, like a sword bridge. There was what looked like a small cave opening in the rock on the opposite side, this would be their destination. “Let me see if I can’t...” he tapped the ridge carefully with his staff end and nothing happened. “Damn, doesn’t want to help. Nothing else for it.”
Arthur was thinking bemusedly that this was the closest thing to a swearing he had ever heard pass the other’s lips and that he’d quite like to hear more of it when the screeching started. The perched wyvern was descending in a free-fall, its wings catching it with a sound like a gigantic sheet or flag snapping in the wind, bringing itself to a low glide before it hit the ground. Its call quickly rallied the others, shaking the two headed one from its docile state and all three (four?) flew toward them, reminiscent of the wraiths’ arrow formation in the streets of Camelot.
Neither of them needed to tell the other to run, but Arthur did shout a heart leaping “careful!” when the clumsy man, but a third of the way across, started to teeter, even with his feet a tiny bit off the ground. In mere seconds they could feel the head creature’s wings, the resulting dust sizzling on the surface of the pools. Merlin swivelled perilously on one foot and bellowed out a command.
Suddenly the two headed one tackled the flank of the fore-wyvern, both crashing hard into a cliff wall, breaking off some stone. The carrion bird one reared up, screaming, suitability distracted.
They quickened their pace. The wyverns battled behind them, the third had landed, the intruders forgotten, until they weren’t. Merlin’s foot slipped but Arthur shot out his hands and to stop his fall, the movement seemed to tip off Carrion Bird. In a running leap its wings were out again, crying as it cut a dart through the acid lake, unaffected by its properties, sending a wave outward, and then crashing back in over their sharp bridge. It was almost upon them when Merlin’s feet touched the shore (or so to speak) and he pulled Arthur with him to the ground and he fell on top of him. Carrion Bird rushed over them, its claws just missing. One of Merlin’s hands went up, the other went around Arthur and the splash of acid coming for them rained down upon a curved, invisible wall.
The wyvern landed in a gritty sweep some distance away, screaming at them, displaying a double row of very sharp teeth and a forked tongue. Growling low it stalked toward them. On the other side of the lake Two Heads had knocked out its opponent and its twin gaze turned back to them, one head even licked its tongue out as though in anticipation of a meal. Arthur mentally rescinded his preference to be prey. They disentangled themselves, scrambled to their feet and began to back expediently toward the cave opening. They were almost there when Arthrur was hit by a wall of scalding sulphuric air. Gasping, he took in a lungful in shock. He fell backwards coughing onto his behind and the last of the rush released between his open legs. His eyes were painfully burned and he struggled to keep them open, though he knew from the growing dark blurs what the creatures were still coming toward them.
Merlin hooked his arms underneath his, pulling him up and pushing him toward the wavering block of colour that was the cliff face. How many times had they hauled each other around, pushed, pulled or dove on each other since their journey began?
Suddenly they hit rock.
“Shit, shit!” Merlin panicked. It still wasn’t quite swearing but it was an improvement.
Through Arthur’s poor vision he understood that what they thought was a cave was actually little more than a shadowy crack in the rock, too small to fit through.
“Ugh, alright,” he said, sounding like he was thinking quickly. “Stand back!”
Hearing the command through his continued coughing, Arthur did so.
“Feall! Feall! ”
Rock broke apart in two powerful blasts but before Merlin could pull them in, the wyverns were upon them. Arthur reached for his sword though he struggled to see. Two Heads was the first to act, the more volatile of its heads opened its mouth and breath sparking like a thunderhead shot forth in a hot boom that should have hit Arthur but for Merlin pulling him roughly inside. The back of Arthur’s head hit stone but he was alive. A little dazed, he saw that the light was quickly disappearing as the warlock rapidly stacked the stones into the entrance with a series of spells. Then it was dark.
“Swīþe!” he shouted, just as another boom hit the stones dead on. It should have had the small cave imploding in on them, but the last spell seemed to be a reinforcing one. Outside the wyverns gave high frustrated roars.
He heard Merlin slide to the floor and sigh heavily in relief, clearly he trusted his own handiwork. “Didn’t know they could do that!” he exclaimed breathlessly before he produced another ball of light, a fuzzy thing dominating Arthur’s vision, and sent it into the air above him.
Arthur went down with him so they sat side by side, right against each other in the very tight space. He saw through painful blinks that the pocket he had created in the rock was tall enough for them to stand but it was tiny and tapered, not big enough for either of them to lie down. “I could have been broiled,” he gasped, trying to make sense of the past few minutes, his voice sounding disturbingly like Seren’s with its dry paperiness.
“Boiled, steamed, then broiled. But you weren’t, thanks to...” Merlin trailed off, expectant.
“Sheer luck,” Arthur smirked, then he reached over to cuff the other man affectionately, knowing even though his vision was blurry that he was probably wearing an unamused frown. “Thank you , Merlin… Are we safe here?”
“Yes, they’re not very smart, they’ll give up soon. But we’ll have to wait until they do.”
He opened his mouth to reply but was taken over by coughing, the burn of each rattle made his chest tight. His skin too felt rawer and more scalded than before.
“How’s your chest?”
“Totally fine… hgh, why do you ask?” he managed through his pinched throat.
“Alright,” Merlin said, patting his bent knee in a very Gaius-like gesture. “I happen to have just the thing.”
He took out a cloth and wetted it with the water from the spare waterskin. After Arthur nodded his assent, Merlin dabbed and rubbed at his face with great care, cleaning it. Arthur could probably do this part himself but he let Merlin do what he needed to do; the man might have denied it years ago and might still deny it, but he had always fussed at him just so when he was worried, it seemed to calm him and Arthur wasn’t about to deny him this. Sure enough, his breath had slowed by the time he was done. The cloth was followed by a bowl in which he placed the lungwort. A short incantation later and it had turned to a fine paste. He added water and stirred it with a spoon.
“Have a premonition… did you?” Arthur joked in a painful wheeze.
Merlin ignored him, but he thought his cheek might have twitched a little. “Healing magic is usually beyond me, not for lack of trying. I have to rely on Gaius’ training for things like this.”
“Alright, let’s have it.”
Merlin held the bowl securely until he knew Arthur had it, making him recall how he had guided water to his lips in the cottage. The mixture was predictably slimy and tasted how Percival’s old socks smelled.
While Arthur was trying not to gag, Merlin was making some more medicine. “Now your eyes,” this new mixture was made from the eyebright, it was thinner, a greasy ointment. “I’ll need you to close them.”
He closed his eyes and felt fingertips tap at his eyelids, sending shadows and sparks through the orange-dark.
There was some stinging but then a pleasant coolness spread over them and the burn was largely gone. He opened them to his companion’s attentive gaze and slightly blushed face, his vision clear.
“Better?”
Arthur nodded, thankful.
The wyverns whined and growled outside, the small cracks of daylight in the rock wall going dark briefly with their pacing, reminding them that they were still there.
“Nothing for it but to rest,” Merlin said resignedly, resettling beside him and mirroring him with his back to the rock and his knees drawn up.
Arthur let his head fall back a bit, ignoring the little point of tenderness there from earlier. “We’ll lose our headway. Morgana will catch up to us.”
“I know, but hopefully she’s far behind.”
“You should sleep,” the king suggested, remembering the events of the early morning.
“Best I don’t,” he said quickly in a way that brokered no argument.
Arthur wondered if what he saw happened to Merlin often, he wondered too what it was. He didn’t press the matter. Propped up next to each other in this small space, with winged beasts outside and a small army after them, he didn’t think it would be comfortable or easy to sleep anyway. He was proven wrong when he startled awake. Feeling the imprint of something on his cheek he surmised with only fleeting embarrassment that his head had been resting on Merlin’s bony shoulder.
“Morning sire,” Merlin teased.
“I should hope it’s not.”
“It’s not, it’s been about two hours. I think they’re gone.”
They crawled out and pressed on. The sun was no longer overhead, having slipped below the line of the cliffs and left this previously sweltering place cold, though Arthur imagined the spots of vol-something activity would help with that. More importantly there were no wyverns.
They soon learned there was a reason for this when the sounds of the beasts and struggle came to them just a little ahead. Two familiar voices came to them through echoes.
“Well, best to avoid that particular path,” Merlin said wryly at a fork, taking a comically large step in the other direction.
Arthur made a noise of agreement, frowning down the path before following him down the other.
That particular strategy hadn’t worked out as planned however as they found themselves turning a corner and there they were, at a point three paths converged, pressed to the cliff wall and facing a wyvern. Arthur and Merlin quickly hid out of sight against the stone but Arthur was left with an image of what he spied; to his chagrin, Morgana had looked bedraggled and not a little singed. It seemed too that they had lost some of their number, there was only one soldier left now, the one with the wonky neck.
There was a piercing roar and a thud. In the space of a few seconds it became apparent that one of them had felled the wyvern, it happened so swiftly Arthur feared for a second that she had already got a hold of Excalibur. Their voices, indistinct but clearly not coming from people under threat signalled two things, that he was correct and they would surely be passing right by them.
He accessed their options, they could double back and take the other path, now around twenty minutes behind them -but the way was a relatively straight line and without anywhere to hide they were sure to be spotted. They could run ahead but this would initiate a chase they were likely to lose, particularly with a dragon on their team…. This left only one course of action, they had to fight, using the element of surprise to their advantage.
Merlin had obviously come to the same conclusion, he breathed in preparation, going dull eyed for a second. Arthur knew that look, it was a fatigued person readying themselves for another round of exertion. He reached for his pack to no doubt take a bite out of one of his mysterious apples but Arthur caught his arm and leaned close to his ear. “Does it really make much of a difference if she knows?”
The warlock met his eyes, he was conflicted.
Before he could explain himself a pair of unholy cries came from above. Two Heads had found them. It, they, landed powerfully upon its clawed feet, a little over ten feet from them at the mouth of their path. It roared at them discordantly, acidic spittle flying as it advanced slowly.
“Hello again,” Merlin said as he stepped in front of Arthur. He bore down on it with a stare and the beast stopped a little, one head growling, the other becoming entranced. Their eyes glowed very red now that they were in shadow.
He felt the man’s foreign words vibrating in his chest. There went the element of surprise. But both heads bowed in obedience, giving them a new advantage.
Another growl sounded out and there a few paces beyond the wyvern was the young dragon, scales pearly white, crouching low, looking between them all with its eyes flicking between them and its teeth bared, threatened and threatening.
“Brother ,” Morgana greeted, sauntering into view behind it. She wore only leather armour and a dark fur tucked about her. Her hair was matted and wild, and there was dirt still on her cheek and caked in her fingernails where she clutched the hilt of a dagger looped into her belt. She was flanked by Seren, now with a crossbow upon her back, and the remaining soldier. Then her eyes flashed a little with something hard to identify, maybe pleasure, maybe fear as she turned to Merlin. “Emrys .”
When Arthur looked to his right, Merlin was no longer Merlin, but Dragoon again, his face twisted again in a way that told the king he had taken a bite out of one of those ageing apples. So he chickened out.
Between them their beasts exchanged strange rumbles and were locked in place as they faced each other down, creating a dangerous barrier neither party could cross.
Further assessing his surroundings, Arthur made the mistake of meeting Seren’s eyes and her face spread in a disturbing facsimile of a smile. She levelled her axe at him, her feet sliding into readiness for a lunge. He did the same, raising his sword, his nerves sparking involuntarily as they reminded him of the pain she had once inflicted upon him.
“Do anything and I’ll command my wyvern to rip out your liver,” ‘Emrys’ threatened quickly before anything could happen.
“Try it,” Morgana challenged, her neck long as she met his threat with nonchalance. “Didn’t you know? Little can harm me these days, much like my knight here.”
He gestured to the wraith by her side. “What did you do to put her under your control, hmm? I’ll find out in time and undo it. Ugly thing you did, bringing her people back for your little war, can’t imagine she’d stand for it,” he changed tact.
Seren didn’t react, as though he had said nothing at all.
There was a flash of anger on Morgana’s face. She clicked her jaw, glowering at both of them. She raised a hand and Seren swung her axe back down, though the unblinking fixity with which she stared at Arthur made his skin crawl.
The beasts between them began circling each other, and Merlin used the cover to sidestep so he was in front of Arthur again, he walked them both slowly out of the tight corner they had been hiding in.
Morgana watched the two headed thing they had at their command with some amusement before her chin went up toward the old man she called Emrys. “Time for a threat of my own I think, my lovely knight is just dying to rid you of your life, dear brother.”
With that Seren’s chest swelled and the smile was back. She nodded once, confirming this.
“It’s you who’ll be dying, Morgana,” Arthur countered, readjusting his stance and his grip on Leon’s sword.
“Ouh, ” Merlin winced in front of him, grey eyebrows knitting as he threw back a pleading look. “Leave the insults to me, won’t you sire?”
Arthur set his mouth to the side, unamused.
Morgana ignored their odd display and turned her head back to Merlin. “You were thought dead or to have abandoned your cause by those who follow you and by your enemies alike,” she sneered.
“Sometimes I give and sometimes I take, it’s mine to know which and when,” he croaked in response, banging down his staff for good measure.
“Oh, how I missed our little talks,” she giggled, daring to pace a little, one of the wyvern’s heads snapped at the air near her and Aithusa snapped back at it in turn. She was unconcerned. “Tell me Emrys, why is it you protect my brother? He’s still the son of Uther, still an enemy to the Old Religion.”
“ Why do you look as though you were dragged backwards through a bush? Hm?!” he countered inanely, animated. “We all have our questions!”
“Insufferable fool,” she said, face falling in disgust.
“Why thank you,” the old man preened, seeming proud that he had riled her so.
“It doesn’t matter where your loyalties lie, Camelot will be mine and you can’t protect him forever.”
“You don’t realise how wrong you are,” he said then, surprising Arthur, almost sounding like his younger self.
Morgana eyed him, noticing the change. It seemed she was struggling to keep up with the halting nature of their conversation, all of the peculiar words the warlock was throwing at her, but she shook it off. “Useless to stand by a king without a kingdom, there will soon be nothing left of the Camelot he knows. I won’t expect the loyalty of his subjects this time, I’ll slaughter them all and start anew.”
“You talk and you talk!” Merlin groaned into his free hand, genuinely exacerbated. “You know, it is a known dysfunction of evil that they just have to say their evil plans aloud.”
She was clearly amused by that. “What then is the dysfunction of good?”
He took a breath to answer, then stopped, he gave her the hairy eye. “Are you getting philosophical with me, witch?”
“It’s believing evil can be redeemed,” Arthur answered for him, taking a step forward.
If Merlin, old man though he was, looked like he was swooning to Arthur he figured it was probably palpitations, or something.
She threw her head back and snorted a little. “Redeemed? To what state would you have me returned to? Hiding my true nature? Terrified of my own persecution? Spare me your morals.”
“There’s change afoot, witch, even you should be able to sense that,” Merlin contributed, an undisguised edge in his tone.
“Too late,” she said simply, bitterly, and there was a world of pain, of promises of revenge made in the dark behind her eyes. She gave Merlin her full attention, her voice slow as it peeled back years of hurt. “When my henchwoman described the sorcerer who ended her life, I hardly believed it because it sounded like my brother’s meddling manservant, the very ordinary boy who tried to poison me, who maimed and almost killed my sister to save his master. I can only conclude you are one in the same and now that I look at you up close I see it. It’s a poor disguise simply to age oneself.”
Poisoned her? Maimed Morgause? For me? Arthur’s mind raced.
“Fine. I am the one you call Merlin. Now you see my true form,” he lied, spreading out his blue robed figure proudly for her scrutiny, either he was shaken by her deduction or he was a poor actor because it was a deeply unconvincing display. It was Arthur’s turn to wince.
Suddenly she lost her airs, she looked disappointed, drooping a little, like this was all deeply unfair. “You do all of this to me, you destroy me, and all you give me in return is a childish lie? At least give me the dignity of looking me in the eye as you really are.”
He hesitated and then with a shimmer Merlin was Merlin again, grim and unblinking as he faced her.
Seren seethed, struggling to stay in place as her queen had asked of her.
“Merlin,” Morgana addressed him quietly, head raised, eyes taking him in.
“Morgana,” he did the same, their tones matching.
Instantly her expression twisted. “Have at them!” she screamed.
They were all movement. Aithusa went for the one of the wyvern’s necks, never a true match for her. Morgana sent a blast of blue flame from her outstretched hand as she followed Merlin and Arthur’s hasty sidesteps from the battling creatures.
“Oh, what I could be if there were only me!” she cried.
“That rhymes!” Merlin exclaimed as he jumped nimbly out of the way, drawing her fire. In the next step Merlin raised his staff and sent the advancing Morgana and Seren flying, then it was Merlin who was advancing. Despite this, Arthur saw that every adversary had their eyes on him. Arthur went low to avoid the crossbow bolt fired by the remaining soldier, it reached for its quiver to load a second. Scrambling on the ground, rolling away from the warlock, Morgana uttered a spell and Arthur’s feet came out from under him, placing him prone in the path of the approaching dragon. Her two-headed opponent had withdrawn, injured, and was retreating in front of Merlin, blocking him from an expedient rescue attempt and from their enemies both. Seren had righted herself and was reaching for the crossbow on her own back, Morgana was preparing to shout a second spell, even the wyvern had its twin ruby gaze fixed on him. Cornered, Merlin took a deep breath and commanded Aithusa powerfully. She stopped, only a moment of confusion on her face before she turned around and she lunged for Seren, knocking her down and sending her skidding across the stone in a cloud of dust, separating her from her weapons. Merlin said something else and she did the same to the soldier, and with a claw on its chest and her jaw around its head it was promptly decapitated. She circled around to Morgana.
“What tongue is this?!” Morgana demanded to know, on her feet now and backing up, her gaze flicking between Aithusa and Merlin.
“My own,” Merlin told her simply. Then to Arthur he said, “let’s go.”
He went around the wyvern, the injured head meaning to bite him, the uninjured head snapping at it. Barely off the ground Seren was kicking and sliding toward the fallen soldier’s crossbow. Merlin shattered it into splinters with a single word. Aithusa was still facing down Morgana, who was stock still against a stone wall, anger and confusion plain on her face.
“I’m sorry,” he said, looking back, and Arthur wasn’t sure if it was to the dragon he was speaking, Morgana or both.
They ran hard, knowing Seren was likely not far behind them. Every bound sent jolts though Arthur and he wondered how it was that his legs were still carrying him. But his heart was pumping fast and soon the pain faded to the background in favour of elation, thanks to Merlin they had escaped, even though the advantage in numbers had been their enemies’.
The ground was ascending again and the cliff faces getting shorter, foliage starting to reappear. Arthur spied a natural corner where rock had fallen into a series of tall steps.
“Up!” he panted, pointing, and despite the fact he really should have been at the limit of his stamina given his state, he jumped from one rock to the next and hauled himself up the last with his arms, ignoring the complaints of his deep bruises and overtaxed muscles. Flat on his stomach he dangled his good arm to help Merlin up. Instead, he gave him his staff and made his own way to the top easily. Arthur rolled onto his back, breathing, and the other man collapsed down beside him.
“We should move... away from the edge,” Merlin panted as Arthur passed his staff back to him.
“In a second… just...” he said, watching the gathering clouds, feeling the tickle of the rough grasses below him and thanking whatever deities might be listening for this brief chance to rest.
There were swallows here too, and they were none too pleased at the intrusion. They dove at them as the others had, as though every swallow in Albion had been briefed on the same battle strategy.
After a sigh Arthur was the first to get up, lest he suffer an unfortunate fate whether by bird, by wraith or both.
The last of Dragon Country was like a scar in the land and there was little else to navigate once they were over the canon edge but rumble and brush. Soon this transitioned to fossilised trees and then, to living trees. They surveyed that hazy canyon behind and below them before it was out of sight, its sinister oblique peaks were like the rib bones of some gigantic skeleton, its hue in the descending sun made it light up like fire. Arthur was happy, as happy as he could be, to leave the hellish place behind.
Merlin leaned on his staff as they continued, deep in thought.
“The dragon, did you make it...?” Arthur asked him tentatively, trailing off, wondering if Morgana’s dragon had been made to attack her.
“No, no, I couldn’t. I wouldn’t do that to her,” he answered, shaking his head like he was trying to dislodge the mental image.
“You know her name, do you um, know that dragon?”
Merlin sagged around his staff, not looking at him. “I hatched her, I named her, and then I failed her.”
Arthur had many, many questions, chief among them was how Merlin could possibly hatch an egg, but this was clearly not the right time, it didn’t seem the right time for any talking at all.
Above, clouds of many shades had overtaken the bright blue of the day and were layered thickly over half of the sky. When the trees finally closed over them again, rain was pattering steadily above while over laden leaves sent heavier drops below. All was misty and extra-green. With the steep ground wet and muddied, Arthur’s boots slid below him, slowing their progress, but Merlin hadn’t forgotten him even in his pensive mood and offered help where it was needed.
Certain they had evaded Morgana and Seren, they took a rest in the shelter of a rambling oak tree that had grown half over a boulder, choosing the spot for no other reason than it seemed to be a worthy place to pass some time. Merlin dug out some hard bread and sheep’s cheese and Arthur had rarely been so grateful to receive such plain food.
He watched the other man, he was sitting below him having opted for an extruding root closer to the ground while Arthur went for the higher seat on the stone, his back resting gratefully against a low curving branch. He looked like he had relaxed somewhat, his head bobbing a bit as he ate, though he was still a little fidgety, his feet and toes interlacing out in front of him (this footwear having disappeared soon after their exodus from Dragon Country).
Arthur cleared his throat, he had a question he wanted to ask. “Earlier, was that true?”
All tension was back in his companion’s posture in an instant. He swallowed his bread with an audible gulp and craned his neck up at him. “Which now?”
Arthur started rethinking things when he saw that the other seemed braced for hurt, he swiftly came up with another question. “You said that was your true form.”
Below his mouth opened in a smile, making a sound like a hiccup, but he was still wary. Arthur was right, clearly he’d been expecting a different question. “Oh, yes. I’ve definitely been an old man in disguise this whole time.”
The king made a show of letting his shoulders down in relief. Though secretly he was in fact a little relieved to have it confirmed.
“She asked me to look at her in the eye as I was, didn’t she? Anyway, what’s it to you?” Merlin narrowed his eyes. “What difference would it make?”
“It would make a hell of a difference, you being an ugly, horrible, grouchy old man all this time,” he said, finding the question was making him a little defensive. “For one it would be creepy.”
“An old wizard protecting and advising the young king with a destiny? Sounds like a good story to me,” he argued, clearly choosing to ignore some of Arthur’s words.
“I don’t know, is it? Might be better to have them roughly the same age so they might be equals.”
“Equals?”
This seemed to leave the man with much to chew over, Arthur could almost see the waterwheel of his mind turning double-time, he decided to slow it down before something broke. “Wouldn’t make much sense either since I’ve met your parents, they seemed about the right age.”
“Then why ask at all then? Clotpole,” he frowned, but that frown deepened, he didn’t talk for some time. He stopped craning upwards and was staring straight into the trees instead. The patter and plic of water grew a little louder, a single magpie hopped about in the oak.
“Merlin?”
“I said to you I made mistakes in the past,” he began, still not looking at him, and Arthur knew he was answering his unspoken question. “Morgana was my greatest mistake.”
Arthur digested this for a while, he had wondered for many years what mistakes his friend could have possibly made, why he had felt the need to tell him this before his flight from Camelot. He understood now that Merlin had a poor grasp of what constituted a mistake. “No,” he said emphatically, sure. “She was my father’s mistake, not yours.”
That made Merlin turn again. “You don’t unders-”
“Whatever you did, I’m sure you would never have had to do it but for his laws. She could never have been a threat to me or this destiny of mine if she was not under threat herself. I’m sure she felt cornered.”
The warlock’s mouth dropped open, he swallowed again. “No, it was because she threatened you , Arthur , not you, the future King of Albion that I acted, that things happened the way they did, I was scared. On top of that I was a coward for too long, I-I didn’t understand fate and what it would turn her into, I should have been more decisive, I should have killed her long before, and then when it came to it I-!”
“You’re not listening,” Arthur stopped him, hearing the panic rising in his voice. “It wasn’t truly your fault, I’m certain of it… You said you would never regret saving me.”
“Never, Arthur,” Merlin said in earnest, his torso turning further to face him, his hands on the root before him.
“Then don’t regret it. You saved me. She was not your mistake and probably not fate’s either. Before anyone else, she was Uther’s mistake, it is he who drove her down this path.”
Merlin cast his eyes down but to his relief he nodded slowly.
“Good,” Arthur finished, sliding carefully down the rock and placing a hand on his back. “Now come on, we can’t be far from that scaly uncle of yours.”
“He's almost another day a-”
“Get a move on,” he slapped his back when he failed to move.
Notes:
Dragon Country, acid lakes and the two headed wyvern are borrowed from/inspired by QfC
The combination of Eye Bright and Lungwort are a little nod to Once Upon a Forest (1993), yet another startlingly dark cartoon movie I was raised on.
The ridge they cross references Lancelot by Chretien de Troyes and the titular character's very stupid decision to cross a very dangerous sword bridge and get himself all bloodied up. I absolutely love the absurdity of Lancelot specifically, he's constantly making dumb decisions and getting himself hurt or disguising himself and creating idiot plots in the process where no one knows what's going on or who he is. He and Tristan basically almost kill each other at one point because both idiots are disguised. When they realise who the other is "there was much kissing." Best boy Lancelot.
The line: "I give and I take, it's mine to know which and when" is said by Merlin in Excalibur (1981)
The line about Merlin being a grouchy horrible old man is from Disney's Sword and the Stone
Chapter 14: Here In the Night I See the Sun
Summary:
The land grows steep but our boys keep going. They visit a sacred grove and Merlin tells Arthur a little about Gwendydd and the druids. A small victory is followed by disaster and all seems lost.
He looked up into the tree to see the sylvan smiling ear to ear down at him like some kind of very unlikely forest nymph. “Catch!” he shouted.
Arthur leaned his ash stick against the tree and something dropped down through the leaves, preceded by a shower of droplets, into his hands.
It was Excalibur’s scabbard.
Chapter Text
They had been walking decidedly upward now and the forest had started to change around them, overtaken by holly, juniper and Scots pine. It was still raining too, making the way more difficult, especially as the canopy thinned. Two hours or so ago Merlin had presented Arthur with a sturdy rod of ash to help his climb ('ash tree baneful in the hand of a warrior,’ he had said, offering no explanation as to what they meant or where the words came from). Arthur had scrunched up his face at the gift then ('Merlin, do I look like an old man to you?’), but he was grateful for it now, the way was occasionally difficult and it was engaging new muscles that now ached alongside the rest.
Merlin explained to him, at last giving Arthur foreknowledge of the road ahead, that Kilgharrah resided in a hollowed out mountain in the north-east. Between here and there would be much evidence of the druids that lived there, their cairns and sacred places, as well as a stretch of boulder strewn slopes he called the Giant’s Battlefield.
“Giants,” Arthur said, a statement rather than a question as they climbed, a sense of déjà vu coming over him.
“Yes.”
“Please don’t tell me-”
“No, there aren’t any giants.”
“The same way there aren’t any dragons in Dragon Country anymore?”
“No, I’m not sure if there were ever giants.”
“Then why is it called-?”
“You’re the warrior, what does it look like to you?”
In a break in the pines there was mountainous country, peaks and sheer granite cliff faces. Off in the distance he could see the flat expanses of lakes caught between them, the shine of a river that sometimes fell in waterfalls, sometimes snaked between curves of rock, sometimes disappeared. What Merlin was pointing to was a cleaved section where two wide curves of rock met, the river a clear dividing line between them, on either side were huge boulders dotted seemingly at random all over, on the rock and among the copses of hardy pines like they had been thrown there with some giant trebuchet.
“Two sides of a battlefield, I suppose,” Arthur admitted.
“Exactly.”
“But surely if there’s a Dragon Country, that would mean-”
“Well I didn’t name it!” he argued, annoyed, raising and shaking his staff.
“Would you stop your interrupting?!”
“Sorry,” he apologised, dipping his dark curled head before looking at him again. He brought his staff back down. “Truthfully there could have been giants, I’m not sure. Maybe there still are and they’re just sleeping.”
“Just sleeping? You’re not serious, are you?”
“My mother used to tell me there were giants sleeping in the hills on the path home.”
Arthur knew the hills in question, the very green sweep of land that marked the way to Merlin’s homeland. In the two times Arthur had accompanied him on the journey there, Merlin had sighed at the sight of these hills, like it was a relief just to see them, and his pace had picked up, no matter how tired he was from travelling. Could there really be something sleeping below them? “Those are just stories, Merlin,” he said, but he wondered.
“I’m not sure I could say with confidence where stories begin and history ends, could you?”
“I suppose not.” He tried to imagine Hunith holding secret knowledge of giants and where they had laid down for their rest and found that it was not difficult at all. He realised that many of Merlin’s stories about the constellations, great heroes and now giants that he had shared with him, were likely passed down to him from Hunith and others in the village. He remembered again those once half-forgotten nights under the stars, he hoped that there would be more ahead of them.
“There, you see?” the storyteller in question concluded, heedless of his companion’s thoughts as he restarted their climb. “Anyway, on we go.”
They found the cairns and other signs here and there, usually on the peaks of hills but sometimes tucked into hewn out areas of rock or into the hills like the one that had attacked him a few days ago. All of them bore the sign of the tri-circle triskelion, as the warlock called it. The most notable place was a secluded grove, well-lined with foliage and in a natural fold in the earth and rock that hid it from view until they were almost upon it. Entering through an obliging holly bush, Arthur found that it was small but notable for having been so hidden, about double the size of his chambers when he was still prince (he was still measuring things in units of Camelot, it seemed). It was all shadowed greens and rain darkened granite glittering with galena. Off to one side there was a mysterious paved circle half-covered by a rock overhang and rimmed with standing stones, probably not too useful as a sundial. Here and there on the way were stout figures carved into stone, perfect tripping height. Some of these stones had wide inhuman eyes, their features abstract. Others were a little different, seeming to present their sexual organs to any onlookers, this and their blank but piercing stares made them as funny as they were unsettling. Between these, a lazy, thin rivulet ran though here, making the ground marshy and a good home for frogs, toads and gnats (food to the former two). They trilled loudly here, though Arthur couldn’t see any, too well camouflaged were they.
It might have been a good place to rest, it felt well hidden, but Merlin seemed to treat it as sacred and bowed to some of the figures before moving on. Arthur bowed awkwardly too before catching up with his ash stick. He realised Merlin must have brought them through here just to pay homage.
“I assume this place belongs to the druids here?” he asked quietly, feeling the need to be quiet as they left. He was unable to tear his eyes from a particularly lurid carving with its tongue sticking out of its small mouth and its legs spread wide and he wondered what kind of people revered these things.
Merlin bowed at one last figure before he stepped onto the rise that led them out, the mixed wall of holly and juniper that grew on this section of the fold partitioning neatly for them. “Belonged isn’t quite the right word, but yes, might be more accurate to say it was built by their ancestors.”
“Do you know them then, these people?” he asked as they passed through. Though some holly snagged at his clothes and scratched his arms, and deliberately, he was sure.
“I do, though I don’t often see them. They healed me and let me live among them once. One of them, Gwendydd, we spent Samhain together just last year, not long after I first arrived here she insisted I call her sister and I told her she can call me brother,” he said, his voice taking on a nostalgic tone. It was odd to think so much time had elapsed that either of them could be nostalgic about things that had occurred in the intervening years, though there was little Arthur could feel the same way about within that same frame of time.
“You seem to have lots of kin, but only of a sort,” Arthur observed, forcing his complaining muscles ever upward with the help of his walking stick. He set his sights again on the cleave in the landscape they were heading for, visible again now.
“And not much true kin,” he tacked on to his words.
“That’s not what I meant,” the king frowned.
“I know, sorry.”
“I have a maternal uncle I don’t much like… And Morgana, I suppose,” Arthur shared after a beat.
“Slim pickings,” Merlin smirked at him.
“Slim indeed.”
“And no ‘kin of a kind’ of your own then?”
“No.”
“We could take a detour,” he offered, pointing his thumb north. “Maybe Gwendydd or one of her people will adopt you too.”
Arthur shook his head and suppressed a smile at the other’s odd suggestion, at his open playfulness, but if he was honest it sounded quite nice, to have someone declare you family like that.
“I never thanked you, Arthur,” Merlin started after a stretch of time in which they said nothing but their steps and staffs sounded in time. “For keeping my mother safe.”
“Truce terms made on a battlefield can’t really-”
“Arthur,” he said seriously, his tone bolstered by a look that conveyed he wouldn’t be fooled. “When were you ever humble ?”
“I’ll be as I please,” Arthur defended, then he swallowed and looked at the line of the river ahead through the trees, and at the mountain beyond, its forested leeward side half-white with a billowing mist. “I had the chance to bring Ealdor under my protection and I wasn’t going to let that chance go.”
“You’ve spoken to her?”
“Yes, though I kept a respectful distance. Just as I deserved she wasn’t too pleased with me when we finally had cause to speak.”
“But you charmed your way back into her poor heart, no doubt,” Merlin waggled his staff reprovingly at him.
“I can’t help that I’m naturally charming,” Arthur replied haughtily, head raised.
“So says you.”
Arthur decided again to tell it to him plainly. “Truthfully we never reconciled, I would be deluded to try. Only thing I can do is exercise my power as king to ensure those like her son do not have to fear for their lives in my kingdom, or at least try to ensure it.”
At that Merlin’s steps stuttered a little, as though he had briefly hit a glass wall. With all of his scrying he surely already knew all of this, but to say it this way must have been a different thing entirely. He recovered. “I’m sure she’s proud of you.”
Arthur eyed him, pointing from Merlin back to himself. “Are you saying you’re sure your mother would be proud of me ?”
“Yes? What’s wrong with that? I know her, don’t I?”
“Fine,” he relented a little breathlessly. “Can’t rightly argue about that, can I?”
“No you can’t.”
Arthur shook his head and smiled.
“I’m proud of you too,” he said suddenly, his attention very much on Arthur.
“What?”
“Have you gone deaf?”
“Probably a little. Ringing,” Arthur explained, pointing at one of his ears, though in truth both of them sounded out equally and constantly.
“Oh. Ugh, well I-I said-”
“I know what you said, it’s just… it’s something Gwen said to me, that’s all,” he smiled to himself.
“Oh? Always wise, that Gwen.”
And Arthur was amazed, as he had been so many times since their journey began. “My thoughts exactly… But, thank you, Merlin, that… that means a great deal.”
They laughed nervously a little, looking at the path ahead just as much as each other. The king tried to chalk up the fluttering of his heart to the altitude, but he failed, he knew just what this feeling was and it wasn’t new, it was only growing stronger
They were not far off stepping foot onto the granite of the Giant’s Battlefield. The rain was coming down hard, when their clothes became too sodden Merlin found them a tree to step under and spelled them dry, though it was happening with such frequency that they had agreed to give up until their next rest to conserve his energy. The day was showing signs of coming to an end, and it would do so earlier than the previous day owing to the thick grey of the clouds overhead. The forest just before the opening had been so shadowy that they almost missed it, but suddenly Merlin was tugging and flapping at him excitedly and before he knew it he was climbing up the mossy tangle of an aspen, despite the heaviness of his clothing, leaving Arthur no time to work out what was going on.
He looked up into the tree to see the sylvan smiling ear to ear down at him like some kind of very unlikely forest nymph. “Catch!” he shouted.
Arthur leaned his ash stick against the tree and something dropped down through the leaves, preceded by a shower of droplets, into his hands.
It was Excalibur’s scabbard.
Elation came over him, he laughed and made wordless exclamations.
“Excalibur must be close,” Merlin summarised, jumping down lightly from a height that might have sprained another man’s ankles, still looking delighted.
Arthur looped his arm around his neck and ruffled his wet hair. He wondered in his happiness what would happen if he pressed a kiss there.
“Oi!” his long suffering companion complained before he was let go.
Arthur examined the fine leather work, finding scratches there from the dragon’s teeth and claws. Despite the damage he was soothed to have it. “We should circle the area,” he said, looking up.
“Right,” the other agreed, rough treatment forgotten.
With the scabbard secured at Arthur’s waist and using the tree as their centre point, they searched the woods in concentric circles. They looked in all directions including up, and kicked through the leaf litter and pine needles lest it be caught in a branch or be buried below their feet.
***
The day was almost gone, the rain drove down hard and they had not found the sword.
“Maybe Morgana will think we’ve got it, and she’ll give up and go home,” Merlin joked, though Arthur couldn’t help but notice that he looked a little exhausted behind his plastered down hair, reminding him that he’d only slept maybe two hours, and had suffered through that magical fit to boot.
“We can live in hope,” Arthur said, craning to see every branch in a particularly tall pine but it was too shadowy against the last of the blue-grey light. He was about to tell Merlin that he thought they should resume in the morning but when he turned back to him the other had his hand on the tree trunk, leaning against it like he was about to fall forward. He was breathing slowly and deliberately.
Something was wrong. “What is it?” he asked him, alarmed.
“It’s um,” he started, though he looked bleary eyed and confused. He looked at the lichen covered, flaky bark beneath his fingers. “W-we, um, share a name, the t-tree and I.”
“Uhhh… Merlin ?” Arthur entertained, though only to keep him talking, he looked like he was about to faint.
“No, Slyvestris,” he said, face crunching like he was in pain.
“Merlin, that’s not your name. Tell me what’s wrong.”
“It is, my name’s Merlinus Sylvestris. I have lots of names, don’t you know. Lots . I’ll uhh list them for you some time, or, um, soon, I should… I should do it soon,” he slurred. He tipped a little then caught himself, briefly alert again, and turned his head again to Arthur, panicked. “Arthur I’m going to- I think-!”
Arthur dropped his stick and was crowding in to catch him, seeing that his legs were slipping in the dirt (and touching it fully now, he noted) but with a speed that stunned him, Merlin shoved him roughly away. A crossbow bolt appeared in the pine where his throat had been. Reacting immediately he pulled the half-limp Merlin with him as he slipped quickly around to the back of the wide tree. He caught sight of Seren’s milky eyes stark in the shadows as he did this, her crossbow resting on the fallen trunk before her. Thankfully, though appearing sick or drunk, Merlin was at least aware of the danger. He pressed himself against the trunk beside him.
“Can you run?” Arthur whispered to him quickly.
Merlin nodded, though he was pale and there was sweat on his chin.
“Stay close then, and don’t you dare collapse!”
As before, they used their cover to go straight into the woods from one safe place to the next. They couldn’t hear or see her, but Arthur knew Seren was stalking after them. Their trajectory had placed them running close to the last line of trees that marked the Giant’s Battlefield, if they went there they would be too out in the open. He was strategising when Merlin’s form fell away from his periphery and he turned about whip-quick just in time to witness his eyes light up and his legs buckle below him. Without time to ask himself what was happening, Arthur leapt to haul him back up but he succeeded only in turning him in place and dragging him backwards through the pine needles, his legs suddenly dead weights. A whistling cut through the air and Merlin fell back hard into Arthur.
Arthur was fighting immediately to get him to safety.
No.
Merlin cried out as he was moved.
No.
He slung him half over his back, his feet dragging.
He made more pained wheezing sounds into his ear and Arthur had to keep his burning eyes from obscuring the path to their escape.
He stumbled with him behind a set of boulders. Merlin was bleeding rapidly, a circle of red spreading on his tunic around the bolt. It had struck him just below the collar bone, on his left side and from his horrible gasping it was obvious it had pierced his lung. Arthur’s mind raced, he needed to tend to him, it was doubtful he’d survive if- it’s doubtful he’ll survive at all, his experience as a warrior told him, he had seen wounds like this before, he knew how this ended. He shoved that warrior hard away, what had he ever been good for? Nothing good. He readjusted Merlin’s arm and brought a hand back around to hold his waist. He could still walk somewhat, though he lost strength when his eyes flickered bronze and he fell in and out of trances.
Heart thudding, Arthur took a gamble, he made for a stretch of stone in sight of the boulder where his footprints would not show, and he started to head back in the direction he came. They would be expecting him to dive back into the woods -but to go back where they came? Maybe that would work.
The possibility of bumping straight into their hunters was great but when on his careful journey he saw Morgana’s back disappearing in the opposite direction, he was glad he had followed his intuition.
Thankfully they had not been far from the familiar landmarks, having searched every inch of the woods meticulously. It wasn’t long before they passed the tall pine again, then the aspen the scabbard had been in. The stretch between the aspen and the grove took longer to transverse and Arthur was forced to stop twice to prevent Merlin from slipping. He was bleeding heavily but in his left hand the wounded man still clutched his staff, a good sign, the king told himself. They reached the thickets that marked the grove.
“Merlin,” he whispered to the paling man, noticing that he could barely hear his own voice over the roar of the rain. “Merlin, we need to get through.”
The holly and juniper parted slowly and closed immediately after them. Arthur descended with him as carefully as he could.
He splashed through the streams, being sure to skirt the low stone figures. Merlin’s feet dragged more and more and suddenly he was truly sagging in his grasp, the weight on Arthur increasing as he went limp. As they entered the covered paved circle, his staff slipped from his fingers and clattered to the stone.
Arthur propped him up against a flat, leaning stone with the ever present tri-circle upon it and dropped to his knees beside him.
His hands shook over him, unsure of what to do but wishing to heal him, scared to touch but wishing to hold him.
Merlin was half-lucid and his legs kicked feebly as he strained against the pain. There was too much blood… but if Arthur removed the bolt it would surely kill him.
“I should have pressed you when it happened the first time, but I didn’t,” Arthur despaired. “And now-”
Merlin shushed him, looking directly into his eyes like he was trying to calm him. He smiled a little, but there was blood on his teeth.
“Tell me what to do,” Arthur demanded as softly but as urgently as he could.
He swallowed and spoke slowly. “The-there’s nothing you can-”
“There has to be!!” Arthur panicked. “The forest, ask it-!”
He winced, eyes half-closed in pain. “It can’t, Arthur-”
“Then heal yourself!”
He shook his head weakly.
“You healed me back then,” the king reasoned, confused, his heart drumming so hard he was sure the other could hear it. “Heal yourself, now!”
“That was...different, this is...”
“You once told me your magic was for me,” he tried, desperate. “Do this for me, Merlin, please, try!”
Merlin’s breathing was a slow wheeze, his eyelids closed and opened again, like they were too heavy. “It’s alright...”
“No, no, it’s not alright Merlin, don’t you dare-!” he growled, taking a hold of his blood crusted hand in a pleading, clutching way.
“I can’t die… Arthur,” he whispered and his gaze went very steady as he imparted this, his fingers curling around Arthur’s.
“I don’t understand… God Merlin, you aren’t making any sense!”
“I… know. Trust m-me.”
“I do, you know I do, I always do!” Arthur reassured him frantically, taking his hand and pressing it to his chest.
“Good,” he said, and his hand went heavy in his grip.
“No, no Merlin!” Arthur’s voice shook hoarsely, letting the hand fall as he surged forward to grip his shoulders and look imploringly into his eyes. “I can’t do this alone! I can’t do this without you. I know what you meant, what you said to Morgana. She said you can’t protect me forever and you told her she was wrong. You have to make sure she stays wrong! I love you, you idiot! I love you and I need you by my side. Don’t die.”
“Ha,” Merlin breathed the tiniest triumphant sound.
The rain fell hard on the stone, splashing in the rapidly flooding rivulets around the grove.
Arthur waited for him to say more, to move. But he was still. It can’t be, he was just- His eyes were open but…
Arthur stared, unbelieving, waiting for a sign of life. It did not come. Arthur shook his shoulder very carefully and found he was utterly limp. He called his name and did it again, but he got no response. He trailed his hand to the side of his neck to check his pulse, his dark hair tickling and wetting his hand, and tried to still his own breathing and shaking. There was no life beneath his fingers. Slowly he brought that same hand up to cradle his cold cheek. Merlin had told him that he couldn’t die, he had asked him to trust him, but the minutes went by and how could he have hope when he was so clearly gone? In quiet horror, in realisation, he took in the evidence. The slackness of his features under Arthur’s hand and the slow, useless caress of his thumb, where all the subtleties of his emotions should be there for him to read, the stillness of his body where there should be almost constant motion.
Eventually, many minutes later, Arthur’s breathing erratic and his eyes blurred, he reluctantly let go of his sweet face and took hold of the killing bolt. For a split second he worried that he would hurt him. He pulled it free and blood welled lazily in the hole it left behind. I should bandage him , he thought. He should wash him and bandage him, wrap him up in the blankets he wove, and then he should bury him, Morgana be damned, Seren be damned, Camelot be damned, let it all be damned.
Feeling as though he were seeing himself perform every action outside of his body, his senses following suit and coming to him dully, he reached for the pack still crossing his friend’s chest. His hand came upon his pan, his scrying crystal and some of his medical paraphernalia before he found a cloth. He doused it with water from his waterskin. Before starting he realised guiltily that he hadn’t closed his eyes, he touched the thin skin of his eyelids and brought them down. Without his spark behind them they didn’t look like his anymore anyway. He started with his face, bringing the cloth carefully over his familiar features without quite taking in the reality of what he was doing. There was blood here too, transferred from Arthur’s own hands, and pinkish water gathered in Merlin’s lashes as he worked. He caught the drops with the back of his fingers and flicked them away. He moved on to his bony, once strong hands where the blood was already dry and caked. This, for some reason, he found impossible. He folded over and pressed a kiss to the back of his right hand, lamenting that he had never done so while the man still breathed, and a foreign cry left him, feeling all the while as though he were being rent into pieces.
Merlin’s hand tightened around his.
No it didn’t. It can’t. The dead sometimes do this, as their muscles twitch and settle and eventually stiffen.
But-
Arthur looks up.
Did his chest just-?
His hand tightens again, undeniably holding his.
And suddenly Merlin’s back is off the stone and he’s bracing, his neck extended. There’s a change on the exposed wound of his chest, the skin pinkening and scabbing rapidly.
Arthur wants to fall back and peddle away, he wants to reach for him and never let go but he’s frozen, all he can do is bring his other hand over to grip his extra hard and hope.
And then he’s gasping, moving, kicking again and coughing blood onto the stone.
And Arthur finally moves, hauling him into a better position so he could empty his lungs. He was wracked in his arms, his body warring against this unnatural thing that was happening to it. When the blood was but a line dribbling from his lips he collapsed back onto Arthur. His eyes, bleary, the red rapidly retreating, met Arthur’s and the pain in them was all for him.
“Merlin!” the king chocked out, sputtering.
“Hi Arthur,” Merlin whispered, apologetic but smiling just a little.
Arthur all but bundled him into his arms, wrapping himself around the resurrected man.
“Ah! Be careful,” he complained half-heartedly.
“No way in hell will I be careful!” Arthur told him, voice half-gone and not sounding like his own. “You aren’t even wounded any more. I’m going to hold you as tight as I want and then you’re going to explain to me what the hell just happened!”
“I will, I promise, I’ll tell you everything. But can we just-? Can we make a fire or something? It’s not that easy, you know, coming back to life and all.”
But he couldn’t let go yet, he buried his face into his neck and rocked him.
“Arthur, did you hear me?” Merlin’s weak voice said into his ear.
He breathed unevenly, clutching him hard, knowing and not caring that he was covering himself in blood.
“Arthur?” he gentled, bringing his shaking arms around him too and breathing into his hair. “I love you too, you big prat.”
Notes:
"Ash tree baneful in the hand of a warrior" is from Buile Shuibhne, ash trees are sturdy and have long been used in weapon making, as walking sticks and for sports instruments such as hurls.
The giant situation is in reference to a lot of things. One being the ogre debacle in QfC, the ogre looking more like a stone giant, another is the Buried Giant by Kazuo Ishiguro in which the giant is unseen and acts more as a metaphor, this is set after the death of Arthur in a very broken down and dreamlike corner of the land. Lastly in my own life there is a large granite landscape next to a road in Enniskerry in Ireland with boulders on it, my granny used to tell me that giants had thrown the stones at each other there long ago and that they were sleeping. I went passed this on my birthday trip to Crone Wood and sadly it's largely not in view of the road anymore.
The grove is taken from QfC and it's where Kayleigh takes Garret when he's injured. Very small pieces of dialogue and the general set up is taken from the film.
The small lewd statues are Síle na Gig, they are beautifully weird and I love them.
Chapter 15: Here In the Dark Our Two Hearts Are One
Summary:
Arthur and Merlin talk about fate and their hearts. Arthur asks Merlin to come home with him.
“Immense power for an immense destiny,” Arthur sighed long and looked at the rain, he knew that Merlin was watching him very intently. “I was raised on legends such as these, great kings and queens whose reputation defied the usual erasure of the ages. They lived such lives and did such deeds that their lands were forever changed, their names will be upon them until the end of time. They were at the helm of destiny, and they changed its course for all.”
“That’s… surprisingly poetic, coming from you.”
Arthur doesn’t rise to his teasing, he isn’t done. He looked into the fire, at the way the brightness threw light selectively into the grove. “They all have one thing in common.”
Merlin tipped his head up in askance.
“They all die young and without heirs.”
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
The fire cast their shadows large and swaying onto the hewn out rock, they were joined by the shadows of the standing stones so it seemed the two were surrounded by an invisible crowd. Aware this was a sacred place, Arthur contemplated their various affronts, their very presence here, the blood on the stone, the catching fire in the dip in the centre of the stone payment (even as he blew it to life). Still on his haunches he looked over his shoulder at the nearest authority on the matter, hoping for advice.
Merlin, propped against the stone wall now and looking rather diminished, was spelling himself clean slowly, the spell failing more than it worked. He repeated his words in a slurred mutter and Arthur couldn’t see any more blood upon him, just a hole in his clothing where the bolt had been. Arthur was free of blood too, the warlock insisting that he use the spell on him first. This seemed to do nothing, however, for the sickly tinge of it left in the air.
“This is a sacred place to magic,” Arthur started after a few moments of watching him.
“Feel it, can you?” Merlin smiled weakly, the sparkling of his eyes in direct contrast to the grey and purpled skin below them.
“Maybe a little,” Arthur shrugged, using a stick to poke some of the roughage Merlin had spelled dry that had fallen away back into the growing flames. He was trying not to look at the carved figures staring his way out in the advancing dark, hands opening their genitals, their expressions hypnotically odd with their blank eyes and open mouths.
“Good intentions are what matters,” he told him softly, himself examining the carvings on the wall, swirling variations of the tre-foil, pointed waves and concentric, looping lines like small mazes. “We should pay our respects before we leave in the morning.”
Arthur was calmed by his words and asked no further, though he wondered, with inevitably salacious images passing through his mind, what paying their respects in a place like this would entail.
Satisfied that the fire had caught, Arthur scooted back towards Merlin. He untied the earthy and red blanket he had attached to his pack and draped it over the front of the still shivering man before settling down beside him, shoulder to shoulder.
The fire snapped, frogs called and the rain went on. The overhang that was their cover ensured that there was a curtain of extra heavy drops between them and the open air.
They were at the precipice of an important conversation, he knew, but he kept the peace for a few moments longer before finally the words wriggled from their bounds. “You can’t die?” he asked plainly.
“Don’t think I have to age either, if I don’t want to,” Merlin answered quietly but immediately, though he wrapped the blanket a bit more tightly around his body.
“Are you sure?”
He nodded, eyes cast down, following the lines of the weave in his blanket.
“How is that possible?”
The other didn’t look up, the answer was magic, no doubt, a cruel trick fate had played on him.
“How do you know?”
“This isn’t the first time it’s happened and… I have visions, they started soon after I arrived here…”
Arthur gave him a moment.
“I’ve been seeing the future. I can’t control when it happens or for how long it happens. I can sometimes stop it happening so frequently though, if I use the crystals and the stars enough. What I’ve seen... My life might never end… There’s a lot of future to see.” His shadow betrayed the minute slide he did, the curling in on himself.
“Is that what happened then? Why you stopped when we were being pursued?”
Another nod.
“What do you see?”
“So many things, some of it is what I’ll see through my own eyes, some of it isn’t…”
Arthur notices his flinch at the former. “And it’s what you’ll see that distresses you most?”
“It’s all distressing,” Merlin laughed brokenly. “You have no idea.”
“I would never pretend to.”
“I’ve seen that I’ll live for a very long time, and keep on living. But the worst thing is- worse than seeing my own life go on and on… I can see the death of people, the people I care about… that I love.”
Arthur absorbed this slowly. “Have you seen my death?”
Merlin drew into himself, all knees and elbows. That was a yes. A few things started to click into place, it might explain why Merlin did not leave the woods, especially when he knew Arthur would have welcomed him and was working to make Camelot a safer place for his kind.
Arthur’s mind was turning. “Tell me about the prophecy, the whole thing this time.”
“I don’t think I know it all,” Merlin looked at him with a furrowed brow, frowning.
“Then tell me what you do know.”
Merlin took a tight breath, like he was pained, but he delivered it as asked. “You are the Once and Future King, you are destined to unite Albion under peace… and bring magic back to the land. We are two sides of the same coin, with my magic I’m supposed to help bring about your destiny. Your deeds and legacy will live on forever.”
“And the sword?”
“I made the sword to protect you a long time ago, all those things I told you about your ancestor were a lie… Sorry.”
“You’re forgiven,” Arthur huffed, bumping him teasingly where they sat but marvelling at these deeds as he did it. “It did its job, I should think... I told you I wanted to understand… So this is what you meant when you said your magic was for me.”
“It’s always been yours.”
“Immense power for an immense destiny,” Arthur sighed long and looked at the rain, he knew that Merlin was watching him very intently. “I was raised on legends such as these, great kings and queens whose reputation defied the usual erasure of the ages. They lived such lives and did such deeds that their lands were forever changed, their names will be upon them until the end of time. They were at the helm of destiny, and they changed its course for all.”
“That’s… surprisingly poetic, coming from you.”
Arthur doesn’t rise to his teasing, he isn’t done. He looked into the fire, at the way the brightness threw light selectively into the grove. “They all have one thing in common.”
Merlin tipped his head up in askance.
“They all die young and without heirs.”
And with this the warlock beside him, the seer, unfolded and reclined back, the blanket pooling to his lap. He stared at him with the saddest eyes.
“Well,” Arthur added casually, “if they had heirs they were either illegitimate, they met sticky ends, or both.”
“You haven’t-?” Merlin ventured.
“Haven’t-? No. No, definitely not,” he smiled lopsidedly at the suggestion. A few bugs joined the frogs in their messy chorus. He straightened, suddenly very earnest as he met the other’s eyes, very blue even in the poor light. “If I’m to be such a king, Merlin, and my life is to burn fast and bright, I’d rather have you by my side. When we find the sword, please come home with me, to Camelot.”
Merlin shook his head and seemed to back into himself again a little, looking like a cornered animal. He was mouthing the words ‘fast and bright’ over and over, like they were a horrible revelation.
“Merlin-?”
“I won’t be able to stand it,” he panicked, his hands going around his face. “If I fail to protect you then your death- it’ll be mine to bear. I’m not that strong, Arthur! I never was. That’s why I-that’s why I couldn’t come back.”
“No, listen to me,” Arthur said sternly, sliding just a little so he was facing him better. “All this talk about saving me, I understand it now, it’s always me you want to save, just me. But if I’m to die then I’m to die. Preserving my life should be secondary to my destiny, kings die for their causes and I’m willing to die for mine. My life should never take precedent over it, do you understand? It’s too great, bringing peace to Albion and magic back to the land again. You say it’s this destiny you must help bring about, then there’s no doubt, I cannot do it without you, but you must understand what bringing it about might mean.”
The other man was still shaking his head, the firelight swinging in his wet eyes.
“You know I’m right,” Arthur pressed. He didn’t like Merlin’s silent crying so he slid back and tugged him closer, guiding the man’s head onto his chest. He went willingly. Arthur could feel how his whole body shuddered with uneven breaths, soundless sobs. He wanted to ask something and his pulse quickened as his mouth opened, it was knowledge no mortal man should possess, though he thought wildly, Merlin isn’t mortal. “Are you frightened because you know how it will happen?”
Merlin’s breath hitches at that.
“You don’t have to answer,” the king added hastily, regretting saying anything at all and wishing he could take it back.
“It could happen any number of ways,” he whispered in his chest, surprising him. “I’ve seen so many of them. The future is so strange, the paths it can take… it’s not really the knowing that scares me, it’s… seeing it play out before me and being powerless to stop it. It’s happened before… When I saw my first glimpse of the future I thought I would go mad, I couldn’t stand to look at it. Back then, so many things came to pass despite my trying to prevent it. I’ve seen so many futures now.”
Without thinking too much Arthur had buried his hand into Merlin’s hair and had begun to sooth him gently. “I’m sorry. I know I can’t begin to understand that burden, or what it means for me to ask you to be with me, despite it all. But I’ll ask again, because I must. Come back with me, please, I need you.”
Merlin didn’t say anything. He trembled against him.
Arthur sighed again, he let this knowledge settle in and he was amazed at the lightness he felt. After a long silence he said in an almost whisper, “it’s strange, now that I know about it, I find this supposed destiny a great deal less daunting than some of the expectations laid out for me as King of Camelot. Now I know I’m freed from them in service of something greater.”
Merlin raised his head, they were inches from each other. “I’m not sure what-? But, you’ll still be king...”
“I know. What I mean is the expectation of an earthly legacy, you know, heirs, and all that comes with them. I don’t think I have it in me to be a father. I’d rather try to fix my own father’s mistakes and their marks on the land, than bring new people into it.”
Merlin’s breathing was evening out, he found Arthur’s hand in his hair and brought it down to kiss his palm with equal parts love and reverence.
“I thought for a long time that I would meet all these expectations on me as prince and as a king, find a worthy lady to marry... I thought myself too busy for all that, but truthfully as time passed I found it didn’t sit right in my heart. I know my own heart better now, I think.”
Arthur held the coolness of the man’s still over-pale face, Merlin didn’t say anything.
“Again, I can’t know the immensity of what I’m asking-”
“You say you know your heart better,” Merlin stopped him quietly.
“I do.”
“What does it say?”
“It says this,” -he squeezed Merlin, pressed a kiss into his hairline- “this is how things should be.”
He looked into Arthur’s eyes and it seemed for all the world like his heart was so full it had broken, love and grief mixing. “And mine would agree with yours… May the Gods help and deliver me.”
“It was you who taught me to be true to my heart, I’d encourage you to heed your own advice.”
“When did you get so wise, clotpole?” Merlin laughed then and it was a glorious sound.
“When you weren’t around to be wise for me,” Arthur smiled, dipping his head slowly toward him. “You better come back, who knows what will happen if I get too wise.”
“Yeah… maybe I should…might be dangerous…” he trailed off, looking at Arthur’s lips.
They met in the middle and kissed, holding and sighing into each other. Everything suddenly seemed a great deal simpler if they could only keep doing this.
“In Dragon Country you implied you would protect me forever, you really meant forever,” Arthur breathed in amazement.
“Yeah,” he smiled sadly. “You know, I think you might have gotten smart too. Just a little bit.”
“Oh, you think so, do you?” Arthur leaned in for more kisses, but he was smiling too.
“Don’t let it go to your head, s’already too big,” he mumbled, doing the same.
Arthur’s eyes were heavily lidded when he said, “this future-sight of yours, I’d like to know more if you’re willing to tell me.”
With Merlin exhausted, Arthur naturally took first watch. Merlin lay with his head on his lap, the first blanket he ever wove tucked around him. Now that Arthur knew more about his time with the druids he was deeply honoured that the man had insisted he wear it. They were both sentimental fools, it seemed. He should have really sat apart from him, somewhere where he could see their surroundings better, especially with the rain echoing around the stone and cutting off his ability to hear, but he couldn’t bear it.
Merlin’s dark curls had parted around his ear, a rarer sight now than it used to be with his hair longer, Arthur found that he wanted to trace it with his fingers, press a kiss into it. He let him sleep, adoring the very soft snore, the restored heat of him.
Guilt gripped his guts then, Camelot was probably taken or burning or both and what was he doing? But what could he do, with Merlin so tired? In a place where the nights were so treacherous? He knew they would both need their strength for whatever lay ahead, the journey, Morgana, Lady Seren, dragons and a giant or two (maybe).
Your time together will be short , his own thoughts cut in. Enjoy it.
And if Merlin was going to be by his side again, he would try his very best to make his pain worth it, as daunting and as lofty as the task may be.
Notes:
The carvings on the wall are from pre-historic sites in Britain and Ireland.
The myths Arthur is speaking about are the likes of Boudica, Cú Chulainn, Achilles, Perseus -name a hero any hero. I love the idea of Arthur being a total entitled meathead growing up apart from when he was learning about mythical and historical heroes.
The fit-it tag really comes in strong here. Arthur is learning about magic, he knows his fate and he wants to stand side by side with Merlin so they can realise it together. In my personal opinion this is the place Arthur should have been in by S5 3
Chapter 16: For Me It Means Life For Others It's Death
Summary:
A Merlin POV flashback to his second autumn in the woods. Merlin has visions of Arthur's death in Camelot and understands that he will witness it through his own eyes. Not long after, Aodhán alerts him that something is wrong.
Notes:
TW for explicit animal death.
For Irish moon folklore, deer and our animal friends, see notes at the end.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Everything breathes and I know each breath
For me it means life for others it's death.
It's perfectly balanced, perfectly planned,
More than enough for this man.
It was his second autumn in the woods and the third consecutive frosty morning. Merlin had made full use of the harvest season this year, mushrooms of all kinds still abounded, he had adequate shelter and cloth to warm him and overall he had grown in power. Though over-prepared, still he stood afraid on the precipice of the season.
He tried to appreciate these last few mild weeks. On his journeys through the brown, orange and red place his wooded home had become, he sometimes heard the tell-tale throaty billowing that told him the stag (melodious little bleating one) or his kin were somewhere near, often accompanied by the clash of antlers, reminding him so much of the noise of practice swords striking on Camelot training grounds. Rutting season was a noisy time.
He had been too distracted by all of his preparations to do much divination and that morning he knew he would pay for it when the world suddenly tipped and he got a brief view of Aodhán jumping alarmed in the canopy before the visions took over.
Arthur with his neck slashed, the chaos of toppled market stalls all about him, falling to his knees as his hands fluttered weakly over the gushing wound, life leaving his eyes even as he remained upright. He is dead before he hits the ground.
Arthur pinned to the stone of Camelot’s streets, an axe through his stomach and blood upon his teeth as he implores someone to carry out some final decree.
Arthur’s hands missing the round table, leaving a bloody streak on the wood. He falls like a rag doll to the floor and bleeds out upon a bed of broken stained glass.
Merlin had lain in the leaves unmoving when he came to, asking himself what he had done to deserve this cursed and unending life. Whether it had been a dysfunction of his birth or a punishment for one of his many insults to the old religion, he did not know. When he lay there too long Aodhán hopped down and bounced on his chest indignantly, he wasn’t sure if this display was meant to shake him from his thoughts or he was demanding seed and worms from him.
He used the crystal and the stars to try and widen the scope of these visions and learn more. Arthur had recently taken up Excalibur and Merlin wished to prevent what he had seen via his connection to it. These were days of terrible inexpert fervour in which, despite his obsessive attempts, he learned little.
At first there was only a single new detail.
The moon, waxing and not long ago new, hung somewhere above in each vision: half-visible through the entrance to the market, overhead in the street, centred in the shattered glass of the hall. He had better control now when he used the methods his not-sister had taught him and he used this control to cut off the visions before the final blow. Among her many beliefs, Merlin’s mother had informed him that one bleeds more on a new moon and in the days proceeding it than any other time, just one of her many superstitions that placed the body and humanity in general as being inextricable from the patterns of nature. As a physician’s assistant he hadn’t particularly proven this theory; people bled, it was when and how attempts were made to stem it that determined whether they lived or died, but now Hunith’s warning weighed on him greatly.
He tried to use that same treacherous moon to divine these things further. He looked through the warped conjured glass of his small side window and found that the moon was presently new. A portent if ever he saw one, especially that he had seen it in this way, that he had failed to greet it properly outside as he should have ( ‘I see the new moon and the moon sees me, please leave me as whole and hale as you found me’ ). That it was barely more than a black disk, holding the old moon in its arms, also did not bode well. He sighed, he supposed that like the druids, he too would divine the fate of men though the moon, in that way maybe he was also a disciple of Taliesin. Already, with all of these bad omens summed up, he could tell much, and anxiety crawled into his ribs like a bear seeking its place for winter. It was this highly dangerous moon that showed him the second new detail, himself. These visions, it seemed, had been through his own eyes. It was a realisation similar and as horrible as those that led him to understand his immortal nature. Would he be reunited with Arthur only to witness his death? These visions too he did not care to see to the end, the outcome would be the same, he reasoned.
Warning calls from Aodhán snapped him from his ruminating one evening when the frost had properly taken hold. Merlin left his chair by the fire, staff in hand to investigate. Outside the bird immediately landed on his shoulder, then restless, he swooped ahead and called, swooped and called, urging him to follow. Forgetting to go back inside for one of the blankets, or the gloves (made of his unravelled and re-knitted green wool coat) that were ever present on his person in these colder months, he ran after him.
They found their friend the stag panting and fatally gored in the bracken and nettles. Merlin approached carefully, not wishing to startle him and cause any further hurt, but he didn’t particularly acknowledge him, too absorbed in pain and too far into the all-consuming pull of death.
He kneeled by his flank. “Blódseten! Blódseten!!” Merlin tried desperately, but as always the healing arts failed him, his magic was in disarray inside him, having no concept of how to mend a body in this way.
It was this useless shouting that started the animal rearing. The whites of his eyes were showing and his breathing was uneven and heavy as he tried to heave his body upright twice, three times. His antlers snagged on Merlin’s neckerchief, pulling him forward until it was ripped through into scraps. Hands on him he told him to lie down, that’s it’s alright, then he shushed him, gentling him in quieter and quieter tones until he was calmed.
He had not divined this, but even if he had it was unlikely he would have been able to prevent it. Powerless in so many ways, he sat and spoke reassurances to him, his hand stroking his russet pelt until it was over.
Merlin had not known his friend’s name because the stag had never thought to give himself one, which was often the way with animals. To mourn someone without a name was a quieter affair, he found, than it ought to be and in the end he selfishly took something for his own grief, the antlers that had been his friend and steed’s pride.
Merlin wondered, as he worried at Arthur’s stolen sigil with his fingers later in the cottage, whether he would do more selfish thievery to remember those who had gone, or would go, in the unending course of his life. The cold came and, lonely and desolate, he descended yet again with the season.
The years went by and everything proceeded, and would always proceed, in a state of unending grief, both for those passed and for those whose hearts were still yet beating.
Astray no more then east or west,
blizzards whipping my bare face,
assemble no more in some den,
a starved, pinched, raving madman,
but sheltered in that dappled arbour,
my haven, my winter arbour,
my refuge from the bare heath,
my royal fort, my king’s rath,
Every night I glean and raid
and comb the floor of the oak wood.
My hands work into leaf and rind,
roots, windfalls on the ground,
they rake through matted watercress
and grope among bog-berries,
cool brooklime, sorrel, damp moss,
wild garlic and raspberries,
apples, hazel-nuts, acorns,
the haws of sharp, jaggy hawthorns,
blackberries, the floating weed,
the whole store of the oak wood.
Keep me here, Christ, far away
from open ground and flat country.
Let me suffer the cold of glens.
I dread the cold of open plains.
The Frenzy of Sweeney, Translation by Seamus Heaney in Sweeney Astray, Section 58.
Notes:
I've added little pieces of folklore and belief to Merlin's background that are a bit of a geographic mixture but I've given him very Irish ideas about the moon, as recorded in various folklore projects I've been learning about. Seeing the new moon through glass was thought to be extra bad luck, the best thing to do with the new moon was to greet it with the prayer "I see the moon and the moon sees me..." out in the open because something was likely to befall you soon if you did not. I've adapted the prayer slightly to take out the christian elements. That it was "holding the old moon in its arms" means Merlin caught it just as it was exactly new and it was a perfect disk, like a full moon but entirely black, this was also exceedingly bad luck. Basically poor old Merlin is getting triple bad omens here.
There are additional beliefs about bleeding associated with the new moon so when he sees in his vision that the moon was still fairly new over Camelot when Arthur dies, he can't help but remember his mother's superstitions about this.Usually if a stag is injured badly in a fight he has more of a chance of dying later due to infection than anything else. What happens to Merlin's stag is very much a freak accident.
A little deep but sometimes we lose our animal friends in very difficult ways, I guess this is me using Merlin/Myrddin's closeness with animals to explore that as much as it explores the constant state of grief he's in because of his gift/curse and all of the people he's already lost. The animals in my life are some of the best people I've known and I know I'm definitely not alone in feeling this way, grieving them was/still is an oddly complicated thing. Hug your animal friends (if they're comfortable with it)!
Chapter 17: I've Seen Your World With These Very Eyes
Summary:
Arthur and Merlin cross the Giant's Battlefield, Merlin tells Arthur how his life and destiny are very literally written in the stars. They step foot on Kilgharrah's mountain and into a mysterious mist that seems to affect Arthur's memory.
Notes:
For Merlin's names, the pole star and dragon's breath see the notes at the end.
Also I manged to write and finish this chapter off when the weather was exactly the same as described, even months and months apart. I did the same for the next chapter. It's currently thundering now and I love it >:)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Paying their respects to the grove, to Arthur’s surprise, had been little more than bows and an apology, and not at all in line with the more than suggestive themes of the place as he had secretly expected. He admitted to himself that his imagination may have run a little wild on this occasion. The lewd figures stared back impassively as they bowed, they cared little for them and anything they might have done, it seemed.
The rain had stopped sometime in the night and although the sky was smothered in an unending blanket of cloud it was bright and glaring and the heat was rising rapidly. Merlin said he felt a storm was on the way. Supporting his prediction, the woods were agitated and alive, roots tripped him once or twice and holly bushes took a liking to Arthur (in that they seemed to relish scratching him). The creatures too seemed either ill at ease or full of activity, there was so much blackbird song, for example, that Merlin wondered if Aodhán had abandoned his post and followed them.
With the heat, the wet of the rain was quickly wicked off, though this did nothing for the humidity. It was set to be an uncomfortable day for travelling.
When they emerged there was no sign of their enemies. Arthur’s ash stick still lay in the pine needles at the foot of the tall tree, Arthur took it up again and resumed his search in same said tree. As he had guessed, Excalibur was not there.
Arthur learned that Merlin had been trying to divine where they would find it in the stars the night before, every attempt at scrying it in the present had failed without explanation.
“I know I can’t be one hundred percent sure,” he said as Arthur dug at the litter on the ground with his boot, hoping that he would suddenly find it buried in the pine needles. “But I think the sword has to be with Kilgharrah.”
“It’s a risk, but if you have a feeling I’m willing to bet on it,” Arthur said, stopping.
“There was a time when you used to tease me about my feelings,” he smiled, eyes narrowing and edging toward him.
“I can keep doing it, if you’d like. Mer lin, is this another one of your funny feelings? How could you know a thing like that?” he poked his back with his walking stick.
Merlin wheeled around suddenly and met the stick with his staff, the wood striking together. He smiled at him, playful, mischievous. They made some circling steps,their eyes locked until the warlock, mouth twitching a little before he moved, feigned for the king’s stomach. Arthur parried the strike easily and used the movement to quickly whirl behind him, locking him in, weapon across his chest.
“Ash, baleful in the hand of a warrior,” the defeated man recited, settling against his hold.
Arthur wrinkled his nose, “did you foresee our little spar?”
“I might have, I foresee a lot of things.”
“And you still lost?”
Merlin shrugged and turned his head to plant a kiss on Arthur’s lips. “I wouldn’t call it losing.”
“Did you foresee this too?” he asked, voice low as he relished the spoils of his victory, feeling just a little drunk on the smell of him with his nose to his neck. He realised he could very easily suck a love bite there if he wanted, or nibble at one of his ears. He decided on the latter, moving from his earlobe up the ridge of cartilage, tasting all the while.
“Not telling!” Merlin teased, though he gasped and wriggled, clearly very sensitive.
He managed to wriggle enough away to turn around. Facing each other now, Arthur had the walking stick around his back. They kissed again, slowly and without any pretence. Endlessly grateful for their strange fate, Arthur tried not to think of what would have been had he lost him last night, but the thoughts came anyway and they were distressing enough to make him drop the ash stick and hold him tightly. Merlin seemed to understand and he sank into him, breathing deeply, putting his arms around his back and a large hand in his hair.
The Giant’s Battlefield stretched on and on. Dry now it was an entirely different colour than it was yesterday, so light grey that the upper ridges of it would have blended in with the cloud, like the sea and the sky sometimes do, but for the scattered pines and heather that grew there.
They walked largely out in the open, though Arthur would have preferred to go along the river, it was too steep a fall to its coursing, white way. They instead chose to move from one small collection of trees to the next, skirting the truly massive boulders that lay all around. Arthur suddenly wondered if this was how the place had got its unnecessarily fear inducing name, these things were certainly giants.
Amongst the trees, russet crossbills crossed the air above them, from pine to pine. A pine marten watched them without fear, standing half-upright on a rotting trunk. Once, within a small copse with much heather and broken stone, Merlin pointed out a quickly disappearing adder, the brown pointed waves on its scales matching the lines on the walls of the stone circle, miles back now.
Even with so much to draw away his attention, Arthur hadn’t failed to notice that his companion had not long ago started sniffing and snuffling, in fact he had done it intermittently throughout their travels, but now he really seemed to be suffering.
Having just left behind a copse of pine and juniper the man gave a sudden and powerful sneeze, having to stop to do so. He tried to resume his walking only to sneeze again.
When Arthur looked, the end of his nose was decidedly red, so were his eyes. He seemed a little exacerbated. “ Mer lin, do you have hay fever ?” he asked, incredulous.
“Ugh, a bit, why?”
“You’re immortal.”
“But I’m not infallible!” he sniffed, banging down his staff. “Not completely anyway...”
Arthur blinked, his mouth open, head shaking. “That the Gods and magic conspired to make a creature such as you, I don’t think I’ll ever fathom.” He thought back to their first day travelling together, that he had thought about Merlin being both gentle and strong, that he was reassured to learn he was still clumsy, still averse to causing other living things harm. Now he found he still suffered from hay fever. Even with this new revelation of his immortality, all of these very normal, very Merlin things about him were still true. He chewed on all of this before saying, “you talk of being immortal, but you should never lose that.”
“Lose what? My magic? My hay fever?”
“Yes, your hay fever. You’re very human Merlin, though you deny it. It’s that you shouldn’t lose.”
That seemed to hit him hard. His hands went over his chest and stomach, clutching, and he laughed and shook his head a little, as though it was all bittersweet. Arthur understood then, as much as he could understand, that the question of his continued humanity was loaded with an unknowable pain. “Mightn’t be easy, there’s a lot of life ahead of me,” the immortal mumbled eventually. “I might have to lose it, humanity I mean, become something else just so I can bear it.”
“Mm,” Arthur frowned deeply, but the beginnings of an idea was stirring in his mind. “If my legacy will be as enduring as your prophecy says, maybe there’s something I can do about that.”
“It’s not just my prophecy, I’ve heard it from others, druids, Kilgharrah… Seems anyone powerful enough in the Old Religion knows about it… Wait, what do you mean ‘something you can do about that?’”
“Not sure yet,” he said thoughtfully, saying the man’s own words back to him. “I’ll have to think about it.”
“That’s never good,” Merlin sniffed, managing a smile.
Arthur ignored him, he decided a change of topic was in order. “In the meantime, tell me about your names, when you were half-out of it yesterday you said you wanted to tell me, I would like to hear them.”
“Are you sure, sire?” he raised his eyebrows. “Y’might be listening a while.”
“Yes I’m sure, Sylvestris .”
“That’s Merlinus Sylvestris to you,” he countered and then he was off, tipping his head from one side to the other with every name he listed, his pensive mood seemingly forgotten. “Also Merlin, but you know that one; Emrys, what most of the druids call me; Myrddin Wyllt, that’s what they call me here.”
“I like that one,” Arthur cut in with his honesty again.
“What, Myrddin?”
“Mm, suits you.”
Myrddin was trying not to blush. “Ughh, what else?” he asked himself.
“Good God, there’s more?!”
“Ambrosius, Merlinus Caledonius, Merlynum. Gwendydd has called me Llallawg and Llallwgan before and in a vision I had someone called Alan referred to me as Suibhne, but I’m sure it was a case of mistaken identity.”
Arthur puffed out air from his cheeks slowly. “I’m pleased I don’t have so many. Arthur and Once and Future King is enough.”
“Iron Bear, they call you here, sometimes Great Bear.”
“Excuse me?”
“Arthmael, that’s what it means, bear. I’ve also heard you called Brawn. All in all I guess that’s five so far.”
“Ridiculous wizard, add that to your collection.”
“Hey, it wasn’t me who came up with them. And don’t think just because you have fewer names than me that you get away lightly. You’re quite the topic of discussion, particularly here. Gwendydd said your birth was heralded by a red comet. Even the bear in the sky, Ursa Major, one of your namesakes, contains a round shape, divined as your famed round table. It’s been in the stars all along, Arthur. And taking the Little Bear and the way it’s rising, year by year, it’s long known that you will lift your country’s fame above the pole star.”
Arthur felt more than a little dizzy. “The stars ?! My name… The round table… Merlin, what.. ? And that last part… Are you composing poetry now, you mad man?”
“I guess I am,” he shrugged.
“I never could have imagined any of this, not for a second,” Arthur admitted after a few moments of confusion and processing. He watched the crossbills, then the stone before his feet as he moved, trying to ground himself. “And to do it all with the plucky peasant who dared defy me all those years ago… That you say it’s all there in the stars…”
Beside him, Merlin was mouthing ‘plucky’ to himself, clearly vexed.
“How can you be certain your interpretations are right?”
“I can’t. I can get it wrong. But all divinations have influence over the world, that’s what Gwendydd told me. If you expect something to happen you may make it come to pass, if you try to prevent it you might inadvertently be the cause of it, or make someone else the cause of it.” This last part he said a little bitterly, like he was speaking from experience, and Arthur knew he was talking about Morgana again.
Arthur decided to free him from his sudden bout of rumination, something he was learning he was good at. “And if you’re a powerful druidess who adopts the prophesied warlock and gets him back on his feet enough to face his destiny anew, you’d have influence that way too.”
Merlin scratched the back of his head in amazement and laughed. But Arthur guessed it was more complicated than that, that Merlin must have clawed his way back largely on his own, animal friends and adopted sisters notwithstanding. He closed the gap between them, put his arm across his back and kissed this impossible man, the seeming custodian of his fate, on his temple.
The mist on the mountain was so thick it looked as though half of the land had disappeared into the sky, only the foot of it and the jagged peak were truly visible. They were close to the end of the Giant’s Battlefield when they noticed the mist gathering, coming down off the mountain. As the land rose, the distance they could see grew smaller and smaller.
Finally, Merlin raised his head and frowned. “I’ve never seen mist like this here,” he murmured, voicing this concern. “There’s something about it… Something’s happened, I know it has.”
“This is the dragon’s mountain, I presume?”
“It is.”
“Do you think it’s um… a magic mist?”
“Not quite, but now that we’re closer I think I can guess what it is.”
Arthur suddenly wasn’t sure what the man was babbling about, he tried to remember the thread of their conversation, but it was gone. “What what is?”
Merlin’s head snapped to him and the king found himself under close examination.
“Arthur, what were we just talking about?” he asked, serious.
“We were ugh… magic mist, you were saying it was magic mist.”
“No, now I know for certain, it’s dragon’s breath.”
“Dragon’s breath ?”
“I don’t know much about it, I’ve only heard stories. But when a dragon is sleeping... or maybe they do it deliberately..? Anyway, they can do this,” he said, raising his palm upright to the air. “It can cause temporary confusion, memory loss and the like. If I’m right, I think you’re starting to feel the effects.”
“Wonderful,” Arthur rolled his eyes, throwing his hands as best he could.
Beside him Merlin was looking straight into the white, fists clenched, his staff made a sound as his hand tightened around it. “This could be bad, for us and for Kilgharrah, to have done this... he-he’s probably hurt.”
“Could Morgana and the other dragon really-?”
“Years ago I might have said no, but she’s grown more powerful. Used to be that she used sly tricks, enchanted objects, creatures and the like,” with this he grimaced, likely with the memory of some old pain or pains, Arthur was sure now she had caused him plenty of it. “Recently she’s turned to other kinds of sorcery. She might have the power now to do it.” He struck his staff down hard, meaning to resume their upward journey.
A great crashing rumble sounded all about. Both men went stock still, Merlin like Arthur was likely imagining the same thing, giants being roused from their slumber below the earth, soon to spring up and resume whatever battle they were in the middle of.
It took them a little bit too much time to realise it had been thunder.
“Did you do that?” Arthur asked.
“No,” he said, craning his head to the sky as the echo petered out. Though no rain came, yet. “It’s that storm I told you about.”
“I would remember if you said something about a storm,” Arthur pouted.
He didn’t understand what was making Merlin look so anxious.
Merlin, they found, was unaffected by the breath, whether this was owing to the will of the dragon’s, his nature as a sorcerer or some trick of his immortality they couldn’t know. They had to assume as well that Morgana and Seren, if they were here too, could be similarly unaffected. Given the danger, he instructed Arthur expressively to stay by him. They set up a system of calling and answering even as they stood side by side. They talked often about their mission, though as their visibility closed in, they did this at the risk of alerting their enemies, who could come at them from any direction undetected. Arthur wasn’t quite sure where they were, there was no birdsong here and tree after tree (all pines now), came at them without warning, not just because they occasionally moved on their own, but because the mist was too thick to see them ahead.
Arthur stared into the white, finding something familiar about it, getting a gripping feeling in his heart without a clear reason. He slipped his fingers underneath the odd blanket around him and beneath his tunic to the skin of his chest, feeling the need to put pressure there, to settle his over fast heart. He felt a smooth and raised scar there, taking up a good portion of his left breast. He quickly unlaced the garment to peer at it, he didn’t remember this wound.
Then he realised someone was talking, calling his name. Beside him there was a man resembling his manservant.
“Merlin is that you?!” he exclaimed, confused beyond measure, taking in his beard and his generally strange appearance. “Why do you look like a Saxon?”
“Oh dear,” Saxon-Merlin paled, stopping.
“Arthur, it’s Kilgarrah’s breath, it’s messing with your head, remember?”
“Who?” and then it was all back, how could he have forgotten? He laced up his tunic again. “Oh, your dragon. Kin you said, kin.”
“Yes! That Kilgharrah.”
“Good, good. I’m glad I found you, Excalibur is in the fores-” alright, maybe not all back. “Wait, no, of course you know that.”
“Um, right, let’s see if we can’t do something about this breath,” he said, rolling up his sleeves.
“And when you’re done with that be sure to polish my armour, then my boots.”
Merlin looked back at him, not a little horrified.
“I’m joking. But do something, please,” he mumbled into his hands, rubbing at his face. “Mind’s muddled.”
Merlin closed his eyes in concentration, hand outstretched, then his eyelids flew open again, his irises brightening to gold. Nothing happened. He shuffled his feet, licked his lips. “ Blæst !” a wind raised their hair and clothes but was quickly gone, there was no change, he prepared to try again. “ Byre !” at this a sudden howling rose up and pine needles were whipped into the air, Arthur raised his arms to shield his eyes, straining against the wind almost horizontally. Abruptly, it stopped and Arthur almost fell face first to the ground.
“Oh no,” the warlock said. His hair stood on end and he was making it worse by running his hands through it in his panicked state.
“What?”
“I can’t hold it back. Looks like the only way through is through.”
A voice sounded then, far away in the mist but decidedly ahead of them, Morgana’s voice calling for Seren. Without needing to communicate, they went swiftly in another direction.
“Things could be worse, you know,” Merlin whispered to him as they left.
“How could they be worse?!” Arthur hissed back.
“They couldn’t, I lied.”
For some reason Merlin was walking a little ahead of him. Arthur overtook him. His servant was unarmed, why was he always charging headlong into danger? Then he realised that they were alone.
“We’ve lost them,” Arthur said, stopping, and his servant collided with his back.
“Morgana and Seren?” he asked, coming around to his side, though Arthur didn’t look at him. He was scanning the white before him.
“Morgana and who? No, Mer lin, are you alright in the head? The knights! Leon, Owain, Pelinore? Really Mer-”
“They’re not here, Arthur,” the boy said slowly, as if he was talking to a child.
“What do you mean, ‘not here?’” he repeated, he was about to turn around and shake him in his annoyance but… Odd, for some reason he had been holding his sword with his off hand. He switched it back, dropping the walking stick he had in the process, though the balance felt wrong, like the sword wasn’t his...
“I should try again,” the other was saying, but still the prince had no idea what he was babbling on about. “I think this might work.”
Arthur looked at him in askance and bewilderment. “What might-?”
Merlin, or someone that looked like Merlin, came into view with his hand raised and before Arthur’s very eyes…
“Āfiereþ misthelm !”
The mist about them retreated in a perfect circle before rushing back, disturbed and swirling but no less thick than it had been.
Arthur’s heart was loud in his ears, surely Merlin didn’t just-? He backed away slowly.
Then not-Merlin caught sight of him, he had concern and fear painted all over his face but that wasn’t right, which one of them was the threat here? “Arthur?” he called his name softly and cautiously, taking a step forward.
“You’re a sorcerer,” Arthur swallowed, still backing away.
“Oh Gods,” he paled.
All this time, all this time Merlin was -
“Arthur-”
“Stay back,” he warned, raising the unbalanced sword, finding that his arm was close to a dead weight. He was injured, how had he been injured? The answer would seem to be right in front of me . Still he couldn’t quite believe it.
“Fine,” Merlin said placatingly, hands up, though between one finger and thumb he balanced some kind of dangerous looking staff, free fingers splayed around it. “I’ll stay back, but everything is alright. You’ve known I have magic for years now. We’re looking for Excalibur, this mist is affecting your memory.”
This name rang a bell, something shining, something deadly but trusted flashed through his mind before it was gone. He was trying to get into his mind.
“I would never consort with a sorcerer,” Arthur declared hoarsely, finding his voice pinched with emotion. “Now that I really look at you, you don’t even look like him, he doesn’t have a beard, he’s a boy, barely a man, he’s-”
“Older now, you are too, Arthur… But ouch, really? I’m not that much younger than you, you know.”
It sounded like Merlin, but he wouldn’t be fooled.
He raised his sword further, swinging it when the thing in the Merlin skin got too close. What had happened to the real Merlin? Fear for the servant he dare not call a friend, but who was emphatically his friend, came upon him. He wanted to ask the thing what he had done with him, but it would surely just attempt to ensorcell him further. He would find him, if he was still alive. He stilled, gathering strength to bolt, finding when he took stock that his muscles were aching deeply. Then he ran, not-Merlin calling and running after him. He swore that branches made a grab for him as he fled.
Arthur was running but he wasn’t sure from what. A quick assessment told him he was nowhere natural, he had been hit in the chest by a branch that seemed to move of its own volition, roots too tripped him and he had ended up hands first in the pine needles too many times to count. Sorcery, that was the only explanation. All was white too, so obscured that he had no choice but to go headlong into the unknown. He kept running.
Suddenly there was a grey smudge in the mist ahead, turning into a black one as he approached. It moved, formed into the shape of a person. He made to slide behind a tree but didn’t account for the aching, the unexpected heaviness of his legs and he snapped some debris at his feet.
“Is someone there?!” a woman’s voice called out, authority behind it. “Announce yourself! Come no closer!”
“Morgana?!” he exclaimed. It was his father’s ward, the girl, now woman he was half-raised with.
“Arthur?!” she shouted in surprise, tone changing immediately. “Where are you?”
“Here!” he said, stepping away, going to raise his arm but- ouh, that was a mistake. Why was his arm so sore? It was like he had been running and fighting for his life, but he couldn’t remember, maybe he had been.
“Oh thank God!” she gasped. Her figure sharpened and she came toward him, making no secret of being relieved. Her eyes were wide like she was scared of every shadow. She was proud, rarely did she show fear like this. “I know this is going to sound crazy to you, Arthur, but-but the trees, everything here, I think they’re alive- I mean they move. Tell me please, where in the bloody hell are we!?”
“I don’t know. But we’re getting out of here,” he reassured her, a hand upon her shoulder. He noted she was wearing odd, dark leather armour, trousers and a black fur drapped and belted across her body of an animal he could not identify. His own clothing was strange too, and he could feel tell-tale scratchiness of stubble on his chin, like he hadn’t shaved in days.
She nodded, her face going steely. “Last thing I remember, Gwen and I were in the gardens, we were just finishing breakfast on the lawn...”
“I…” Arthur started, but he couldn’t pinpoint what he had been doing before they were dropped here in this blank place. Merlin, something about Merlin, but that didn’t narrow it down, there was always something about Merlin.
A root rose from the ground before he could warn her and swept low at the height of their ankles, Arthur jumped but she tripped, though she caught herself. “You see?! That root, it moved!”
“I saw it,” he reassured her, moving, deciding down the mountain was a good direction. “Stay close.”
Her hand went around his sore forearm, immediately tightening. As he winced in pain he was sure for a second he remembered something, stained glass shattering, a white beast lunging at him.
“I think I remember now, we were attacked,” he told her. “Some monster came through the window into the hall, landed on the round table.”
“A monster?! What kind of monster? And where in the castle is there a round table? Arthur, are you sure?”
“The round table, Morgana,” he started to bicker with her. “Of course you know it, it’s the one I had made when I was crowned ki-” Then it all came back to him, and it was like iron had been placed in his heart.
She was watching him, her dark brows knitted, waiting for an answer.
Slowly, he shrugged out of her grip.
“Arthur? What are you-?” she started, eyes wide in confusion, her fear mounting again.
He thought he would never see her like this again; it was hard to see the person he had known in the enemy he had gained, but faced with her like this, as she had been, she was so painfully familiar.
“It’s alright, Morgana,” he tried to keep his voice even, hoping she couldn’t hear his heart thundering in his chest. He took a step backwards.
“It’s alright? What’s alright?!” she demanded. “How is any of this alright? You don’t even know where we are!”
“It’s dangerous ahead,” he lied, thinking quickly. “You have to stay here.”
“What danger is there?” she came after him but looked this way and that at the mist as she did so.
He could kill her now, he could kill her and everything would be over. “I need you to stay,” he said instead.
“Arthur, you have to tell me, what is it?!”
He gripped his sword involuntarily, his body reacting for him.
She caught sight of his hand and took in the way he backed away from her. “You dumb brute, I bet you don’t even have a plan!” she accused, clearly misinterpreting it all as a desire to launch into some battle. “Why will you not answer my question?!”
“It’s- I don’t have time to explain,” he tried. “I have to go.”
“No, I’m coming with you. I have a dagger, see?”
And Arthur did see her dagger, sheathed in black leather at her waist.
He shook his head, stepping conspicuously away this time.
She changed tact. “Don’t! I’m frightened, please,” she implored.
“I’m sorry,” he choked out, then he took a few more steps back and fled from her, into the mist and beyond her view.
“Arthur!!” she called after him, but she was going in the wrong direction.
The ground was suddenly softer, gravel or sand. Smelling water, he stepped forward. Without any warning he came upon a woman on her haunches, her feet in the shallow water of a very still lake, only a tiny section of it visible in the mist. She was peering at her reflection closely in the surface, completely still as she did so. She was wearing a suit of armour so black that it was like a hole in the world, her brown hair was long and loose over it. There was a crossbow and quiver upon her back and a hooked axe and helmet just behind her on the shore, just out of arm’s reach. She was the strangest vision, so strange that he wondered if he was dreaming. Something about her hair and her form, clearly slight even under the armour, reminded him of the young Lady Seren, who he had not seen since he was a youth.
If this was the young noble lady, or anyone else for that matter, it was likely they were equally lost in this strange place.
She didn’t seem to notice his approach, he tried to alert her to his presence by clearing his throat but there was no reaction. He took a careful step forward, then another. Then he noticed the back of her head. It was caved in, flat, the white of bone visible. At her neck where her hair was parted there was a deep gash, and something, something wriggled there beneath the ashen skin. Her fingers went up as if to dig it out. He hadn’t realised he had taken a further step forward until he saw her face come into view in the water, and the almost white of her pupils fix on his in the reflection.
He started, this was indeed the young Lady Seren, but she wasn’t human, not anymore.
Her head snapped around to his, and accompanied by splashes she was reaching for her axe, her pale bony hand closed around it before he could kick it away. With barely a pause she was upright and swinging it at him, displaying strength that should surely be beyond her form. On the third swing she would have slashed his stomach if he had not sucked in, the sand having almost fatally messed up his quick footwork. He jumped back, sword raised, ignoring the pain that shot through him.
She growled and advanced, incensed.
And then all at once she fell to her hands and knees, gasping, a papery, inhuman sound. She looked up to see him retreating and her eyes went wide. “Wait!” she managed and with a single movement she took the axe and flung in it, spinning away from her. It clattered on stone somewhere out of his limited view. Her arms went up and she tore at the back of her neck, crying out as she extracted something black and wriggling. She cast it with fury into the lake, causing the smallest ripple to lap at the shore.
Arthur hesitated, maybe the thing had been enchanting her, maybe she needed help…
“She won’t let us sleep,” she hissed into the sand, half-collapsed in the semblance of a bow. “She won’t let me go.”
His mind screamed that it was a trap, yet another part told him that it was her who was trapped.
“Ensure that they sleep, please. They died for one man’s vengeance... A whole kingdom... Just one man,” she rasped, still not looking at him. “Now they wake for one woman’s. I swore a vengeance of my own, when next we face each other, Pendragon, end me before I end you.”
And before he could try to speak or understand what had happened to her she was on her feet again and walking into the mist. He heard her pick up her weapon and helmet, for a while she was a small grey pillar fading in the white, and then she was gone.
White, everything was white, like the white pain of the curse Seren put on him, the lonely place she had sent him as his whole being blazed in agony. He had no idea where he was. The last thing he remembered was Camelot under its second siege, he had resolved to leave in search of the prophesied sword, the one that Merlin told him he was destined to wield.
He held a sword now but this felt like no great weapon, it was unbalanced and by the looks of it was the standard fare from the castle, its grip well-worn at that. He raised his arm and pain radiated through it. This was not the injury he had left the castle with. He switched the sword to his off hand.
His clothes too were unfamiliar, the red tunic he at least would have chosen for himself but the strange stole around him was unlike anything he owned.
He heard movement, the barest brush of foliage, then a directionless groaning creak that made his hair stand on end. The mist moved a little, a swirling with no apparent cause. He listened but that damn ringing, the noise that had plagued him for the last few years, stymied his efforts.
He walked on and it seemed he had been cast into purgatory, the woods going on and on, the mist never lifting. His aches spoke to his being very much alive, however.
“Arthur!” he heard someone shout his name, he wasn’t sure from where. “Arthur!!”
I know that voice , he thought, heart leaping, stomach dropping. He didn’t move, fearing he would accidentality go in the opposite direction.
And then he was there, backing into view, a staff in his hand, a similar but green and brown stole, or maybe it was a travelling blanket, over his shoulders, layers of rough unfamiliar clothing below it and… bare feet, feet he swore weren’t touching the ground fully. He was bearded, his hair was longer, he looked older. He had a hand cupped to his face, calling out Arthur’s name before running his hand through his hair in clear despair. When he finally saw him he seemed to go half-limp in relief.
“Oh Gods, there you are!” he rushed forward, but he stopped short as if remembering something. He assessed him, craning down a little, taking tiny steps forward like he was approaching a scared child. “Arthur?”
“Merlin,” Arthur gasped, confused, grateful, fearful, sorry, so very sorry, all of his breath gone from him in an instant.
Every day since he had last seen this man had been so… he didn’t know what they had been, only what they lacked, and they had lacked so much.
He had just left a Camelot on fire, blood on her streets, her people screaming, his people screaming.
He didn’t mean to fall to his knees, but everything, everything-
“It’s alright,” his wayward friend was saying, dropping down too, his hands holding his arms tenderly, their foreheads almost touching.
“I’m sorry, Merlin,” the king choked.
“There’s nothing for you to be sorry about,” he soothed without hesitation, a bittersweet smile on his face.
Yes there was, there was so much to be sorry about.
Arthur betrayed Merlin, he should have pleaded for him that horrible, cold night. Now, lost and alone, he had no choice but to plead for his help. Merlin had every right to turn him away. Arthur didn’t rise, he would prostrate himself at the man’s feet if he had to, let go of all pride and beg. He needed to find the sword.
“Morgana,” he swallowed hard, his voice high and stained. “She led an army straight into Camelot, I need-”
“I know, I know,” the other hushed him, a thumb rubbing a circle into his good shoulder, deep blue eyes looking, deliberately, calmingly, into his. “This mist is affecting your memory, we’re trying to find Excalibur so you can defeat them.”
He raised himself up a little, so he knew, he knew and they were going to find it together. “Yes, yes, I need to find the sword,” he agreed hoarsely, surprised and grateful beyond measure.
Merlin stood and offered him his hand to help him up, his hand was cold, Merlin’s hands had always been cold.
They walked together, side by side. But an acute uncertainty overtook him, a feeling foreign to him just a handful of years ago, now all too familiar. He told himself he shouldn’t speak it aloud, shouldn’t give it words, but words came anyway. “Back then... You said I was destined to wield this sword... But what if I cannot pull it from the stone?” he asked him, low, like it was a secret, like he should never impart that much weakness to anybody, not even Merlin, the person he could trust with all things.
“Oh...” Merlin stopped as if realising something, there was a sadness in that small noise too. “Fine, close enough... Listen to me, it’s yours, always has been, there’s never been any doubt that you can wield it.”
Arthur processed this and nodded, relieved. If Merlin believed in him, if he said he could, then Arthur would believe it too.
“Come on then, cabbage head, we’ll find it together,” he smiled kindly, a hand on his back.
The king let himself be led and let himself be soothed too by his friend’s gentle touch, though he felt so undeserving of it.
Then beside him Merlin was looking apprehensive, he cleared his throat. “Um, by the way... The sword is not in the stone… The Great Dragon has it, probably, it’s a long story.”
“The Great Dragon?!”
“I did say it was a long story, I’m afraid if you can’t remember you’ll just have to trust me,” he said sheepishly, shrugging.
“I do,” he told him, because it was true.
Arthur wanted to tell him he had missed him but he didn’t have the courage to do so just yet. He hoped after they found the sword and retook Camelot there would be time.
When they found it the cave entrance was startlingly wide, as wide maybe as the citadel (he found it useful to measure the unfamiliar with the familiar), though the mist prevented him from making a full assessment. Around the mouth were hanging ferns, moss, and smaller clingers like pennywort and ivy-leaved toadflax that grew in the cracks of the walls and the blurry, inverted steps of the ceiling, this last feature showing the downward curve, the descent of its interior. Below it was rocky, and where bracken could not grow there were stalks of red valerian. This was indeed where the mist issued from, disturbed and stirring around the entrance.
“Do you remember why we’re here?” the older, bearded, blanketed Merlin asked him, as they peered down into the grey shadows where the green extended along the floor until Arthur could no longer see it.
“To find the sword,” he answered.
“Alright good, hang on to that thought.”
Arthur nodded.
“I’m going to speak to him, the dragon I mean, it won’t be in a language you can understand. I need you not to be startled when I do it.”
Arthur snorted lightly, though his heart was still very heavy, his mind on his kingdom. “When have I ever been startled ?”
For some reason that had his old servant laughing at the sky. “I guess you must have grown into wearing your heart on your sleeve, don’t think I haven’t noticed.”
“I’m… really not sure what you’re on about.”
“I believe you. Alright, ready?”
“Wait. If we’re about to go into some danger I wanted to tell you-”
“I don’t mean to deny you whatever you’re about to say, especially, um, this version of you, I guess I could say, but I promise you’ve said it, and more,” he reassured, his smile wide, a little sad, but achingly, achingly fond.
Arthur finally understood what people meant when they claimed one or the other internal organ was doing somersaults.
“Once this mist is gone, you can tell me what thing you were going to tell me,” he continued.
“It’s a deal,” Arthur agreed, wondering at what he could possibly have said to make the beloved man smile at him like that, he looked forward to finding out.
They went inside, sliding down the scree, helping each other along, going down, down until the stone levelled out to a platform.
A wind moaned through the huge cave, then did so again, and again, turning the stone into some hellish bellowing instrument.
“Is that… snoring?” Arthur whispered into his companion’s ear, barely able to see him in the dark now, the daylight a jagged panel of white above and behind them.
“It’s… Yup that’s um, that’s snoring.”
“It’s asleep?”
“We need light, I’m going to use a spell,” he forewarned him.
“Do what you need to.”
An orb of white-blue light appeared before them, edging them and all the peaks and plains of this huge place in blue to the limits of its cast and leaving all else black. It looked so much like the thing that had guided him in that cave when he was trying to find a cure for- oh .
The dragon’s form came into relief, utterly massive, its terrible scales all agleam even through the shifting mists. It was curled like a cat might be in slumber directly below them in the hollowed base of the cavern, eyes closed. It was crested and horned, its spine ridged. It had no hoard, as Arthur thought it might.
“He really is asleep,” Merlin said incredulously on his right. Then he stepped in front of Arthur, his posture changed and the sound that issued forth from this relatively scrawny man was entirely unexpected. Arthur knew they were words but he couldn’t be asked to spell it. The echo was clear, the rock crying out his words for longer, surely, than was natural. It was trust alone that gave him cause not to fear it, or the man it came from. The king could not distinguish the power of sorcerers from dragonlords, but in his inexpert opinion, as impossible as it was, this seemed like the latter.
Nothing happened, the dragon snored on.
Merlin furrowed his brow, shuffled a little with his feet and licked his lips in preparation in a way that was reassuringly Merlin, and shouted out more words, deep from his chest. Nothing happened, he repeated his shuffling motions, glancing worriedly around. “I’m going to try something different,” he said. “Āfweċeþ !!”
A deep groan reverberated through the cavern and rattled Arthur’s chest, there was a pause and then the dragon’s wings stretched out, spanning the space. Its maw opened putting its huge, pointed teeth on display as it gave another drawn out moan, a powerful yawn, he realised. The dragon started to raise its head. Arthur did not rightly know how he had come to stand here in his immense cave with the man who saved his life, looking down upon a waking dragon, the dragon that attacked Camelot no less, but he stood ready.
It brought its head level with them and its eyes opened, reflecting yellow disks fixed and contracted on them, looking first at Merlin then at him.
The view stirred a memory, a smaller dragon upon the round table, its eyes on him, on Excalibur. Then he remembered it all, the attack, his flight from Camelot to find the stolen sword, the forest, Merlin . Despite the dragon before them, Arthur stared at the straight back of his wonderful, impossible companion and his heart swelled; Arthur had been a different man in the year of Camelot’s second siege and he was grateful for Merlin’s gentle treatment of him.
“Young warlock!” the dragon boomed. “I understand you are here on a quest.”
“I… A quest?” Merlin faltered.
“Fear not for I have the thing you seek,” he said, his inhuman tone satirical.
There was a glint of something below and slowly, Excalibur floated upright to the platform, a pale light surrounding it, more beautiful than Arthur had ever seen it.
“You had it this whole time?!” Merlin burst, wrenching it from the air, causing it to lose its otherworldly gleam, and waving it about as he chewed out the beast. “What, have you been using it as a toothpick or something!? And you spelled yourself, why!?”
“It was so I was not compelled to come when you called. You have ignored your destiny for too long, Merlin. This journey with King Arthur was essential.”
“What?!” the warlock shouted anew, sword waving high. “So you holed up here to give us some quality time together?!”
He crossed his claws where he reclined and looked for all the world like he was smiling. Arthur tried not to shiver.
Merlin shook his head balefully. “Interfering is what it is. How many lives might have been lost in Camelot in all that time? If you had just brought it to him, or me-”
“Your king would have surely died fighting alone for his kingdom!” Kilgharrah cut through his words. “The only one who could have convinced you was Arthur himself and he needed time to do it.”
Merlin was about to protest when Arthur, who could hang back no longer, cleared his throat. Merlin moved aside for him, handing him Excalibur as he did so with hilariously little ceremony, clearly too occupied with being angry at this beast to endow the moment with any particular importance. Still as he passed it to him Arthur felt a wave of relief and triumph, the thing he had set out to find was found and now their enemies could be defeated. He raised his gaze from the sword to the dragon, whose intent gaze was upon him.
“Ah, the other side of the coin, at last,” the dragon said with satisfaction, its voice as otherworldly as any Arthur had ever heard as it tipped its massive scaled head toward him.
“Ugh, hello,” Arthur said, taking a few more cautious steps forward, putting Excalibur back into its scabbard at his side, he now had two swords. “If I understand correctly, you held Excalibur here to ensure Merlin and I were reunited… Are you responsible for all of this prophecy business?”
“I forged Excalibur. And I’m sure you’ll find the responsibility is Merlin’s, and yours .” The laugh that followed almost had Arthur stumbling. Almost. “You are forces in this world inexorably tied to one another, it was fate that brought you together once more, I was merely its instrument on this occasion.”
Merlin scoffed loudly, but the anger on his face did not quite match the lightness of his words. “I have other things I’d call you.”
“As I’m sure you do,” the dragon narrowed his eyes at him.
“But you tried to kill me once,” Arthur interrupted, noting the very charged air between the two. The dragon’s talk of his destiny and the events of the recent past sat too incongruously with each other, and he wanted answers.
“And you me,” he countered, attention drawn away from the prickling warlock.
“You attacked Camelot, innocents died.”
“I was a prisoner, my kind slaughtered, I sought revenge,” he explained, lips (if he could be said to have any) drawn back in the semblance of a growl, his eyes hard and alight. “This story, these actions, surely they are not unfamiliar to you, hm?”
Arthur felt Merlin take a protective step forward but he raised his hand to stay him. “It does nothing to erase what is passed, but know that since I took the throne, I have tried to be a just king and atone for my father’s actions, along with my own.”
“I know you have, and therein lies your destiny.”
Arthur absorbed this for a moment. “Do you really believe I can unite the lands in peace and bring magic back?” Odd to ask such a monster this, but as absurd as it may be the dragon held knowledge of these things.
“Not alone,” he answered, bringing his head further forward, a look of satisfaction and conspiracy upon his features.
“We need passage out of here,” Merlin told him impatiently, stepping beside him so their arms brushed.
The reproachful look he received in return could not be denied, Arthur couldn’t get over the fact this thing had recognisable expressions, as inhuman as it was.
“ I know, I know, you’re not a horse,” he continued.
“I grow old, Merlin, and slow.”
“Faster than legs can carry.”
The dragon didn’t reply, only threw his eyes and got fully to his feet. His back rose so it was near the level of the stone on which they stood.
“Take this,” Arthur said before he moved, unstrapping Leon’s sword. “Can’t be carrying two swords.”
Merlin did so with a moment’s hesitation and secured it at his waist. Then, as though this was entirely natural to him (and Arthur supposed it was), he walked straight onto the dragon’s wide scaled back, taking the king, who refused to be daunted, with him.
Its skin was hard and cold, only the shifts of muscle signalling that it belonged to something living.
They sat at the hinge of the thing’s neck, Merlin in front and between Arthur’s legs. Merlin held his staff flush with the scales, the other held on to a hard protrusion on its spine.
“Hold on tight to me,” he requested, his hair brushing Arthur’s nose as he turned to meet his eyes.
“You don’t need to ask me twice,” Arthur said low into his ear, looping his arms around his stomach.
Kilgharrah sighed below them as he began to lumber out, stepping on to the rocky platform easily, feet sliding in the scree only a little as he climbed. It was a very alien feeling to be riding such a beast.
“Don’t you start, you great big matchmaker, this was your doing,” Merlin chastised, poking a scale hard.
“And you two will make it my regret,” he sighed again deeply.
“What were you going to say to me earlier?” Merlin asked softly then, head turning half back again as the daylight fell on them once more.
Arthur couldn’t help the smile that broke out on one side of his face. “I was going to tell you not to die in there, that I need you to come back to Camelot. All of my new manservants are too efficient and even worse company than you were.”
Merlin’s muscles tightened in a wheezing laugh.
The king held on a little tighter, resting his chin over the other’s shoulder. “I wanted to say that I missed you,” he told him quietly and Merlin tipped his head onto his in response.
Now that the mist was lifting and lay in fading sheets low over the pines and rocks, they could see the day had turned, the clouds were thickening and had taken on blue and bruised colours. Soon the wind would swirl about, he knew, the sky would darken even further and Merlin’s storm would be upon them soon. He hoped that they could outfly it.
Kilgharrah spread his wings, they were pointed and curved in the infernal way of bats and devils, looking even more menacing on him than on the wyverns they had faced yesterday.
His wings and body moving in opposite directions to one another, Kilgharrah rose from the ground, and with a downward movement of his neck like a diving bird’s they swooped over the trees, the pines waving with the wind they created. The rush of it, the incredible height to which they climbed was so shocking that Arthur couldn’t help the shout that escaped him, secretly sure his heart would simply stop. Merlin patted his arm in a poor effort at calming him, more at home riding this awful thing, it seemed, than a plain, Earthly horse or indeed a stag. The Giant’s Battlefield was already a retreating strip of grey below, the peaks of Dragon Country unfolding amidst the rushing green as they neared.
Merlin looked back once more and Arthur couldn’t place the expression he saw there.
Before Arthur could ask him what was wrong Merlin’s chest swelled and he shouted something to Kilgharrah, the dragon’s pupil went back and his eyes narrowed, as if wary. His wing dipped and the world turned, the position of the sun relative to them changing. Suddenly they were going east, not roughly south as they should.
“Merlin?” Arthur asked, but the other said nothing. He was tense and his expression was set grimly and fixedly on the rising horizon, like he was trying to keep his emotions in. “Merlin, what are you doing?”
Merlin’s only reply was another command and soon they were descending, circling a wide glen with a lake, Kilgharrah’s wings stretched out wide. Waterbirds, herons, goosanders and their cousins, fled below them.
They landed powerfully in the tall grasses.
“Merlin!” the dragon shouted before Arthur could, neck craned back. “I urge you, do not do this!”
Arthur scuffled with him a bit, trying to turn him, make him look him in the eye for an explanation but Merlin shrugged him off.
“I’m sorry, I have to command you, I need to make sure,” Merlin said shakily to the dragon. As Arthur shook him, his chin fell to his chest, his eyes closing before his head snapped back up again and he was shouting words powerfully in that language Arthur couldn’t begin to understand, but this time within the words he heard his own name.
“Tell me!” Arthur demanded. “What’s-?”
Then Merlin’s eyes were on him again and he looked so sad, why does he look so sad? He set his jaw and his expression darkened alarmingly. He spoke, a different language now, and Arthur remembered the words and what they did “ Gefeoht.”
Arthur was frozen. He was just harmlessly stuck in place but his heart immediately thudded hard, his body remembered the impossible pain, the spell that had come after this one but his mind was not on that, he was screaming internally as Merlin slid away from him and down the dragon’s feet to the ground.
He stood on the ground there, clearly in a great deal of mental anguish as he hugged his own middle and frowned up at him, sorry. He looked oddly small. He took an unsteady breath and said something else, his eyes flashing.
Arthur found that he could speak and speak he did. “Merlin, you bastard! What in the hell are you at?!”
“Kilgharrah’s wrong-” he started, holding himself tighter as wet appeared along the waterline of his eyes.
“Wrong?!” Kilarragh stamped, not far from throwing Arthur off, who couldn’t clutch on in his current state. “How dare you! He cannot fulfil his destiny without-!”
Then Merlin boomed something he was sure was ‘shut up,’ tears flying. The dragon snarled and reared but remained where he was.
“I’m sorry Kilgharrah but I can’t let you interfere in this, I’ve divined these events and I’ve recourse to send him alone, I need you to understand,” he beseeched. Using much the same tone in his next words, like he was trying to convince and beg forgiveness all at once he said, “Arthur, I’ve long had visions of your battle ahead and in every single one of them I’m by your side when you die. I can’t go with you.”
“No,” Arthur panicked, it felt deeply unnatural not to be able to move, not to be able to jump down, take this mad prophet by the scruff of his neck and haul him bodily back with him to Camelot. “I’ll die if you’re not by my side. Please , come with me!”
“You can’t know that!” he spat, and Arthur could tell he was panicking too.
“I do, Merlin, please! You can’t do this, you lied, you promised you would return with me!”
“And I will!” Merlin shook, backing up but keeping his red and wet eyes locked on Arthur, like this was a choice fate had made, like it wasn’t his own. “I’ll come back when you retake Camelot. But I can’t come with you, not now. I can take care of Morgana and Seren, I don’t think I can kill them but I can keep them here, away from you. It’s them who kill you in my visions, I’ve seen it Arthur, every little detail, all the deaths awaiting you. Would you go with me, Arthur, if our positions were reversed? If you knew somehow you could be the cause of it? If I don't go things will play out differently, they have to.”
Having had this very man die in his arms barely a day before, Arthur had an answer for him, but feeling angry and betrayed he didn’t give it to him.
“Be careful when you face Lwenwi and Dalfan,” he sniffed, miserable to his bones. “Dalfan, I saw him slash your neck in the market. Don’t go there, fight them somewhere else, anywhere else.”
“No, we’ll deal with them when they arrive, we’ll go together! Let me go!!” he tried desperately despite it all, the warlock’s spell not even affording him the luxury of straining against his bonds, giving him only an acute sense of his own powerlessness.
“Please Arthur, please understand! I’ll lose you if I go with you now, it’s too soon.” With this Merlin moved slowly backwards, a steadying breath for every step, then he straightened, fists tightening in resolve at his sides, and he shouted words to the dragon that made Arthur’s bones shake.
Kilgharrah dipped his head toward him in resigned fealty, then unfolded his wings.
“No, no, no, no!” the king shouted in a stream as he felt the creature brace itself below him. With one huge beat, two and then three they were in the air, the gap between them and the ground growing rapidly. “Merlin!! Stop this!!”
The wings increased in speed and when he was too far off the ground to jump, he felt his movement suddenly return to him. He held on. The blue-grey cloudiness of the sky overtook the green, and the dragon started to glide, dipping back in the direction they came, wings beating only occasionally to keep them in the chilly air. Merlin’s figure grew smaller behind them, until he lost sight of him.
Of Arthur, who, to upper light restored,
With that terrific sword,
Which yet he brandishes for future war,
Shall lift his country's fame above the pole star!
Artegal and Elidure by William Wordsworth, as Quoted in the Age of Chivalry, the Legends of King Arthur compiled by Thomas Bulfinch
Notes:
Llallawg and Llallwgan are different forms of the wildman Laioken's name, and Gwendydd refers to him by these names on occasion so the figures of Laioken and Myrddin are very much conflated. These names mean variously brother, lord and twin-like, among other things.
Alan is a character who appears briefly in Buile Shuibhne's story. He's another wild madman like him and is his companion for a short time, then I kid you not, the man foresees his death at "the waterfall of Doovey" and he goes very placidly to his death to let the wind unbalance him so that he may fall and be drowned. And poor old Suibhne's like, yeah cool, I'll be meeting my own sticky end shortly too, off you go.
A note on the above note, you may have noticed the spelling of Suibhne being a little different from one moment to the next, this is a function of the Irish language, nouns gain a séimhiú, or a special lenition, in various situations.
The prophecy about the pole star are further astrological connections with the story of the Arthur. The position of the stars is basically changing very slowly. Our pole star is currently Polaris, part of Ursa Minor, but it was once Thuban, part of Draco, this is a 25,770 year cycle. Polaris (and Ursa Minor) are still climbing and will reach true pole position in March of 2100. Wild stuff. While Ursa Major leaves for the winter, Ursa Minor doesn't, so in Merlin's long life Arthur will always be in the stars. The round table being in the stars is from the Age of Chivalry, the Legends of King Arthur compiled by Thomas Bulfinch, the quote about his country's fame lifting above the pole star comes from Wordsworth and is quoted in the former.
The dragon's breath comes from both Excalibur where it a symbol/part of the power within and over the land (this is my interpretation) and the Buried Giant where it functions to make everyone in the land forgetful. I use it here to have the characters revert to earlier times in their life. I really loved letting deep depression arc Arthur meet Merlin, and for Merlin just to care for and be generally soft with him. I also wanted to show Morgana as she was. Arthur has too much integrity and residual love for her despite it all to kill her when she appears to him like this.
Also Arthur meeting Kilgharrah was so fun to write, the two have more interactions coming up.
Chapter 18: It’s Out of Our Hands, We Can’t Stop What We Have Begun
Summary:
Kilgharrah and Arthur don't get on but they can agree on one thing, Merlin is an imbecile, and after a mid-air attack Arthur is able to tell him so in person. He tells him too that if he's going to make a promise to be by his side, he should start now.
“No,” he paled, his hands fluttering at Arthur’s, attempting in vain to get them off though he seemed suddenly weak. “No, I told you, in every vision you-”
“And I told you I’m willing to die for my cause! I thought you understood, I thought you were coming with me! You lied to me!”
He shook his head. “No, no, I didn’t, I promise! When you’ve won I’ll join you, I can’t do it, not now, not after what I saw-”
“Oh shut up Merlin, to hell with your visions! Be with me now. If you tell me you’re willing to be by my side ‘til I meet my end, be bloody willing to do it! There’s no destiny if Camelot falls. Defend it with me! I need you!” Arthur beseeched.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
“Take me back, foul lizard!” Arthur demanded, daring to drum his fists against the hard scales even when he wished to clutch on for dear life, the forest was so far below him and retreating so rapidly that it set his mind to blind panic. Still, getting back to Merlin took precedent.
“I can’t disobey him any more than you can stop me,” Kilgharrah sighed bitterly, voice reverberating through his body and also through Arthur’s.
Water from Arthur’s eyes streamed behind him, robbed by the wind. He contemplated sticking the creature with Excalibur, but remembering Merlin calling this thing kin, he reluctantly refrained. Kin, he had said! He still wasn’t able to get over that.
But hadn’t Arthur succeeded? Hadn’t he intended to retrieve the sword and return, alone, as fast as he could? Maybe just as Merlin must do things that go against his heart, Arthur would have to do the same. But, as he always reminded himself, Merlin had told him to rule with his heart, a heart that clenched now, telling him urgently that all would be lost if the man wasn’t by his side. Here in the air however he could do little else than curse Merlin and curse at the dragon, which he did, colourfully.
But things changed, and rapidly.
Suddenly the beast dove down. A rush went to his head and his stomach felt like it had been left several feet in the air before it returned to him, then his blood was pulled back with the force of the beast’s sudden turn. The king had to hold on, yelling terrified nonsense all the while. Until he saw why all of this was happening, a line of bright blue shot upwards from the trees then exploded into flame not far from Kilgharrah’s wing, another one close behind it, angled differently so it followed his movements. Kilgharrah dipped again, avoiding it. He tensed, likely poised to put as much distance as he could between them and these magical blasts. Something white curved below them seemingly coming from the blue clouds themselves, it swooped below and out of sight. He made another curve again but just when he should have levelled out there was a flare of white heat on the right and they were wheeling down down and the tops of the trees rushed up to greet them and Arthur was in the air and falling quickly through branch upon branch upon branch in a confusion of whipping and snapping. He had barely any time to think before he was in a bed of broom on his back and heaving for breath, adrenalin still coursing through him.
He had just fallen from the sky and he had survived.
He was still in the forest, large trees pressing all around, a treacherous rocky drop off to one side. He sent his eyes up the truck of the massive downy birch that had broken his fall, with its mess of thin flexible branches, and the swath he had cut through it that avoided the thickest of them. Still, it was a miracle he hadn’t broken anything or ended up dead. In fact, he was relatively unscathed, all things considered. That wasn’t to say that the impact wasn’t going to hurt for many days to come. His head fell back and he gave himself a moment to be amazed at his own luck and wonder too if it had been luck at all, whether the woods might finally be on his side.
Suddenly there was a series of almighty crashing noises and quakes not far from him. He saw the tops of the trees come down with the force of the dragon’s landing and all birds escape in a frightened, loud cloud.
Arthur was on his feet and running before he had quite decided to go.
It wasn’t hard to find him, and when he came upon him Arthur was greeted with the sight of a limp wing, torn and singed. The dragon himself was also limp and facing away from him.
“You better be alive, beast,” he gritted his teeth, trying to find a way through the wreckage of fallen and splintered trees. But as soon as the dragon’s face was in view a huge eye popped open, contracting as it found him, again, like its much smaller counterpart’s had the night she stole Excalibur.
“Oh, I’m alive, I’m sure you’ll be ecstatic to learn,” he groaned deeply. He tested his wing and the thing barely lifted from the ground, rendered as useless as a ripped sail. He definitely would not be flying them out of here.
“As much as I might wish for the opposite, Merlin said you were kin of all things,” Arthur grumbled, hands on his hips.
“That we are. How magnanimous of you,” he rolled his eyes, getting to his feet with a pained growl.
“I have to get back to him,” Arthur stated. He was aware that Morgana and the others would be descending on this place in short order but he had no sense of orientation to speak of. How far had they flown? What direction should he go in to get back to Merlin? How could he even hope to find him?
Kilgharrah’s head rose, casting a shadow over him. He squinted his eyes before closing them and pausing. “He’s too far, I cannot reach him psychically.”
“Psychically?” Arthur repeated, bewildered, only half aware he was clutching the snapped rowan beside him for support. “Do you have an idea of the direction he might be in at least?” Arthur asked. He looked to the sun, trying to situate himself on the compass and trying not to despair.
Before the dragon could answer a black thing came crying through the remaining foliage at him. He ducked on instinct before he heard the warbling. A blackbird was hopping at his feet, making urgent noises at him, heedless of the mighty dragon behind it.
“Are you..? Aodhán! He was following us! Or maybe we’re back where we started?” he exclaimed a little too excitedly. Then, wondering if maybe he’d hit his head somewhere on his way down he found himself saying to him, “I need your help, I need to Merlin!”
Aodhán’s tail flicked, he made quick movements of his head, but kept his eye on Arthur.
“You, young King Arthur,” Kilgharrah lamented, sounding long suffering as he watched them with a weary gaze. “Are certainly the tails of the coin. That pigeon will be of no use to you.”
“Do you have any other ideas?!” the tails shot back, then softly to the bird, “Aodhán, can you do this for me?”
Aodhán made a singular peep, an affirmative peep, Arthur hoped. They watched him flit away and the king and the dragon exchanged a look.
“Go after it,” Kilgharrah rolled his massive eyes again.
“And you?”
“I can defend myself, even like this the witch is no match for me,” he sneered and Arthur really hated that unsettling smile.
“Good, then… goodbye,” Arthur said awkwardly to the huge beast. “Can’t say it’s been pleasant.”
“Likewise. If you manage to find him, tell the young soothsayer he’s an imbecile.”
“Oh I will!” Arthur shouted as he ran, not looking back.
“AhhH!” Arthur roared in rage. He snapped a hazel sapling over his knee and was immediately swinging hard, refraining from using Excalibur for his task only out of respect to his stupid warlock. He whipped it down upon the mouths on the ground, cut through the garlic, sent encroaching vines flying. Leaves shredded like confetti around him.
He had almost forgotten just how much the woods fought him when Merlin wasn’t by his side to calm it. Aodhán was indeed leading him somewhere but every step was stymied by one thing or another. His ankles, which had only just started to heal from his last encounter with some semi-sentient brambles, were now bleeding again. He seemed to be suffering more at the hands, hands is certainly the wrong word, of the trees on this journey than he had crashing through one from the air. Rocks and roots were shifting to trip him up, and the spikiest of plants always seemed to be lying in wait just where he would fall.
Scrapped up and in a rage, he had had enough.
Always quick thinking and resourceful in a crisis, he tried something new as he hacked his way through the curtain of a willow that seemed determined to hold him back rather than let him push through. “Can. You. Please. Stop. Fighting. Me! Just. Help me!!” he spun around, arms out, seeing the colours blur a little with his motion, challenging the woods. “WELL?!”
There was silence, he lowered his arms, panting.
Then ahead, a yew creaked out of the way, allowing him to pass. Aodhán landed on it and flew on ahead.
“Ha,” a laugh escaped him unexpectedly as he started running, like it wasn’t his own. “Hahahaha!”
Everything parted for him as it did for Merlin.
“You can help too, right? Lead him to me,” he said to it, again wondering if he had hit his head earlier, then as an afterthought he added, “please!”
They came upon a huge apple tree that had not long ago stopped blooming, the blackbird jumped around it and in it excitedly as Arthur passed below, he looked around but his imbecile was nowhere in sight. Then Aodhán dove off a branch and through a thick stand of birch and bog myrtle, disappearing.
Arthur followed with some difficulty, wading through the bog myrtle that seemed deaf to his treatises to make his way a little easier. He started to smell water and hear the call of birds. Just before he emerged there was a short exclamation ahead of, “Aodhán?!”
And there he was, rising to his feet where he had been sitting in a shady stretch of woods by the lake, the glittering water and the sweep of the glen just visible beyond the trees.
Aodhán was fluttering at his back, screaming, jumping at him from a nearby perch as if fighting him. Guarding himself, confused against the avian onslaught, Merlin was too distracted to hear Arthur’s approach.
“Merlin, you idiot!!” he yelled, and the other barely had a chance to wheel around before Arthur had closed the space between them. He boxed him softly about the head, shook him and hugged him, and not necessarily in that order. Aodhán leapt away and warbled at them in annoyance from a birch sapling.
“What?! Arthur?! H-how d-did you-?!” he stuttered in Arthur’s ear, voice broken, betraying that he had been crying.
“My sister and her dragon blasted your damn uncle out of the sky,” he explained, pulling away enough to see him.
Merlin’s tear bruised eyes went wild. “Is he-?”
“No, just his wing.”
“Then she’s more powerful than I thought... Where did he fall? I have to-!” he started to move.
“No, we’re going back to Camelot,” Arthur told him decisively, catching his arm.
“But Kilgharrah-”
“Told me he could defend himself,” he finished, then added, “he also asked me to tell you that you’re an imbecile.”
“Morgana and Seren, I need to stop them,” he panicked, ignoring Arthur’s words entirely.
“No, absolutely not, we’re following my plan this time,” he gripped him by both of his arms and pulled at him, trying to get him to look him in the eye. “We’re getting out of here together like we’re supposed to.”
“No,” he paled, his hands fluttering at Arthur’s, attempting in vain to get them off though he seemed suddenly weak. “No, I told you, in every vision you-”
“And I told you I’m willing to die for my cause! I thought you understood, I thought you were coming with me! You lied to me!”
He shook his head. “No, no, I didn’t, I promise! When you’ve won I’ll join you, I can’t do it, not now, not after what I saw-”
“Oh shut up Merlin, to hell with your visions! Be with me now. If you tell me you’re willing to be by my side ‘til I meet my end, be bloody willing to do it! There’s no destiny if Camelot falls. Defend it with me! I need you!” Arthur beseeched.
His lip trembled and his eyes were teary again. His eyes were flicking about, he looked like he was thinking rapidly.
Arthur found his own expression softening, hating that he had distressed him so, any feelings he had of being betrayed overridden when he saw the depth of the other’s fear so plainly on his face. He soothed him a little with the rub of his thumbs where he still gripped his arms. He had never been one to comfort another, but this man seemed to have that effect on him.
Merlin gentled too. His eyes met Arthur’s properly this time, brave and vulnerable. “Fine, to hell with them. I’ll come with you, Arthur, curse my heart,” he breathed finally, though it was a wobbly and watery thing.
Arthur pressed a hard kiss to his lovely bitten lips before turning straight back around. It took Merlin a moment before he followed.
“Move, please!” he said to the wall birch and bog myrtle.
Everything untwisted and twisted again into a tunnel just tall enough and wide enough for them to pass through. Hearing Aodhán behind him he held out his arm and the bird flew up to perch on him and shimmy to his shoulder.
Arriving by his side, the warlock’s mouth was hanging open. “You even said ‘please,’” was the first thing he managed to say about the matter, as though this was the most shocking part.
By early evening, parts of the forest were on fire, they could smell it, they didn’t need to ask each other why or how.
“I don’t like it,” Merlin muttered, nose in the air as they moved swiftly together, their destination, finally, Camelot. “But it’ll slow them down. We’ll have to skirt around it.”
“We’re already so far away,” Arthur lamented.
“I know but we’ll travel through the night this time, that’s not something they’ll be able to do. We’ll get there before them.”
“Are you sure?”
“I am.”
“I suppose the plants have more of a chance of listening if there’s two of us.”
“Right,” the wildman said determinedly.
They spoke of Arthur’s encounter with Seren in the mist as they travelled. This disquieted the warlock for some time. When he finally regained his voice his words were of dark magic, of means to control a person. He wondered what effect the removal of the mysterious worm would have on the wraith, whether she would turn against her master. All speculations made about Seren, Merlin asked him whether he had also met Morgana in the fog.
“Thankfully not,” Arthur lied, deciding somehow that the brief meeting he and Morgana had as the people they had once been, the crown prince of Camelot and the king’s ward, should remain between them.
By early evening they were crossing Dragon Country again, a huge jagged scar bisecting the land, it was too wide to avoid. As they entered, the strange curves of this place looked very different under a sky of smoke and gathering cloud, the reds and oranges of the stone darker than before. The swallows were in their cliff-side nests, the tail feathers up behind them like coat tails. They peeped nervously to one another. The wyverns paid them little heed, even the offending two headed one from yesterday crossed above them with nary a glance.
Merlin tipped his head upward toward the sky, still bright owing to the time of year, scratching his beard. “That’ll do it.”
“What’ll do what?”
He pointed up. “The storm, it’s starting.”
Sure enough Arthur felt the swirling of the wind and could smell rain. It wasn’t long before clouds grew darker, and goosebumps rose on his skin as the birds went quiet. The first flashes came and were quickly chased by a great crash.
“What did I tell you?” Merlin boasted. “Glad we’re out here and not in the woods.”
“Are you sure about that?” he said wearily, spying the silhouette of a winged thing above, hoping it wouldn’t notice them.
The storm produced a constant rumble that occasionally crashed to a crescendo, a sound like great stones smashing together. If they had been on the Giant’s Battlefield they would have been fooled again and again, as they were before, into thinking that the giants of its namesake had finally awoken and broken from the rock. Quick blue-white-purple flashes preceded the worst of the noise that bounced around the awful canyon. Once the rain had started it too fell in a consistent drum, stirring the air and making fine mud of the dust. In the distance, the air above the green hills crawled with heat lightning.
“Best stick by me!” Merlin shouted to him over the roar. He had employed his magic to shield them from the worst of it, the rain hitting and sliding off an invisible barrier above them.
“Where else would I be?!”
The wyverns had blessedly disappeared, though Arthur wondered if such creatures had gone into hiding perhaps they should too; bold however, they pressed on. Though he wondered silently if Merlin would be able to protect them from a bolt of lightning, if it came to it.
Evening descended. The storm flashed on into the night, making the already unsettling surroundings nightmarish at times.
It was the witching hour when they left the sulfuric hellscape and descended further into a floral one. Sweet smelling nectar dripped from waiting mouths, their images burned temporarily into Arthur’s vision when a flash happened to go off. This was a different portion of the woods and the tricks of the flora here differed suitably too; jewel-like fruits dangled enticingly over wide, bright bowls, vines stuck to them and attempted to drag them to unknown places. Their hopes that these things might obey them were dashed again and again until they resigned themselves to it and tried to keep each other from being enticed or taken away.
When the day lightened, they took turns sleeping in a quiet mossy place, so tangled and hidden from view that they almost gave into the temptation to sleep in each other’s arms, but if they did they would surely be unconscious for days, so deep was their tiredness. They each agreed to give the other five hours each, though Arthur was quietly convinced that Merlin had given him six. Having eaten very little over the last few days they ate the last of the stale bread, which they mixed and mashed with water into a kind of savoury porridge.
They all but pushed and pulled each other along.
Soon they joined up with one of the rivers that, according to Merlin’s geography, became one of the huge waterfalls they had seen on their first day travelling together. They found a stiller stretch and crossed over the water like a pair of unlikely deities, though this was a feat too difficult for Arthur and was accomplished with the other’s aid.
They went over rocky hills before descending to a familiar place of ancient yews that moved now for both of them. The orange light of the setting sun winked and beamed through the trees, warming them between the stretches of cooling shadow. Merlin was soaking in this warmth, sometimes closing his eyes even as he walked to appreciate it. Arthur decided to kiss the side of his face the sun did not reach, the sole kiss since their trip back had begun.
Arthur knew there was another reason for his calm and for the familiar spring in his step, and that reason was home.
“We’re back,” he said with a soft shock, taking in the very green place they had emerged into, the pools, the waterfall, the dense mushroom of trees in the distance where Arthur knew Merlin’s cottage was to be found. Aodhán knew it too for he flew from Arthur’s shoulder (he had taken a liking to him, much to his secret delight) and swooped into the familiar trees, his work of reuniting these two idiots and seeing them home finally done.
“Homesickness for my little dwelling had come upon my mind,” Merlin said lyrically, then his voice returned to normal. “We both need to rest and there’s no better place for it.”
The king was dubious.
“Arthur, we need it,” Merlin insisted, already dragging him by the arm. “And I’d like to get supplies.”
“Fine.”
Merlin took him through the mess of bracken, fallen and living trees alike where all manner of mosses, lichens and small ferns had made their home. They passed the pool that Arthur had fallen into and the king marvelled at the height of the greened stone that surrounded it, it had been a higher fall than he realised.
The sky was relatively clear of trees here and he dared to look at the moon that was already in the evening sky. In a few hours when it grew properly dark it would be big and bright enough to cast light on the land. This moon had been his dial, his timekeeper, for the entirety of his journey and he hated what it had told him now.
When the cottage came fully into view, and more, when he stepped through the threshold, it was as comforting and familiar as though it were his own home. Merlin too was soothed to be back, he could tell.
They soon set about tending to their own and each other’s hurts and aches, with plenty of drafts and salves of Merlin’s making to aid them. It was Arthur who needed the lion’s share of the tending and he submitted himself to it, knowing he needed to be fit to return to Camelot. He relaxed under his companion’s careful attentions, unembarrassed by them.
“Have you melted?” Merlin asked him suddenly, referring to the way the king had draped his arms over the chair as he massaged his calves, something he used to do for him often and roughly when he was a servant, but now he was doing with renewed care.
“Shh, keep at it,” Arthur commanded, sweating a little as Merlin’s hands worked over a sore spot.
That done, they took their meal in their seats, Arthur on the left and Merlin on the right (or maybe more accurately, Arthur on the left with Merlin on his right).
Arthur left his clothes on the clothes horse and settled again into his chair. This was his chair now, he decided, wiggling his rear into the sheepskin.
“What are you doing, you raging turnip?” Merlin whined from the bed. He was holding up his blankets, inviting him in.
“That’s a new one,” Arthur smirked, happily abandoning the chair he had so claimed in favour of something much better. He crossed the cottage and slipped in beside him. A lovely pocket of warmth and a pleasantly Merlin smell settled around him.
“It’s what you are,” the other man said playfully as he tucked the blankets around them, blankets that were very welcome with the heat having broken in the storm.
Merlin didn’t move from his back so Arthur automatically settled on his side, his head on his chest. He did this without protest because he wished to hear the still human heart that beat there. And beat it did, and his worries quietened to hear it. He felt the other’s nose and lips in his hair as his lean arms encircled him tightly. He found that the man was trembling and Arthur brought his bad arm up across his chest to cup his cheek with his hand. Merlin pressed a long kiss into his palm and Arthur felt wet gathering along his fingers. They didn’t speak but they breathed in time as they began to drift into sleep together.
Arthur knew it would only upset Merlin if he said what he wished to say aloud so he thought it instead and tried to sink more into his conspicuously protective hold before sleep took them both. If these are my last days, I’m glad, I’m honoured to be spending them with you.
Notes:
Aodhán and Kilgharrah bringing these two fated idiots back together since 529 AD.
Chapter 19: To Places I Have Never Been
Summary:
The second to last Merlin POV flashback. Merlin is happy and utterly inebriated with the turning of the seasons, despite the content of his visions. He finds a friend in an intelligent little piglet, spends many months in a glen and is intrigued by a curious apple tree.
“O little piglet,” he sang to her as she happily kept pace with him, Aodhán upon his shoulder. “You are a cute as cute can be, you are as sweet as sweet can be-”
Aodhán warbled out a protest.
“Jealousy doesn’t suit you,” he told him, finding a mossy hollow overflowing with wood-sorrel and watercresses and bending to take some for himself and some for his new friend.
The bird repeated his noise.
“Oh hang it all, I’ll find you a worm! Don’t you get your feathers in a ruffle,” he grumbled, mouth full.
The piglet snorted and presented her green mouth to them as she trotted, Merlin laughed.
Notes:
This chapter is primarily based on two parts of the Black Book of Carmarthen, XVII The Appletrees and XVIII Greetings, Little Pig!
The latter captures Myrddin's conversation with a pig companion. He tells the pig about his woes and his prophecies and warns and advises her (I've decided our pig is a she) about staying safe and finding a mate. He shows very clear worry for her that just felt very Merlin. "O, Little Pig!" is how many of the stanzas start, it reminded me of the way I talked to my dogs and Merlin finds himself speaking in this silly way to his new four-legged friend.
"Evil is the joy I have now" is taken from the same and is in reference to Myrddin's madness (do note this is a very archaic perception of "madness" that we're dealing with here). I've generally just borrowed a lot from this part.
The Appletrees talks about a singular apple tree, so the plural is a bit of a mystery, I take bits and pieces from here too, including some of the descriptions and the general powerful air of the tree. The pig also features in this part and the two together feel very much like a journey to me, this is how the chapter was born. A reminder that Merlin aging when he eats an apple is my own invention.
"A derelict doomed to loneliness" is lifted from Buile Shuibne, as are the foods he and the pig eat. The general feeling of inebriation with the season comes from the poem.
"Hang it all" and Merlin's brief grumpiness with Aodhán is taken from Sword in the Stone. The relationship between Merlin and Archimedes is very fun.
The waterfowl that are "at swim" in the lake is a reference to Greetings, Little Pig but also At Swim Two Birds by Flann O'Brien which features our man Suibhne/Sweeney.
The dog star is in reference to Sirius, a star in the constellation Canis Major. The star rises in the summer and is associated with the hottest and most difficult days of the year, these are times of sickness, fever and madness. This is where the "dog days of summer" comes from. Merlin understands that his mood/madness seems to reach its height during this time. Canis Major and Canis Minor were also thought of as the faithful hunting dogs of Orion so there's something there about animal companions. Achilles is also associated with Sirius as the brightest and shining star among warriors (Sirius is the brightest star in the summer sky) and his effect over other men on the battlefield, it probably reminds Merlin of Arthur :')
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Merlin was born with a soul bare to the world, cursed with a raw heart, vulnerable to the plight of all creatures, it rose and sang with their joys, fell and cried with their sadnesses. It was love, friendship and duty that made this pain worth bearing. Cursed now to the trees, a derelict doomed to loneliness until time dies away, with those he loved far away from him and his duties largely abandoned, what lay in his heart should have been a foregone conclusion.
But right at this moment all that was to be found there was happiness.
It was in spite of so much that he felt this happiness, in spite of his loneliness, in spite of the still occasional suffering and wretchedness of his existence. In these years the woods were still fickle. The briar still bloodied him, blackthorn still snagged at him and it was not long ago that a carnivorous plant had attracted him (with all that he secretly wished for: the heady green, charcoal, post-rain scent of unfettered magic, the familiar metallic of sunlit steel and the warm skin of another, or perhaps if he was more honest with himself, a very specific other) before it digested him and he awoke on the forest floor in the morning as naked, sticky and shivering as a newborn. All considered, his love for the woods was surely madness, still it was a welcome balm and perhaps not too surprising given the undeniable beauty of it all. The more surprising development was that he had begun to feel at home.
The source of his happiness was thus, three years into his purgatory, Merlin found that he was inebriated with the season, utterly besotted with every sign of the year’s upward trajectory. Not long ago he had witnessed the return of his favourites (besides the humble and only occasionally migratory blackbird of course), the swallows and warblers, and he welcomed them all home whenever he happened to see them. Now as he walked (if it could be called that, for these days he stepped so lightly his feet did not quite touch the ground) he saw more signs, spying here something in the dead-nettle family, finding there early wood-straws when not long ago it was only the wood anemones (by now reliable, trusted heralds), that flowered on the half-sunlit forest floors. Welcome, he thought, welcome, welcome.
It was these signs of spring, and the strange fervour that came with it, that told him when to depart his little grove so that he might experience it all. He travelled now, staff in hand, pack at his side, blanket (when required) upon his shoulders and Aodhán flying in his wake. Slowly he was coming to know this place, and as long as the woods remained free of the killing hand of frost he all but leapt to explore them.
He was on the eastern edge when he saw the hunters. He assessed quickly whether these were the kind that hunted to survive or hunted for sport, these days he cared little for the appetites of humanity, but favoured the hungry over the greedy. These intruders, he concluded, were of the latter persuasion. It was times like these he grieved most for the stag, but he supposed he cut a threatening enough figure on his own of late.
The details of the hunters’ exploits and the way in which Merlin employed the forest to ensure they would never repeat their mistakes were unimportant, only that the outcome was a single orphaned piglet, small, golden, stripped, big eared and wide-eyed and reminding him so much of Aithusa.
He stayed in place with her and was her silent company through her first lonely, shivering night. In the morning he asked her if she would like to travel with them.
“O little piglet,” he sang to her as she happily kept pace with him, Aodhán upon his shoulder. “You are a cute as cute can be, you are as sweet as sweet can be-”
Aodhán warbled out a protest.
“Jealousy doesn’t suit you,” he told him, finding a mossy hollow overflowing with wood-sorrel and watercresses and bending to take some for himself and some for his new friend.
The bird repeated his noise.
“Oh hang it all, I’ll find you a worm! Don’t you get your feathers in a ruffle,” he grumbled, mouth full.
The piglet snorted and presented her green mouth to them as she trotted, Merlin laughed.
He found that she was curious, confident and intelligent, always running this way and that to examine things of interest. New to the world, she greeted it with unabashed exuberance, reminding Merlin he had once been this way too. Thinking youthful thoughts for the first time in a long time, with no destination in mind and wishing to find out where her curiosity might bring them, he decided to let her lead.
Soon however, as was always the way, the visions came.
“Don’t go rooting on the top of the mountain,” he warned her, unable to shake some of the images he had seen the night before that had involved her. “Stay here secluded in the wood.”
She made a little grunting sound, he hoped it was agreement.
“And if we see or hear danger we should hide, and if we can’t hide we should escape. I’ll run with you as far as we need to and further, I don’t care how tired I get, I won’t complain, do you hear me?”
He doubted he would ever find a companion in the animal kingdom that would heed a cursed prophet such as he. Their concerns were now, immediate, even the concept of the future was a tough one to impart, tougher still for them to understand.
He found too that she was a good listener. He was collecting valerian, the all-important ingredient in his sleep drafts while she was rooting with her snout deep in the dirt. He had urged her to keep away from the plant before so she ceased her digging and snuffled in askance at his behaviour. He was sure she was admonishing him, in all her listening she was becoming a teacher.
“O little piglet,” he started, as was his habit now when he addressed her, something about her called for such jocularly floral speech. “I’m a rotten oak tree. I lack sleep most days, when I do sleep I see things I’d rather not. This stuff’s safe when I only take a little, it helps get me to sleep, sometimes. That’s not to say you should eat it, you should not, there are plenty of other things for you to eat.”
Because she listened he told her about the dangers of the woods, told her about Camelot, taught her what plants were good for her to eat, shared his fear of the cold with her, pointed out the warning calls of birds that might signal danger before she saw it, he described Arthur and his goodness too.
Soon, little hooves a blur and brush-like tail sweeping this way and that, she led them to a glen of endless wildflowers with a solemn Irish yew and a wide lake. It was flanked on one side by rocky hillocks that, if travelled upon in a westerly direction for half a day, would eventually lead to the hollowed out mountain that Kilgharrah resided in. It had been some time since Merlin was somewhere truly open to the sky and he delighted in it. He drank mouthfuls of sunlit water and lay in the green and the colours and the straw, content just to feel the sun on his face and watch the orange of his closed eyelids. At swim there were two waterfowl, peeping to one another. Soon they were joined by more, their brethren sweeping in on white wings and leaving little wakes as they skimmed the water and slowed to an easy swim. When day turned to night he took in the breadth of the heavens and divined all that he could, however painful, sure that doing so would give him more restful nights.
They camped there. Over the many days he spent by the lake he found that it had many changing moods, it was sometimes a rippling thing the colour of unpolished steel, sometimes blue-green, sometimes golden brown and sometimes as flat and colourless as a mirror. In the shallows and the trapped pools, starworts formed submerged gardens and nurseries for tadpoles. They swam there, with the quick squiggly wiggle of their jelly tails. Little by little they changed. He spent long enough watching the sedge edged, verdant pools that he witnessed their legs grow. Then, after they had spent some time grappling with the complicated verge of froghood, he watched them hop away with their tails still intact. The piglet watched too, interested in all things as she was.
He decided to summer here where the herons stalked and the new not quite frogs sang.
On the fringes of the glen, just beyond the point where the forest pressed close to the lake, the branches swooped low over the water and wild purple orchids grew amongst the litter, he found a large crab apple tree, already putting out small but splendid pink-white blossoms. The earth seemed trodden around its base, the bog myrtle interrupted here almost in a perfect circle, but the tree was unharmed by animals and its only visitors other than Merlin and the piglet were bees. He sensed something powerful about it and when he made his divinations he did so at the foot of this tree.
Not only would he summer here, he decided, but he would autumn here too and wait until the apple tree was full so that he may return to his cottage with his pack full.
Though half-sickened by the details of battles to come, he continued to divine at the apple tree, feeling somehow that this was what he must do. As always however, he saw things that rent the tender thing still inside of him.
Arthur falling back into his chair at the round table, reaching for Excalibur as he faced down some unseen enemy.
Arthur clutching onto his right arm, helped by Leon and shouting for arrows.
And with that all of his happiness suddenly felt so much more like madness, though he found, as he listened to the waterbirds and the piglet inveigled her way into his lap, that his misguided contentment would not disappear so easily. The dog star had risen after all and with it, strange, wild elation. “Evil is the joy I have now,” he said to her, a hand around her compact form as his thoughts spiralled inevitably, fatally to Arthur. “Listen to me, little piglet, when you are ready and you can rest, find yourself a mate, do not be alone as I am.”
If she heeded his advice he could not be sure, he sensed she would do as she pleased, as she should.
Then she headbutted his stomach and cuddling turned to roughhousing. That was a habit he’d have to get her out of once her tusks came in, but today he didn’t care to put a stop to her fun.
***
The piglet grew fast, her hair going wiry and her hide darkening as she got bigger, leaving no hint of the stripes that she had once sported. Curled and handsome little tusks appeared at her mouth as anticipated, they were a feature Merlin was sure to compliment her on often.
She left before the apples ripened. She did this with little ceremony, venturing further and further until one day she did not come back, but not before leaving cuts on his leg where she had butted him in her playing, he never did quite succeed in getting her to stop that.
***
Not many weeks later the boughs of the tree were laden and bending, decorated gold with apples. He plucked one, shined it against the cloth of his chest and took a bite. Then a heaviness came over him, his back bent, his beard grew longer and his hands wizened even as he watched them. He was sure he knew what had occurred but he needed to see it. He hobbled to the lake where he found his old face looking back at him in the water.
“Oh,” he croaked, a hand going up to his wrinkly cheek.
A starry frost will come
dropping on the pools
and I’ll be out
on sheltered hills:
herons calling
in cold Glenelly,
flocks of birds quickly
coming and going.
I prefer the scurry
and song of blackbirds
to the usual blather
of men and women
I prefer the squeal
of badgers in their sett
to the hullabaloo
of the morning hunt.
I prefer the re-
echoing belling of a stag
among the peaks
to that terrible horn.
The Frenzy of Sweeney, Translation by Seamus Heaney in Sweeney Astray, Section 40.
Notes:
I hope you all enjoyed reading this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it. I wanted to show Merlin's brighter days and how tied his mental state is to the seasons.
Merlin's dual sensitivity and strength is something I love from the show and I've explored it a lot in this fic. I'm a desperately sensitive soul myself so y'know and this is the kind of representation I crave lol.
Chapter 20: No One Shall Be Greater Than All
Summary:
Arthur and Merlin leave the forest, reunite with their friends and come up with a strategy to defeat the wraiths in Camelot before Morgana arrives.
“Help? But who-?” she started, confused.
In the doorway he knew Merlin had stepped out from behind Lancelot, Arthur too stepped away.
She gasped, and the crowd, those who knew him, gasped with her. Her hands flew up to cover her mouth and nose, tears immediately streaming. “It can’t be!” she exclaimed, her voice muffled.
“Hello Gwen,” he said, his smile thin and wavering with emotion, his eyes just as wet as hers.
“C-can I-? I really want to-” she stuttered, uncertain, taking a few baby steps toward him.
Merlin opened his arms wide, a knowing smile on his face, and enfolded her when she ran forward.
Notes:
This chapter, and the whole fic, may alternatively be tagged Everyone Hugs and Everyone Cries AU.
See end for some small references and me laughing at my own jokes.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
United we stand
Now and forever
In truth, divided we fall
Hand upon hand
Brother to brother
No one shall be greater than all
In the still half-dark hours of the morning Merlin all but swept potions, food and other provisions into his pack and Arthur’s, he topped it off with some magic to make them feel lighter.
In a few brief moments of quiet within the chaos of their preparations, Merlin suddenly stilled, having come upon his old red neckerchief. The sweet incongruity of new and old did funny things to Arthur’s heart. He took it from his fingers reverently and went to tie it around his neck for him when he found it was little more than a rag now, ripped and about half the size it used to be. Instead, with great care, Merlin tied it around Arthur’s wrist. Then something gleaming caught his attention. On the table was his mother’s sigil, a beloved thing he had not seen for the better part of a decade. Merlin clearly had these things stored away together, he realised, the scarf wrapped around the sigil. He picked it up and traced the lines and the bird, kissed it and smiled. He turned back to Merlin to find that he had tensed a little, can’t be having that, he thought.
‘Things never turn out how you expect, you’ll see,’ Merlin had told him the night Arthur decided to give him the precious item. He’d been right then and he was right now.
Merlin’s worried brow was the next thing he kissed as he pressed the sigil into his palm for the second time, so they both had something of each other’s for luck. Seeing the blush and the half-averted eyes Arthur was pleased that Merlin was still a little abashed under his unguarded affections.
With another breakfast of rye porridge in their bellies they left the cottage. Exiting, Merlin kissed his own fingers and reached up to lay them on the antlers above the door. They both urged Aodhán seriously to stay put this time. They traversed the garden path, walked on the waters of the green pool, went through all of the lichen covered trees that moved for them both without complaint and left the grove.
All the while, Arthur noticed that Merlin’s still bare feet were touching the ground again.
***
It didn’t take long for them to reach the parts where the woods thinned and then gave way to open gorseland. In fact, Arthur was secretly sure now that he had gone in circles that first day here.
It was odd, to all of a sudden be able to see such a huge stretch of uninterrupted horizon. He remembered stumbling through here, not knowing what was ahead, knowing only that he needed to find Excalibur. Now the sword was in its scabbard at his waist and Merlin, Merlin , was by his side. So much had changed.
They crossed the land together under the rising sun. Gratefully Morgana and her merry band of dead, as Merlin had so cheerfully called them, didn’t make an appearance while they were exposed.
Then when the same sun was past its peak, they entered the rocky place where he had evaded the dead. He recognised the exact high boulder set into a hill where he had done it, now seeing that it was edged with cow parsley and sat in the shade of an elder, so that the whole scene was filled with frothy sprays of white flowers. Deciding this was as good a time as any to stop for their meal, they sat on it for prosperity, Arthur found the time to tell the story and Merlin found the time to kiss him on the cheek and declare him just occasionally clever.
They drew back, smirking at one another each in their own way. Merlin was sitting with his gangly legs bent below him, the sun had coloured his face a little, having reddened his forehead and nose and brought the barest bronze to his cheeks -the vaguest of tans that would go unnoticed by anyone but those who were familiar with his usual pearly paleness. Despite his smile there was still a shadow of worry on his features, and his lips had purpled and swelled a little where his teeth had continued to abuse them. Taking all the details of him in, Arthur was overtaken by a heady mix of love and duty.
“I want you to know,” Arthur started, and something in his tone made Merlin straighten attentively, “when we win this, I wish to lift any remaining laws against magic .”
The other’s chest swelled, he swallowed but seemed to be waiting for him to continue.
“Though I ask myself whether this will help at all,” he heard himself admitting. It was the earnestness, the vulnerability in the damn man’s eyes that did it to him, made him meet him in the middle and entrust his hurts and anxieties to him, despite the pain. “So much fear has been sown into my peoples’ lives even beyond the fear of accusation; they fear each other, they fear magic itself... As I did.”
Merlin drew himself up further and he looked serious, the small hay fevered sneeze he made into the crook of his elbow did not detract from his sudden air of authority. “I think you’ll find the people are waiting for change.”
“Do you really think so?”
“I do,” he answered with deep certainty.
And with that Arthur was certain, emboldened too. “Then we will win and it will be done.”
***
Out in the open the light hung on long into the night, and they were sure to make full use of it. When the night did finally take hold Arthur’s gut twisted to find that his shadow was cast dark onto the land. This journey, and the sight of the moon would have been a great deal more daunting without the powerful warlock that was now by his side, whatever his visions had told him. Arthur was certain that he was wrong about the future, they were stronger together and would win this together.
Night held far fewer perils here than it had a mere two days ago, so their need to stop was based purely on the limit of their muscles. Since leaving the cottage, Merlin had made proper footsteps like a man rightly should, and he clearly wasn’t used to it. Once they had stopped for the night behind a secluded hill, Arthur returned the favour of massaging the other’s calves, though the attempt was short lived with Merlin’s testy accusations that he was was tickling him and Arthur’s counter argument that his problem was his choosing to be ticklish at all.
“We’ve done so much resting,” Arthur lamented when their minor spat was over, reclining with him on the hill still littered with last year’s ash keys.
“It’s just for a few hours,” Merlin reassured him as he committed to rub his own calves and wince through the ordeal.
There were hints of life here, though the place still felt remote, farmland and trails were starting to appear on the hills. Arthur looked at these hills now in the last of the light, following the lines of hedgerows with his eyes. He recognised them, and if he remembered correctly, he knew which way they should go next. “In the morning there’s a path I want to take.”
“Oh?”
“My horse,” he explained. “I had to leave her behind. There’s a possibility that she’s still there and I should like to try and find her.”
The other brightened at that. “You lead the way, then.”
Then something in the mass of Merlin’s dark curls caught his attention. He reached for it.
“What are you-?”
“You had a traveller,” Arthur told him, holding up the finger upon which clung a mayfly, its small body curled, its wings diaphanous. He transferred it to Merlin’s finger.
Merlin brought it to himself carefully and seemed to commune with it silently for a while, then it flew away.
***
They found her at noon grazing on grasses and clover not far from where Arthur had left her, looking hale and healthy. She threw her mane at their approach and trotted over. Merlin was delighted to greet her, convinced he had known her as a foal and then as a filly, she certainly seemed to be happy to see him but then again, all of Camelot’s horses had loved him, and rightly.
“That’s why mucking out the stables wasn’t so bad really, I got to spend time with beauties like her,” he said, all of his attention on the animal, though Arthur remembered it differently, years of complaints replaying in his mind.
“What do you think, can she ride?” Arthur asked.
“She says she’ll be alright,” Merlin said after some time.
“She says ?”
Merlin wasn’t really listening to him, he was sending his hand up and down the line of her nose and whispering to her. Her ears flicked toward him.
Arthur watched them for a few moments before saying, “can you tell her I’m sorry?”
“You already told her you were sorry. You rescued her, she’s grateful.”
Arthur had told him about his flight from Camelot but in his abbreviation of the events (and to spare his sensitive companion) he had left out the part about the fire in the stables, the mad race toward the woods and his subsequent apology to his steed.
“Tell her it was all the lad, the stablehand, I only rode her to exhaustion,” he said, then coming around the horse to stand beside him he asked, “since when have you been able to talk to animals?”
“It’s not so simple as that,” Merlin asserted immediately.
“Of course it isn’t,” Arthur rolled his eyes, unsurprised, "nothing was ever ‘so simple as that’ when it came to this man.
He was smoothing his hand over her back now as though he had a brush in his hand, not looking at him, his expression was calm. “It was at the same time I started seeing the future. It’s been um, a consolation, I guess.”
“I hope so.” He put an arm around him, and when Merlin tipped his head onto Arthur’s shoulder he tipped his own to meet it.
It was almost night again by the time they could see Camelot, charred but intact through the trees. It looked passive, inert. There was no way to know whether it had been taken or not but just as Merlin’s energy always changed at the sight of home, so did Arthur’s, and he dared to let hope into his breast when those white walls came into view. They left the horse at a safe distance away, wishing her to be safe and wishing too not to alert any dead that might be lurking, choosing stealth over speed.
The tower had been in view for over half-an-hour and in that time they had cut down just two patrolling soldiers. Though they noted there were many more to be found headless around the area, their weapons gone.
They didn’t go directly to the tower door for fear of alerting anyone or anything that might be watching to the presence of the people inside.
They stepped carefully from one tree to the other, or at least, Arthur stepped carefully. Merlin snapped through a few sticks, pointing to his feet each time as though they had been the culprit and he was blameless. Arthur had pulled a face and pointed straight to the warlock’s stupid head in way of counterargument.
As the night closed in he snapped another.
It was then he heard a click in the dark, a sword being readied, brought partially out of its sheath.
Arthur did the same with Excalibur and beside him Merlin opted to raise his hand rather than Sir Leon’s sword.
Arthur scanned the shadows, sure he saw movement.
“Hold, King Arthur!” he heard a voice.
“Show yourself!” Arthur commanded, though he knew by the voice just who it was.
Mordred stepped into view from behind a beech and rushed to greet him, he wore mail but no cape or cloak. “Knew you’d be back, sire!” he smiled widely. Then a little more tentatively he addressed Merlin, though interestingly he didn’t look surprised to see him. “Merlin... Welcome back.”
“Hello Mordred,” Merlin said, a little quietly, but then as if deciding something he paused, then bowed. “ Sir Mordred now, I hear?”
The young knight blinked, but he soon recovered and bowed back, looking greatly relieved and tamping down a hundred other emotions besides. He pointed into the dark. “Lancelot, he’s just-”
Then the man himself came into view. He snapped into a defensive stance when he saw them, no doubt just a collection of shadowed figures given the time of night. Arthur was sorry he had ever had to deny him his knighthood, this man was the epitome of the esteemed position, always capable and discerning. Quickly though, probably from the clear ease of his fellow knight, he judged that there was no threat ahead and he came forward.
“Mordred,” he called. “Whoooo-?” then the knight went stock still, staring at both Arthur and Merlin but most especially Merlin. Suddenly he took a few long strides and he was pulling Merlin in. Arthur could see his knight’s amazed expression over the newly returned man’s shoulder, his eyes were wide and blinking before they closed and he held him tighter.
“It’s good to see you, my friend,” Merlin wheezed as he was squeezed.
“And you,” Lancelot told him, an ache in his voice.
“Found him in the forest, though you wouldn’t believe it to look at him,” Arthur teased, earning him an unimpressed backward glance from the man in question when the two had mostly torn away from each other.
“Is that true, Merlin? You were in that place all these years?” Lancelot asked, searching his expression, taking in the details of him.
“Yeah,” he answered him sheepishly, a simple response for so complicated a thing. “M’back now though.”
The two exchanged smiles, at first faltering, unsure, but soon they were truly smiling.
“I’m glad to see you on your feet,” Arthur said to the recently injured man when the moment felt right.
“It was thanks to Mordred, sire,” he answered, nodding long at his fellow knight, so that it was almost a bow. He still looked a little dazed, his hand was on Merlin’s back as if by letting go his friend would disappear again. “I would have lost my life if not for him, and for your blessing.”
Mordred stepped forward a little, looking tentatively proud. Arthur urged him forward and clapped him on the shoulder. “Thank you, Mordred.”
Merlin looked at them all in askance, his brow raised.
“Before we last parted, I granted young sir Mordred permission to do everything in his power to protect our people, I gave Gaius the same right,” Arthur explained, this was another detail omitted from his retelling on the day of their unsteady reunion, he realised. He had not meant to withhold it.
Merlin breathed shakily in shock, then his mouth curled into an amazed smile.
“Gwen and Leon? Where are they?” the king asked, needing to move on quickly despite the fact that the revelation was clearly momentous for his companion.
“At the tower,” Lancelot reported. “Leon suffered an injury though it’s minor, he can still fight, but he’s asked Mordred to conserve his energy. There are other citizens there too from around the forest and the villages without the city.”
“Sounds like someone else I know, they have the self-sacrificing thing in common,” Merlin said, eyeing Arthur who eyed him right back.
“I’ll think you’ll find we all do,” Lancelot said in a tone that was something between admission and placation.
There were shrugs of admission all round.
“Take us to them,” Arthur said and Lancelot reluctantly let go of Merlin and led the way with a nod.
When Arthur looked back, there seemed to be a silent conversation going on between Merlin and Mordred, each nodding and shaking their head minutely, though their lips didn’t move. Before long Merlin had his hand lightly on the boy’s back, that looked like the beginnings of reconciliation if Arthur ever saw it.
“Oh God, Arthur! You’re back!” Gwen said, launching herself at him as soon as she caught sight of him, barely letting him get in the door. In the dark, amongst the broken down furniture and spiderwebs, people gathered, mostly citizens of all ages but among them some patrolmen and Leon, who crowded up behind her and began chattering excitedly and cheering.
“Awh, careful!” he warned as she squeezed his bruised form, but he was smiling triumphantly at everyone gathered in the room over her shoulder. Over the din of the cheers he managed to hear Lancelot chuckle a little behind him in the doorway.
“Sorry!” she winced. She gave him space and allowed him in, allowing her husband and Mordred to take the final step inside too. Seeming to control the eager crowd in their attempts to swamp him with just a sharp look over her shoulder, she stepped back to take in the details of him, her brow furrowed at the unfamiliar blanket on his shoulders before they travelled down to the sword. “You found the sword!”
“Mm,” he nodded, playing his thumb over the familiar metal of the pommel. “But I didn’t- I couldn’t have found it alone.”
“What do you mean? You weren’t alone?”
“I wasn’t, I had help,” Arthur answered, knowing how he must look, smiling inanely out the side of his mouth despite their still dire situation, but he couldn’t help it, knowing the joy that was coming.
“Help? But who-?” she started, confused.
In the doorway he knew Merlin had stepped out from behind Lancelot, Arthur too stepped away.
She gasped, and the crowd, those who knew him, gasped with her. Her hands flew up to cover her mouth and nose, tears immediately streaming. “It can’t be!” she exclaimed, her voice muffled.
“Hello Gwen,” he said, his smile thin and wavering with emotion, his eyes just as wet as hers.
“C-can I-? I really want to-” she stuttered, uncertain, taking a few baby steps toward him.
Merlin opened his arms wide, a knowing smile on his face, and enfolded her when she ran forward.
Another cheer rippled through the room.
“Of course it was you,” she sniffed into his chest, then she added, “you look a little different.”
“Yeah, just a bit,” he agreed softly, his eyes closed as he held her.
Leon came further forward, amazed but smiling from ear to ear to witness the reunion and greet his king. Arthur and he gripped each other’s left arm. His right hand was in a sling now and it was clear that his stomach was bound, but Arthur was deeply glad to see his friend mostly whole.
“Thank you for protecting them,” he said to him.
Leon only shook then dipped his head, not needing thanks but accepting it gracefully all the same.
“I believe this is yours, sir,” Merlin said to their side, presenting him his sheathed sword flat in his hands, though both Gwen and Lancelot were essentially hanging from his shoulders, unable to let him go. “It served us well.”
Leon laughed too before taking it. “Thank you, Merlin. It’s good to have you back.”
“It’s good to be back,” he grinned.
“And these are for King Arthur,” the knight said, turning fully to Arthur and presenting him with his keys and dagger, bowing deeply despite his injuries, much to the protests of everyone in the room.
There were others gathering on the stairs from the upper floors now and the cheering started anew, rippling upwards and around through the tower.
In the tight space Merlin made the same motion as Leon, suddenly bowing very low to Arthur with a level of respect he’d rarely mustered as a servant. It made up for the graceless way he had thrust Excalibur back in his hands in favour of chewing out the officious Kilgharrah. All in the room who could bow followed his example. “Long live King Arthur!” he started them off, deep blue eyes sparkling as they fell on Arthur.
“Long live the king! Long live the king!” Everyone joined in.
“They never breached the castle,” Leon answered once they were all shut in their impromptu war room on one of the upper levels and Arthur had asked the all important question, ‘what news?’ “Those fighting inside managed to close all the gates and they finished off the dead around the citadel. There are still some in the town but their numbers are few. There have been waves, attempts from within and without to breach the walls, but we have an advantage, supplies.”
“Turns out,” Gwen looked between the new arrivals, leaning on the dusty crate between them. “Morgana’s spies weren’t too thorough before the second siege. Her soldiers aren’t aware of some of the siege tunnels. We’ve been using them carefully and keeping in contact with people inside, mostly the guards and knights on the west side.” She tapped the wood with her index finger like there was a map spread out before them.
“We’ve been ferrying food to them, arms from the soldiers we pick off too,” Mordred explained. “Especially arrows and the like.”
“The last few days there have not been so many in the woods, most of them were concentrated at the city walls,” Lancelot added, looking between Arthur and Merlin.
“Were?” Merlin asked, picking up on the word.
“Were,” the knight repeated. “Their numbers have dwindled greatly in the last few days.”
“We don’t know quite how it works, this raising of the dead, but it sounds to me like re-enforcements couldn’t be made while Morgana was in the forest,” Arthur deduced.
“Playing skittles with us,” Merlin joked before growing serious again. “But she’ll be back, we should expect a new wave to come with her.”
They all nodded.
“What of the wraiths?” Arthur addressed the more immediate threat.
“They stalk the town, sire,” Leon answered gravely. “We’ve lost some of our people to them, rarely does anyone live through an encounter with them.”
“Citizens?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so. But a great many escaped into the castle walls on the first night and are safe, all thanks to your quick thinking.”
“I only gave the command sir, it was your leadership and the good work of Sirs Lancelot, Mordred and Elyan that made all the difference,” he praised.
“Have the wraiths made the same attempts to breach the castle?” Merlin asked suddenly. Not a soul seemed surprised that Arthur’s one-time servant was around the table (so to speak) talking strategy with them, especially not this crowd.
“No, not that we know of,” Mordred answered before anyone else could, meeting his eyes, clearly the magic users among them were thinking along lines the rest of them could not. “I have a guess as to why that might be. I wonder, Emrys, if you’ve drawn the same conclusion?” Arthur noted the unfiltered use of the name and the respectful way it was delivered. There were twin reactions of surprise from Gwen and Leon, but Lancelot gave Merlin a knowing smile. So, he had known all along, and not shared the secret with anyone, not even his wife. This man had been interrogated brutally by Uther and bore the scars for it, Arthur found himself impressed by his strength and integrity.
“Go ahead,” Merlin said, gesticulating with an open hand, much in the same way Arthur would when this same youth hesitated to speak at the round table. All eyes were on Merlin though he had only spoken a handful of words, it was a marvellous thing to witness, him holding court like this. Arthur decided he would like to see him do this more often and he allowed himself just a moment to imagine him by his side at the round table itself, with a position equal to his own.
“They could be following a command, and that command was to kill the people they found in the streets, they can’t deviate from it until they’re given another. I think Morgana was supposed to join them at the front.”
“Exactly my thinking too,” the warlock said to the young knight excitedly, then tipping his head toward Arthur, “we have to do something about them before she arrives.”
“Thank you, Merlin, Mordred,” the king said, leaning forward on the crate though it creaked below his weight. “Strategy. Gwen?”
“We get inside the castle, sire. Not here.” She tapped the spot again, clearly she would find a visual aid a lot more efficient if only she had one. “Um, I mean...”
“Allow me,” Merlin started and then his eyes flicked to Arthur. “That is, if you’ll allow me.”
“Go ahead,” Arthur granted, appreciating that Merlin asked for his sake.
Then his eyes lighted and he sent a ball of light up to hang above them, just enough to allow them to see better and softly brighten all of their faces, Arthur noted that the only one among them to step back was Leon, though the movement was so slight as to be barely there. Merlin brought his hand over the crate and a rudimentary map of Camelot appeared on the wood, as though painstakingly burned into it. His eyes returned to normal.
“You’ve got that wrong,” Arthur pointed out immediately, as everyone else stood awed. “The western gate is further along the wall.”
“Well I haven’t been here for six years, have I?” he gritted.
“I think it’s brilliant, Merlin, thank you ,” Gwen said pointedly, looking at Arthur all the while, mistaking their flirting for fighting, fine line as it was. “Anyway. Not here,” she said, tapping a blank area on the west side of the castle where Arthur knew there to be a siege tunnel, the one they had been bringing food, water and weapons to, “but here,” she continued, tapping the location of a tunnel that ran underground to the north-east corner of the castle, not marked upon Merlin’s map, “we can get to the armoury from here. We’ll get everyone suited up. This is where the guards say Gaius has moved the patients, Percival is there and so is Elyan, we can recruit them too. We haven’t risked the journey there ourselves, but the people on the west side say that the tunnel is still clear.”
Arthur was deeply relieved that his people were safe and was made proud by their cleverness, their resourcefulness. “Excellent, Gwen, excellent,” he commended her, then a little bit of inspiration took him. “I’m happy to hear anyone else. Rectangle though this humble box may be, know that, for now, this is our round table.”
They all inhaled together and their postures changed, they looked charged with new energy.
“The wraiths,” Mordred spoke again. “No matter where in the city you step foot, they will come. We can use that, fight them where they have a disadvantage.”
“Well done, that’s a potential advantage we would be remiss not to take. As you all know the only way we can defeat them is with the sword, I want everyone to keep their distance, the location has to be somewhere others can stand by safely. Can anyone nominate a location?”
“The central market, sire it’s-” Leon began.
“No,” Merlin said immediately. “Anywhere but there.”
All eyes went to him and Arthur could see that their gaze was already too much for him, unable to explain himself he was rapidly looking like a cornered animal.
“Merlin’s right,” he thought quickly, rescuing him, but finding a problem with the suggested location as he did so, with its single way in and out. “It needs to be somewhere that will offer an expeditious retreat, more strategy.”
They all thought.
“Our forge!” Gwen volunteered, gesturing between herself and Lancelot, marriage having rendered it her husband’s as much as her own, although it had remained dormant since the death of her father. “It’s open to the air, lots of entrances and exits, obstacles too, the anvil, everything, it’s all still there.”
For the first time in a long time Arthur wanted to kiss her, this time platonically of course, but he didn’t think it would go down too well with Lancelot or Merlin.
Merlin nodded, clearly agreeing, relieved. He put a finger somewhere within the map of the town and left a little spot at the location of the forge with the quick flare of his eyes.
“We have to get there quickly or via unconventional means,” Arthur thought aloud, considering the distance between the castle and the dark spot.
“I can help with unconventional, whatever you need,” the warlock stated, his lips quirking up.
“Good. But that leads me to the next thing, if they are as efficient as you all say, when I face them I must do it alone, no one should be inside the forge with me.”
“No, I’m coming with you, I need to be there,” Merlin jumped in, they had this conversation before, more than once, under different circumstances. “I know I almost sent you alone, I know I said I couldn’t be there, but I should be, I can figure out a way to help. You know I’ll be fine, it’s doesn’t matter if I’m hurt, I-”
“Why on Earth would it not matter?!” the king burst out, knowing his face had turned red with anger in just a second flat. He stopped leaning against the crate and rose to face him.
Merlin shrank a little, he clearly didn’t have an answer.
“Your life is as important as any of ours, Merlin, or if you’ll forgive me, perhaps more so,” Lancelot said, deeply concerned, putting a hand on his shoulder from behind.
The immortal man opened and closed his mouth, looking around at all of their worried faces. “That’s not true,” he managed eventually, voice strained. “Please, you’re all so important...”
“No one shall be greater than all,” Arthur sighed, and anyone in the circle who could recognise the words, did. A happy night, a different time, floated, faded, out of their reach. “Merlin I would have you near but out of harm’s way, are we in agreement?”
“Yes sire,” he said quietly, though his nettled expression didn’t quite match his words.
“We have our strategy,” Arthur declared, turning back to the crate. “Leon, can you defend the tower?”
“I can sire,” the knight agreed, taking his arm out of his sling as if to demonstrate that he could fight, if required.
“Update the citizens and guards, we arm ourselves and go post haste. We defeat them tonight, before Morgana can arrive.”
“Yes sire!” they said together, their confidence clear.
They began to stream out of the room. But Arthur lagged behind, staying Merlin with an arm. Lancelot, the last to leave, looked in askance at them for a moment before concluding the obvious and exiting quickly, though not before looking uneasily between the two.
The door was shut and Merlin was looking cornered again, literally this time as he was in the process of backing himself into a wall.
“It matters ,” Arthur repeated, emphatically this time so he understood.
“What matters?” he said, being deliberately obtuse, taking another backward step and almost falling over a dusty pile of wood that had once been a chair as he did so.
“Your pain, Merlin, and anything bad that might happen to you.”
“It’s what I’m for Arthur, to protect you, even if it costs me,” he reasoned, hands going to his own chest.
“You are not for that!” Arthur argued, horrified and stunned where he stood. “You’re not! What you are for , if you insist on using that language , is being the other half of me, not for suffering in my name. God or Gods or whatever else knows you’ve done enough of that already. I won’t have it.”
“Arthur-”
“I won’t have it,” he repeated, arms falling to his sides, unable to stop the memory of Merlin dying in front of him from shoving its way to the forefront of his mind.
“You’ll let me help at least, from afar?” the warlock asked slowly, looking miserable.
“It’s what you’ve been doing, if I’m not mistaken?”
He nodded his head yes.
“Good, now,” Arthur moved on, taking tentative steps forward, waiting for permission. When he had it, he took him in his arms loosely and they tipped their foreheads together so they were sharing their breaths. They stayed this way for a few precious seconds before he spoke again, softly this time, “when this is over, when we can, you and I should rest, for however long the kingdom will allow us.”
“When you are ready and you can rest, find yourself a mate,” the other said softly, sounding a little far away.
“Hm?”
“Nothing just… Some advice I gave a friend once, a piglet I spent a few seasons with.”
“Sounds about right. It’s good advice, I’ll try to find one.”
Merlin laughed a little and Arthur caught that laugh with a kiss.
With the cheers and the prayers of those in the tower behind them the team stalked through the night, a handy spell courtesy of Merlin upon them that lightened their steps and dulled any sounds they should make.
The unnatural glowing eyes of scouts or loose dead (Arthur wasn’t sure if his half-sister’s unholy army had ranks) sometimes came into view in the distance between the trees, but they went unnoticed by them. It was a long trek to the concealed ditch where the small door was set, hidden. A breathless key turn and a shoulder slam by Lancelot later and they were ducking inside, travelling along the tight and low tunnel with Merlin’s light to guide them. It was damp and stale smelling in here and a burning torch would have only added to the airlessness. They emerged through a concealed door in the buttery, no less, and were forced to roll casks out of the way to get through. This portion of the castle was as silent as the grave, an analogy that, when it passed through Arthur’s mind, made him shiver. It was an age ago when last it had been this quiet, when he and Merlin had returned to find everyone but Morgana asleep. The royal castle in the Empty Kingdom must have been similarly quiet before its denizens were forced to rise again.
Soon sounds and signs of life came to them. In the corridors citizens slept on any and all material that might provide them comfort. They startled awake at their passing. Shouts of ‘sire,’ ‘my king,’ and ‘my liege,’ went up, welcoming him back. Others recognised Merlin and, finding him more approachable and having no cause to refrain from touching him, the returned man found himself engaged in much hand holding and shoulder gripping as they made their way through. There were so many here, no doubt uncomfortable, no doubt hungry, but alive and out of harm’s way.
The subterranean corridors to the armoury were quiet again, but this was a reassuring silence; during the various sieges and attacks of the past Arthur remembered acutely being able to find the temporary infirmaries by the pained cries alone. This time there were no cries, instead there was just the sound of their steps as they were guided by Merlin and his light, the torches on the walls being lit only sparsely and sparingly.
They turned a corner and, as before, there was the sound of a sword being unsheathed in the dark ahead. They stopped but behind Arthur Gwen was leaning this way and that, going on the tips of her toes, then she was shoving forward. “Elyan! Elyan! It’s us!”
“Gwen! Sire!” Elyan exclaimed, coming forward into the light.
“Ohhh, I’m so glad you’re safe,” she said, rushing over to hug him, her hands around his neck, forcing him to bend.
“Likewise, sis,” he said, squeezing her back before letting her go and straightening. “All of you, you’ve no idea how good it is to seeeee-” and then his eyes focussed behind Arthur. “Is that Merlin ?!”
“Uh, hullo,” Merlin waved awkwardly down the hall, bearded and barefooted, a magical orb of light floating in his palm.
“Helping Arthur, I presume?” he asked, not missing a beat, a sparkle in his eye.
“Yeah, something like that,” Merlin answered, coming up to bump Arthur’s side lightly with his own, the light bobbing as he did so.
“Well uhm, I’m happy you’re back!” he laughed, shrugging, incredulous.
“Me too,” Merlin smiled back.
“So… Got your sword back then, sire?” he said, turning his attention back to the king.
“Yes, now we have to focus on defeating the wraiths before Morgana returns. Your report?”
Elyan cleared his throat, “there are no more dead soldiers on the castle grounds, sire, and thanks to Gaius not one of the wounded who made it back have died, but there’s still plenty who need the rest. Food is in short supply so we’ve been rationing. Sis, Lance and all have been helping with that though.”
“You’re not hurt, then?” Gwen asked.
“No, unless you count my feet from all the running about.”
“Well done, Elyan,” Arthur praised. “I was gone so long, I feared all had been lost.”
“Camelot won’t fall so easily,” he said confidently, head raised, and Arthur suddenly remembered the same words on his father’s lips, now, however, he could get behind them.
“You’re right, it won’t,” he agreed, matching his confidence.
“Gaius, Percival and the patients is everyone-?” Mordred started tentatively behind them.
“They’re safe,” he answered to their collective relief, held breaths being released all up and down the corridor. “They moved to the armoury, there’s no better place. Lots of space there, and if they infiltrate the castle, we’ll be ready.”
“What are you doing out here?” Arthur enquired.
“Supplies, we’re running low, I’m on a run to Gaius’ office.”
“What do you need?” Merlin piped up again suddenly.
“Uh, bandages mostly, or material for some, then he said ribwort, willow, henbane...”
Merlin reached into his pack and as far as Arthur could tell his hands were full of all of these very things. “Will these work?”
“Yeah, yeah those will help.”
Elyan knocked a few times on the armoury door and it cracked open. Though it must have been opened by magical means because there was nobody in the doorway when they entered.
Patients snored in the further reaches of the vaulted room but all was mostly hushed and dark. Nearer the door, a tired looking Gaius was working by candlelight, sitting upon a bench with an array of small glasses and herbs before him on a table. A half-shadowed and slack-faced Percival was asleep upright on a bench behind him, propped against the wall with a blanket over his legs, his snore louder than all the others’.
“Back already? I thought-” Gaius half-whispered to Elyan, peering up from behind his glasses. Then he caught sight of the king, Gwen and the others. “Sire, you’ve returned! And with the sword, no less!” he exclaimed with joy, though admirably he maintained his quiet tone. He rose stiffly from his seat and crossed the space to embrace him triumphantly.
“I have,” Arthur said, bending to receive him, he had grown a little smaller, a little frailer these past few years, though his grip was still as strong as ever. “We defeat the wraiths tonight, before Morgana arrives with new commands, and no doubt re-enforcements. Elyan tells me you’ve had no casualties. Thank you, Gaius.”
“It was thanks in no small part to a certain decree,” he raised his head.
The king gripped his shoulder, smiled. “One that I intend to make permanent, for you and for all in Camelot who use magic under the banner of peace and healing.”
The old man breathed in shock. He tucked his chin in and smiled, fond and full of emotion like a proud father. And a father he was, and Arthur would keep him from his son not a second longer.
“On that note, Gaius,” he moved on, trying to keep the smile from his lips. “I have someone I think you’ll want to see.”
“A patient?” he guessed incorrectly, expression changing immediately. “Bring them in, I’ll-”
Merlin stepped into the room.
The physician gaped. “My word, boy, you look like a Saxon!” he blurted loudly, his hand immediately going to his heart, it was this that finally made him forget his sleeping patients. All around the room people were being roused.
“Gaius!” Merlin cried in the doorway, palms up in shunned askance. “Are those really the first words you’re going to say to me?!”
Gaius maintained his proud expression for a moment before it crumbled, he was hiccuping by the time Merlin had navigated the benches and got his arms around him.
“Where were you?” he asked into his shoulder, it wasn’t really a question though, sounding so much like ‘I missed you’ the way it did.
“It’s a really long story,” Merlin answered anyway, holding him very tightly. “And I’ll tell you everything. ”
“I’m anxious to hear it... my dear, dear boy,” he breathed, a hand rubbing up and down Merlin’s bent back.
“Sir Percival,” Arthur said in a mock reprimand to the big knight, who had just woken up and was already attempting to stand to attention from his bed-bench. “I said bring the weapons to you, not go to the weapons.”
Percival shrugged, smiling widely first at Arthur, then at the little crowd, confused but overjoyed to see that Merlin was among them.
“It was his idea,” Gaius cut in, indicating the knight with a tip of his head, only just now separating from Merlin. “And a mighty good one, I’ll add.”
“You’ve bruised the bone,” Gaius informed Arthur, fingers lying very lightly on his purpled arm. “It’s a wonder that you did not break it, I imagine it’s been mighty painful. Under ordinary circumstances it would take many months to heal. I can expedite the process somewhat, though by no means will it be entirely healed.”
Gwen and Elyan stood behind the physician facing mostly outward, like a wall of privacy for the king who was stripped to the waist and sitting upon a bench opposite Gaius. Crouched between them was Merlin, frowning and trying not to wring his hands as he bounced on his heels. Lancelot and Mordred were elsewhere in the castle, rallying the troops and informing them of their plan.
“Save your strength, Gaius,” Arthur said automatically, leaning on his knees to look him in the eyes, trying to convince him to use his precious energy for someone who truly needed it.
“You’re just like Leon,” Gwen scoffed, half-turning.
Merlin chuckled, looking up at her. “A self-sacrificing streak, perhaps?”
“Don’t you start, we’ve got it too,” she retorted affectionately, eyeing him with a wry smile.
Gaius held up a hand for placation and silence both. “Respectfully sire, I will not ‘save my strength’ as you say. You intend to wield Excalibur against these fiends?”
“I do,” Arthur said a little hoarsely.
“Then you are our hope, I cannot in good conscience have you face them as you are,” he told him emphatically, solemnly, then to his erstwhile assistant he said, “Merlin, your ribwort plantain preparation please, and while you’re at it, bandages, the willow, liquor and a cup.”
Merlin sprang to his feet and returned with everything pressed to his middle, ensuring he would not drop the precious supplies. He put everything down on the bench by Gaius and resumed his anxious crouch.
“Thank you,” he said, and then batting him lightly he added, annoyed, “oh, stop bouncing like that and sit down properly, would you? I should have you take the henbane to mollify you.”
Merlin did as he was told, though Gaius softened and gripped his knee before resuming. He began applying a think green paste to Arthur’s arm and to other visibly bruised areas, as he did so he repeated, “ ġehǣlaþ anwlætan ” and “ Þurhhæle !”
Little by little the ache lifted and the colours of his bruises transformed from deep purple to blue to yellow, though the colours remained mottled in places, some damage simply too deep, it seemed, for the old sorcerer’s powers. Although the ointment was not upon them, the scrapes from his fall through the birch and others slowly lost their scabs, leaving behind mostly healed, pink lines. He proceeded to wrap the arm in bandages, sealing in the ointment. When he was done he sat back, looking somewhat spent, Merlin put his hand on his back to steady him. “I could do a lot more if only you had a day to rest, but this will have to do.”
“Thank you, that’s more than I can…” Arthur said, flexing his arm carefully when he stopped, noticing a change. Was he imagining it?
“Sire?” Gaius enquired, turning his head.
“It’s just…” he listened, hearing only silence. Actual silence.
“What’s wrong?” Merlin asked anxiously, leaning forward. Gwen, Elyan and Percival stirred too, unable to prevent overhearing.
“Nothing the-” he put a finger in his left ear, then closed his palms over both. “The ringing in my ears...”
“What about it?”
“It’s gone.”
“How long have you had it?”
“Six years, give or take… well, give.”
“Oh Arthur,” Merlin sighed sadly, realisation coming over him. “I’m sorry I-”
“What on Earth are you apologising for?”
“I only lifted the curse, I didn’t heal you, I couldn’t, I-!” he attempted to explain, coming further forward on the bench to touch his leg as though begging for forgiveness.
“Would you be quiet, you idiot?! I’m alive, aren’t I?” he asked testily, shaking his knee.
“You told me nothing of this,” Gaius cut in disapprovingly.
When Arthur tried to put words to his logic, why he had not shared it, he found they weren’t worth giving voice, so he remained silent.
The physician gave him an unimpressed but knowing look before moving on. He turned to Merlin sluggishly. “My boy I’m afraid I’m rather tired, can you measure out some liquor into the cup for me? A finger’s measure and no more, it won’t do to have his majesty inebriated. The willow, are you able to-?”
“Yes, I can infuse it.” Merlin did as instructed, taking the items Gaius handed him and setting to work, a clear flash of bronze signalled that he was using magic in the process.
“Not even a spell?” Gaius cocked an eyebrow at him, taking the cup back. “Truly you are a marvel.”
Merlin looked away, scrubbing his hand over the back of his neck.
The old man tossed his eyes at the too humble warlock fondly before passing the cup to Arthur. “For the pain.”
Muscle memory must have kicked in because Merlin put Arthur’s armour on just as he used to, that his hands shook as he did so notwithstanding.
In other corners of the room between the ailing patients, his knights, the guards and Gwen did the same, though only a mail vest could be found for Gwen -that was something Arthur would have to remedy when this was over.
“I’d like to put some protections on you, if you’ll let me,” Merlin said tentatively, inches from him.
Arthur nodded his consent.
Merlin spoke some words, his hand just hovering over his chest, that now familiar light spreading and spinning over his usual deep blue.
A few eyes fell on them before their owners went back to their own business.
“Your visions,” he said low to him so the others wouldn’t hear. “Tell me, how have you seen me die?”
“Lord Dalfan’s sword, in the market, he’ll slash your neck,” Merlin whispered immediately in a stream to his surprise, eyes almost unfocussed. “In the streets Lady Seren will pierce you with her axe, straight into the stone, the way I killed her father; Morgana will use her dagger and her magic, you’ll bleed out by the round table on the stained glass from the window,” he took a gasping breath and he put his hand over his mouth, distressed.
Arthur blinked and then dipped his head apologetically, sure he had ripped the future from him by posing the question. His heart ached for the warlock who couldn’t help but witness all of this, and might again. He pried Merlin’s hands from his face and held them tightly in his own. The other man looked vulnerable without them clamped there, preventing more of the future from spilling out. “So,” Arthur asked as gently as he could. “Any of these could happen?”
“Or none of them,” Merlin answered quickly, hands playing nervously around Arthur’s, then with some desperation he added, “let me wield the sword instead! That way I can face-”
“No, Merlin.”
“It was worth a try,” he said wetly, bending and placing his forehead upon Arthur’s paldron.
“Always blubbering, you are,” Arthur replied, letting go to bring his newly healed arm around him, finding it protested comparatively little.
“And I won’t stop,” he muttered defiantly in his ear, sniffing.
A throat was cleared and Elyan was leaning over a bench. All eyes were on them. “We all just wanted to let you two know, you never fooled anyone, pretending you weren’t flirting.”
Arthur’s face went slack as he processed this. Despite his tears, Merlin held his stomach, threw his head back and laughed. Recovering, and before he could protest, Arthur raised the other’s hand to his lips and kissed it for all to see.
“I think it’s about time for a rousing speech, wouldn’t you say, sire?” Merlin suggested, hands behind his back. The knights and guards were in their armour and standing ready in the courtyard, safe now that the gates had been closed. They held torches aloft against the darkened castle and the starry sky, the flames snapping in the wind, the light revealing that others were here too, servants and citizens of all ages, some in the courtyard with them, others watching from the gallery and the windows. So many shadowed faces, all on their king.
“Right you are, Merlin,” Arthur agreed, armour clicking as he faced everyone more fully.
He bowed low to him for the second time that day and stepped backwards out of the way until he was beside Gwen and Gaius, who were in a line of his best people, his friends, the people he loved the most at the front of the crowd.
Everyone waited, expectant, hopeful.
Arthur took a big, steady breath, and spoke loudly to ensure all could hear. “Tonight I have returned to you with the sword that will end this long battle,” he began, but he did not unsheathe it, did not show it to them for it was unimportant, it was they who had defeated the armies, they who had fought to close the gates, Excalibur would only finish what they had started. His gaze swept over them all so each knew he saw them, that he acknowledged their tireless work and sacrifice. Seeing their faces, the pride he felt was almost overwhelming. “But sword or no, victory could only be assured through your brave defence of Camelot and her people. Thank you, thank you all. You have shown your strength and resilience when called upon time and again, I am honoured to serve you all and to the best of my ability I will try to be worthy of you, to finish this night what you have started.”
You have protected our people with your skills, your strategy... and your magic. Gaius,” he addressed the physician, “you have healed your patients with magic, and no doubt protected them too. Sir Lancelot would not be standing amongst us if not for the young Sir Mordred, who healed his fatal wound. And Merlin-” and with the mention of his name the warlock seemed to jump a foot in the air, clearly not expecting to be credited with anything, “defended all of us in secret for many years, and continued to do so from afar, ensuring we were all here when this army came to our door. It was he who helped me to find Excalibur, who delivered me safely back to you.”
Magic has brought us here but magic has brought them here too,” he gestured widely behind him with his newly healed arm. “This attack is revenge for decades of persecution and terror against users of magic. The fight ahead of us is for far more than Camelot, it is for change, for peace, peace that is long overdue in the land. This is the beginning. When this is over I, or those who will succeed me should I fall, will lift all remaining laws against magic. It is time we restore what should never have been taken in the first place and end the cycle of revenge.”
When he was finished, there was no hesitation, no murmurings, just a noise that was cheer and happy cry both, amplified by the stone, a sudden burst of hope and joy in the quiet of the night.
Arthur was humbled and determined, his gaze swept over them all but settled on Merlin, whose eyes, of course, were close to overflowing. He saw then how he must look to him in his Camelot crimson with the attention and confidence of every man and woman in the courtyard upon him, a king. It occurred to Arthur that had never truly felt like a king until this very moment. The cheers sounding out, he stepped toward him so they were facing each other.
“Not a bad speech, sire, didn’t even need to write it for you this time,” Merlin joked low to him so only those immediate to him could hear, setting off a little ripple of chuckling.
Arthur couldn’t help laughing as he put a hand on his shoulder. “Another thing I had to learn, without you around to do it for me… Merlin, can you get us safely to the forge?”
“I can,” he said, hand going up and gripping his.
Notes:
Saxons typically had beards, Britons were cleanly shaven or at least this is how they were depicted, not sure how historically accurate that is.
The only major reference in this chapter is Arthur's speech under the stars. Merlin delivers a speech like this in Excalibur.
Memes:
Lancelot and Elyan when they see Merlin again: *Windows XP critical error noises*
Arthur: "We don't know how Morgana brings people back from the dead."
Morgana, several months ago with a vial labelled "Acme," her face lit with green under lighting, her hair wild: *Maniacal laughter*Merlin, waiting just outside of doorways to surprise his friends: (◕ᴗ◕✿)
Chapter 21: It's Perfectly Balanced, Perfectly Planned
Summary:
Arthur faces the wraiths in Camelot. Merlin realises he may have misinterpreted his visions. They enjoy some alone time.
When they made their way back in a quiet procession, the blue of the new day had overtaken the sky and the starlings were in full force, the sounds of their tittering and sighs filling the morning air. They stopped to watch a swarm of them turn into an immense murmuration over Camelot. Their aerial display created shifting structures in the sky, at times almost seeming solid even as the swarm moved as a liquid. Merlin leaned into his side and Arthur was comforted to have him there.
Notes:
This chapter contains smut! I would like to commend anyone who got this far, this fic burned SLOW. There will be a little more where that came from.
If you'd prefer to skip the explicit stuff, stop reading at "but why wait if the future was so uncertain?" and pick up at "Now it was Merlin's turn to lean into him." This leaves you with just the intimate moments leading up to and following the sexy bits.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The wind was colder high up upon the barbican that spanned the gatehouses. With the gates well shut and barricaded, they would have to descend to the town by other means and those means stood beside him, peering into the darkness below with his staff in hand and the wind ruffling his black hair. These late spring nights were short and already there was a fine line of blue in the east, the stars that made up the Pegasus already vanishing there slowly.
Arthur looked over his shoulder at Lancelot and Mordred. Mordred was here to provide magical backup for Merlin, but Lancelot, a crossbow on his back and a sword by his side, had elected to come. Merlin had initially protested but now as they prepared to descend, he seemed reassured to have his friend accompanying them. The two stood to attention when they saw their king looking, Camelot red whipping behind them.
“Ready all?” he said to them. “Merlin?”
“Ready,” Merlin said, though he was gripping his staff anxiously, he turned back to the younger sorcerer. “Mordred?”
“Ready, Emrys.”
“I’ll cast it on you first,” and getting a nod from the young knight he stretched his palm in the direction of his feet. “ Flotere fēt .”
Arthur watched as Mordred’s shadow upon the wall behind them became just a tiny bit taller. He bounced a little, testing the spell, and he came down more slowly than was natural.
“Lance?” Merlin looked to his friend.
Lancelot stepped forward, clearly confident, trusting, and the performance was repeated. He jumped as Mordred had and a bright white, amazed smile spread on his face.
The warlock swivelled to Arthur and it was his turn. “Go ahead.”
“ Flotere fēt .”
Suddenly he experienced a sensation like he was floating in water, no longer feeling as though his legs were holding his weight. He looked down to find that his feet had left the stone, hoovering just an inch or so above. He pondered if this was what it was like for Merlin, with the strange, Icarion way he seemed to move about the world these days, although Arthur was sure it wasn’t a spell but something more to do with his nature that set him floating the way he did.
But to his surprise Merlin spelled his own feet too. He left Arthur no time to ask questions, with no hesitation at all he jumped lightly, impossibly, to the wall to stand upon a merlon. He offered his hand and brought Arthur up with him easily. Arthur’s body signalled to him in warning that this lightness should not be possible, but it was cancelled out by trust.
“If I’m right,” Merlin explained to them all as Mordred and Lancelot did the same, looking down and across the roofs, no doubt mapping out their course. “They won’t attack until either we’re before them or our feet have touched the ground.”
“Right.”
“Wait,” he exclaimed suddenly, holding out a redundant arm as if Arthur would jump ahead without him. He was looking at the air and Arthur braced, looking too, expecting perhaps to see the white dragon swooping toward them. “The moon!” he exclaimed instead, pointing at it to everyone’s clear bewilderment.
“The moon?!” Arthur repeated.
“Yes! Look!” he pointed again, open mouthed and breathless.
“We don’t have time to look!” But he was looking all the same, as were the others. There it was hanging white-blue and on its side above them. Yes, it was the moon alright.
“You don’t understand, I’m here but it should be newer than this,” Merlin said, gripping Arthur’s arms, shaking him a little in a way that made the king very aware of the drop below them. The man was practically vibrating with excitement. “That has to mean… I think... I think I missed something! When you died in my vision the moon was newer than this.” -at this the gaze of the two knights beside them snapped over to him in alarm, but Merlin didn’t pay them any heed- “When I looked a little deeper I thought my being with you was a new detail but I didn’t look deep enough , or care to see the end again. I’m sure now they were different sets of visions, some I was in and some I wasn’t! If the moon was any newer there was a chance you’d die but now that it looks like this… Maybe, Arthur, maybe now there’s a chance you’ll-!”
“Stop babbling, you aren’t making any sense!” Arthur shook him right back, harder. The moon has nothing to do with it, you idiot. “It’s simple, send me back to Camelot alone on your awful dragon and I die, come with me and I survive. I could have told you as much, and I did, if I recall correctly. Really Merlin, you’re a very poor soothsayer.”
“I guess I am,” Merlin laughed. Then the self-confessed poor soothsayer pulled him into a quick kiss.
Beside them Lancelot breathed a laugh and Mordred tried and failed not to blush.
The starlings were already awake as they stepped from roof to roof. They flocked in with their high sighs and their single-minded ways, always moving as one, clearly taking advantage of the stillness to take over the town. The strange vantage point afforded him views he could never otherwise see, gardens tucked into the spaces between houses, bird nests and missing roof tiles. It was these details he attempted to focus on as he tried and failed to avert his eyes from the bodies and the small dark masses of crows gorging themselves on gutstrings below. He knew that the others had similarly failed by the silencing of their breath, the changes in their pace.
A few dead soldiers moved in groups through the streets, though they failed to notice them passing above, these they would unleash Camelot’s forces upon once the wraiths were dealt with. Despite their light feet, it was an oddly halting journey, the jumps between buildings, where needed, always a little tricky.
At length, they arrived.
“Be careful,” Merlin said into his ear as they all crouched on the apex of the forge roof together, “I don’t know what’s ahead anymore.”
“I know, but I have you now, don’t I?”
The other’s mouth twisted at that.
“What I mean is,” Arthur tried again. “I won’t be facing them alone.”
“Better get going,” he told him, but he was fretting at the fragment of the neckerchief on Arthur’s wrist as he said it.
Arthur started to shimmy down and Merlin finally let go, he took a look back at all three of them, their mix of determined and worried faces, then dangled his feet and dropped easily to the ground, feeling only the smallest impact.
He found himself faced with a chained door.
“Merlin!” he hissed.
His curly head appeared above, the moon making a lopsided blue halo behind him.
Arthur pointed to the door.
“Hang on,” he said, he craned further down, almost hanging from the roof, and he brought his hand down.
The lock and chain fell to the ground and Arthur kicked them out of the way. “The others too, I want all of the doors open.”
The warlock nodded and disappeared.
Arthur stepped through with the creak of the heavy door, moonlight came through with him, rendering everything not shadowed pale and colourless. One by one the doors opened with Merlin’s magic, each creaking in turn, six in all, wide and arched, mirror images of each other on the east and west of the building. It still smelled like coal and iron in here and tools still lined the walls on rusted nails, dusty and spiderwebbed. The anvil was in the centre like Gwen had told him it would be, a hammer upon it casually, more than likely left there by her father, never again to be picked up by his hand. Arthur understood why she would keep it as it was, why she worked hard when she could have sold it; sometimes it was too much to unseal things and easier to leave them as they are until the passage of time makes it easier to enact some kind of change upon it. He guessed nominating this place for their battle was her finally reaching that time.
A horse whinnied in the distance and soon the sound of hooves was growing nearer and nearer, the echo making it too hard to pinpoint. He went outside again for a report.
He could hear movement above. “There,” Lancelot’s voice said, and his face came into view above as Merlin’s had. “They’re coming fast toward us, and they’ve split off, they’ll arrive on either side.”
“Both of them?” While he had been prepared for any eventually, with all this talk of Merlin’s visions, Arthur had mostly imagined that he would face each wraith alone, but of course that’s not how it worked out.
“Nothing ever goes according to plan, does it?” Merlin said, appearing beside Lancelot.
Arthur grimaced.
The hooves were clearer, louder now, if their horses were alive they were driving them very hard.
Dalfan’s horse charged into view first through the eastern doors, as jet black as his armour and foaming at the mouth around the bit. It rose off its front legs and cried when it was brought to a sudden stop and no sooner than its hooves had touched the ground again, the wraith that had once been Dalfan dismounted and his wife arrived on the opposite side, her entrance having much the same dramatic flare. Only Llenwi, on western side where the moon shone, cast a shadow, darkening most of the room again.
Arthur raised Excalibur, stepping to the centre so that they were equidistant from him. He looked from one to the other. Merlin had wondered if Morgana’s command would allow the wraiths to enter at all but they dismounted and stepped through the threshold simultaneously. Had he inadvertently let himself be surrounded? No, although risky there were other exits and his allies were on the roof, two of them magic users, they would not let anything befall him. Still, he assessed the situation rapidly, thinking about his next move.
Llenwi began swinging her chain mace, creating regular whooshing, singing and rattling sounds that increased in tempo with every rotation. Dalfan was upon him faster than he anticipated, striking his rapidly unsheathed sword down upon Excalibur. The strength of it sent a shock through his arms and the force almost had him losing his guard, but the blades slid together with a clear, sharp ring instead and he easily parried the next blow, circling with his opponent to step toward the eastern doors as he did so, feeling the familiar and comforting thrum of the sword all the while. Dalfan’s next swipe missed but, ducking quickly away, Llenwi’s mace was cutting through the air just where his head had been. Taking a risk he quickly rolled away and back to his feet, his back now to the west.
In much the same way her daughter had fought him a few days earlier, Llenwi’s tall form advanced on him, swinging at him in a tireless way that would be nearly impossible for a living person. He stepped so that the anvil was between them, watching carefully as Dalfan skirted around at the side of his vision. When she came upon the anvil, she placed her foot on it and with a hard kick, it and the dusty hammer upon it came crashing down to the stone floor. She swung again and again and again. Almost cornered he left out of one of the western doors, but Dalfan exited rapidly ahead of him to meet him there. As their met swords again, Llenwi came at him from the side, her mace swinging faster than before. The horse there, he was sure now it was a living one, reared and bolted away down the street.
“Merlin, Mordred!” he called urgently. “Do something!”
There was the briefest hint of movement inside the forge and then the heavy hammer struck Dalfan hard at the side of his helmet with a clang like pots smashing together and sent him straight to the ground, a quick thinking rescue from one of the sorcerers above. Before Arthur could get away however, Llenwi’s mace came down upon his shoulder. Braced for pain he instead was hit by a bright light, both he and his opponent stumbled away. Quickly recovering he found that he was uninjured, Merlin’s spells of protection had worked their (literal) magic. There was a triumphant shout from the man himself and he got a brief view of his form above him in the moonlight, seeing the brilliant flash of a smile before he had to dodge Llenwi’s next attempt. He circled with her, seeing when he turned about that Dalfan had got to his feet again.
Arthur backed in through the forge doors again only to find that the anvil was nowhere to be seen and that meant… He kept backing away, through the entire forge and back through the centre eastern door. And there he saw it, wavering in the air above the door, Merlin and Mordred’s silhouettes behind it. He waited just beyond it, letting the wraiths advance on him.
No sooner had Lord Dalfan stepped beyond threshold when the anvil came crashing down upon him, rendering him prone, even as it fell to the side. His dented helmet rolled away to Arthur’s feet, revealing a shock of red hair, greyed skin and blank eyes, his expression eerily neutral so he attempted to rise. Before Arthur could make the decisive swing, Llenwi came through, gripped her weapon harder, swinging it faster now, silently incensed. In a very quick movement however, Arthur ducked, sliding under her arm, a hair’s breadth between him and a caved in skull, and leaning into a roll he chopped Excalibur down upon the exposed neck of Dalfan. Back inside the forge once more, Arthur righted himself and he turned just in time to see the wraith’s rolling head and body collapse into grey ash. The ash was leaving on the wind as Llenwi stepped over the empty armour and toward him, weapon raised.
Merlin’s head popped down from the eastern door, eyes lit, and suddenly Llenwi’s mace crashed to the floor, made heavy by his magic. She went down with it, back bent and neck exposed. He wouldn’t pass up this chance. Despite her armour he swung down just as she had let go of the mace handle and was rising again. It struck down hard and she bent under the weight, the blade lighted and melted quickly through the metal, the magic of the sword at work, or perhaps enhanced by a certain someone. A clicking from behind him had him snapping his head over his shoulder, the force he applied suddenly lessened, she used the opportunity to dive for his legs, toppling him.
As he cursed and kicked at her, he saw a bolt strike the thing that had distracted him, a dead soldier that stumbled in through the eastern door, summarily felled by Lancelot.
“Ahhh, helmet, Merlin! Helmet!” he cried as she crawled over him, pressing so hard upon his legs he feared his bones would snap clean in half or shatter. With anything that might have secured it destroyed or weakened by Excalibur, her helmet flew clean off her head with the assistance of magic. He tried not to let what he saw stop his struggle away. Her grey braid tumbled out and half across her face, she was almost exactly as she had been the night that she died, even her eyes seemed to be fully intact. He swung Excalibur at her until she was forced to let go and he could extract himself. Although she was weaponless she dodged a few times before Arthur finally landed the fatal hit. Her head fell to the floor, her body went with it an instant later, and then she too was ash.
He heard the happy cries above him and someone jumped down and joined him, he knew by the footsteps and the way he was rushing toward him that it was Merlin.
“You did it, Arthur, it’s done,” he breathed, already pulling him in. It sounded like ‘y ou’re alive, Arthur, you’re safe.’
“Somehow that felt like cheating,” Arthur admitted between his heavy pants, watching over Merlin’s shoulder as the wind that blew through the forge mingled Llenwi’s ashes with her husband’s and carried it away.
“Are you complaining?” he asked him, stepping back, only a little bit of humour in his voice.
Arthur kept watching, solemn, he heard the others jump down behind him but they kept their distance. “Before she died, Llenwi spoke of our hypocrisy, she witnessed you heal me- or lift my curse… There had been no one left that could do that very thing in Astyrex.”
Merlin looked like he had tripped and caught himself. “She was alive after I-?”
“Yes, though not for long,” he answered before continuing his dark train of thought. “Magic should never have been banned, my father should never have unleashed his pain onto the land… Seren wanted to kill me as much as my father and she was right to. I cannot pretend I was not an agent of his revenge, that I did not carry out his will. I will lift the ban, I will accept the healing and the projection that is given to me but I will not allow my own hypocrisy to be lost on me.”
Merlin seemed to want to argue but Arthur raised a staying hand, earning him a sad smile.
Arthur’s eyes alighted on Lady Llenwi’s toppled horned helmet by the northern wall. “I don’t know what I would have done, if our positions had been reversed, if everyone I knew, loved and cared for-”
“Don’t think about it Arthur, please.”
“No, they deserve that much. Seren… I, a Pendragon, the cause of her suffering, told her not to save her love.”
The other was quiet again, allowing him the space to say his thoughts aloud.
“I think I would have done the same thing,” the king admitted. “Tried to kill all of the people responsible.”
“No, I don’t think you would have done what they did,” Merlin said with the same gentle confidence with which he told him of his prophesied greatness.
Arthur frowned at him questioningly.
“You wouldn’t,” he explained. “Because you understand the cost of revenge.”
“Maybe you’re right,” he said after some consideration, and then after another pause, “you’ll help me do all of this right, bring magic back, when this is over?”
“I promise to, I will.”
Camelot’s knights and guards, Gwen and Merlin went through the streets in teams led by Arthur, Lancelot and Elyan to rid the town of the remaining soldiers. It had taken them all of the remaining hours until dawn, but by the time the sky was a gradient of yellow and orange radiating from the east, there was not a single one left standing. That done, they chased the horses down and Merlin gentled them with some soft words and gave them to a guard to be cared for at the stables.
Aching and exhausted, they moved on to their next task.
Camelot’s dead were upon unlit pyres in one of the town squares. They were each respectfully covered, many Camelot flags and mantles had to be spared for the purpose, so these fallen people had become a collection of mostly red, Pendragon crested forms. They likely died on the first night before they could get to the castle, or fighting to secure the town. Arthur had counted them, very low in number for the suddenness and violence of the siege, but he refused to rejoice, these had each been human lives and deserved not to be converted into evidence of their success.
The wind was stronger now, it would be hard to light them and they would be feeding fuel to the fires for many, many hours yet.
“I can do it,” Merlin said by his side, knowing just what the problem was, he had been in step with him throughout the fight and it seemed he would be so in this as well.
Arthur winced, he didn’t want to ask him to do this.
“It’s alright,” he reassured him, his blue-eyed gaze sad but steady. Strong , Merlin was so strong, stronger than he knew himself to be.
It was already agreed that they would burn the dead to avoid their being turned into yet more soldiers should the walls be breached, but still Arthur found himself looking around, like someone else might agree or disagree, make the choice for him. Even as they lay on the pyres he was overcome by a feeling that the power to decide this for these recently dead and anyone who might survive them was unwieldy, wrong. But instead he found that all eyes were on him. He decided it would be a far worse affront to have them resurrected for Morgana’s war than cremated to prevent it. “You may do it,” he granted.
Merlin started forward but Mordred, who had been standing not far from them, intercepted him.
“Mordred, you don’t need to…” Arthur heard him say.
“No, Emrys, please allow me to help,” the young man responded.
The older sorcerer hung his head for a moment in solemn thought, then nodded and the two shared the burden of the work together.
When they made their way back in a quiet procession, the blue of the new day had overtaken the sky and the starlings were in full force, the sounds of their tittering and sighs filling the morning air. They stopped to watch a swarm of them turn into an immense murmuration over Camelot. Their aerial display created shifting structures in the sky, at times almost seeming solid even as the swarm moved as a liquid. Merlin leaned into his side and Arthur was comforted to have him there.
By the time they had returned to the castle the birds had ceased their show, the sky almost empty as though it had never happened and despite it all Arthur found his heart felt light.
They were greeted as heroes. It seemed everyone wished to ensure their comfort and rest, and soon they both found themselves with a gaggle of insistent people at their behest. Merlin, as was to be expected, took particular issue with this.
They took their rations with the knights, Gaius and Gwen, and it was a wonderful thing to be together like this again. Merlin’s homecoming, it seemed, was also theirs and it felt so much like a reuniting even between the people who had been here all along, a return of bonds that should have never been broken or strained to the degree they were. In their very natural chatter, the jokes they exchanged, Arthur found he wasn’t the only one whose heart was light, everyone was elated in their small victory and felt assured that there would be more ahead.
Once they parted, Arthur and Merlin were shuffled off to different parts of the castle to be bathed. That he could have something as luxury as a meal and a bath felt wrong to Arthur, but by degrees he was restored and so he found, begrudgingly, was Merlin, because when they met again he was relaxed and a smile came easily to him. Arthur, cleanly shaven, his muscles having lost some of their tightness, found himself smiling back.
A little restless, they did the rounds, checking in on everyone, but found that many had rightly found somewhere to sleep. Gaius was awake but looked at them reproachfully when they entered his temporary infirmary. He herded them out into the corridor where they wouldn’t disturb the patients.
“Please, forget about the events of tonight, you two,” he urged them astutely, seeing the source of their restlessness when they had not. “And get some sleep, Gods know you deserve it.” And with this he patted each of them on his arm and made to leave, though Merlin and he gripped hands briefly before he had shuffled back through the door.
Stripping was more favourable to donning night clothes, thinking little about what might happen if they were interrupted or if the enemy came knocking. They slipped in on either side of the bed and met again, sighing in the middle and into the new, very right sensation of each other’s bare skin. Merlin rested his head upon Arthur’s bare chest, and Arthur squeezed him and ran his hand up and down the bones of his spine as if to warm him. At length he slowed the movement, already drawing in on the feathered edges of sleep.
“I’m sorry I almost sent you alone,” Merlin said to him softly, drawing patterns on his stomach with his long fingers.
Soothed by his weight on him and his gentle touches, Arthur took a long breath and pressed his lips to his head, his hair tickling his nostrils. “Good, you idiot, you should be apologising... But you’re here now and you saved me again today, like you always do, so… How about we say ‘apology accepted?’”
“Mm,” he mumbled into his skin. “Someone has to save you, you’re helpless on your own.”
Arthur laughed lightly and pinched him a little on his hip, earning him a frankly adorable yelp, but he didn’t argue because there was truth to it, though he wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of telling him so. He resumed rubbing his back and he relaxed against him again. There was a heavy ache in Arthur’s heart that lightened with every second they were together like this, he closed his eyes, pulled him a little closer and he allowed himself to sink into the feeling, allowed both of them this moment.
Merlin’s breathing was deepening and Arthur thought he was falling asleep too until he felt the tentative downward trail of his hand over the plane of his torso. He tipped his head up to meet his eyes, a careful question in his expression and in answer Arthur kissed him, nodding yes into Merlin’s sudden, small gasps. Sleep was pushed away, and the beat of his heart doubled as he deepened the kiss and his hands began some exploring of their own, laughing when, in what should have been the heat of the moment, he was accused of tickling him again. Only thing for it was to call him a girl, roll on top of him and suck his bottom lip until he got a whimper out of him. He drew back a little to see his eyes were hooded and blown, flicking between his lips and his eyes. He drank in the sight of him, the blush of his cheeks, the scarred span of his naked chest, the lovely unruliness of his hair and beard. This time Merlin, impatient, raised his head off the pillow to kiss him again, wanting, and Arthur wouldn’t deny him any longer.
‘When you are ready and you can rest, find yourself a mate,’ Arthur remembered him saying earlier that day. Maybe this wasn’t quite the rest he meant but why wait if the future was so uncertain?
He crawled forward over him and saw his already wrecked expression, his little breath of anticipation before he dipped in and they kissed hard. Arthur’s hand was in his curls to catch his little fall to the pillow while Merlin’s roamed his body. Arthur stole every breathy noise and whimper he made around his tongue. Once Merlin’s mouth was thoroughly kissed, he moved onto an ear and he nibbled it, enjoying the way it made his hips stutter and his muscles tense. He did it again, sucked an earlobe and in return a hand gripped his buttocks and his name was moaned out. He could feel himself growing hard, and as they moved against each other, their skin still warm and dry from their baths, he found Merlin was too.
He started to travel southward. He kissed his Adam’s apple, licked it, thinking of the images that the salacious night plant had presented him with many days ago now. He wanted to know what this man was like in the throes of pleasure, if he would throw back his head and lose himself just like he imagined he would. He continued down but Arthur wasn’t the only one on a mission. One of the hands that had been sliding up and down his flanks, gripping his backside and scraping there lightly, now slipped up and around his side and to thumb, pinch and roll a nipple. Arthur stilled and groaned at the feeling, but just when he had recovered and wanted to reciprocate, Merlin slid down and craned up to suck at the opposite nipple and his hand started travelling downward once more.
“Want to take you in my hand,” he breathed over his nipple.
The question sent a nice little shock downward. “Please,” he found himself saying.
The other chuckled a little, a teasing about his suddenly being fond of the word abandoned in favour of sneaking his hand back to hold his balls and play them over his fingers. After some very slight brushes of his hand designed to make Arthur gasp, Merlin began tugging at and pumping him slowly while the fingers of his other hand dug bruisingly into the flesh of his arse. Tensed, surprised at the pleasure of it, Arthur’s head fell down into the crook of Merlin’s neck and the man kissed his head softly. It was a very Merlin mixture of ministrations and it made him wonder what it would be like to be taken by him. This mental image and Merlin’s clever hands soon proved too much and he could feel himself on the verge of release already. Moaning, he let himself be brought dangerously close.
“Your turn,” he drawled into his ear and he rose, crawling down, licking a nipple and a stripe up his stomach on his way, loving the salt taste of him, before settling at his legs, his own legs out straight behind him and hanging off the bed. He liked what he saw, his dick was very hard and nicely proportioned, long while Arthur’s was thick. The hair there was coarser and it curled tighter than the hair on his head. There was a bead of precum about to slip from the round pink head. At Merlin’s dizzy nod he lapped it up and circled him with his tongue. He took a hold, bounced it playfully against his lips, and then took it all down into his mouth to his high hums and moans, sucking up and down.
After a while however he found the angle a little difficult, it relying on him to lean on his elbows and strain his neck. He let go of him with a deliberate pop that made him breathe a laugh. He rose, stepped off the bed and pulled Merlin by his legs, causing some of the bed clothes to slide down with him. This time, with his legs around him, Arthur imagined the opposite scenario, him taking Merlin, fucking into him while he held his thighs. Below him Merlin had flushed and Arthur was sure he was imagining the same thing.
If they had a chance to do this again, and he hoped they would, Arthur knew they would give and take, but what constituted as giving and what was supposed to be taking would surely blur in their need to simply have and be close to one another in every way they wished.
Then, to Merlin’s clear delight, Arthur went down to the ground. He took his dick in his mouth again, the angle letting him take him deeper, faster. He moved his hand up and down on him twistingly alongside his lips when he wasn’t trying to take all of him. Everything was slippery now and Merlin writhed and canted into the feeling.
“I always thought you wanted me on my knees,” he gasped out from the bed.
Arthur’s eyes flicked up just as Merlin was at the back of his throat, that’s not off the cards , he tried to convey.
Merlin seemed to get the message, his eyes rolled back a little before they closed and he started to throw back his head just as he had hoped he would. Encouraged, Arthur picked up speed and he went more and more taut. He noted with satisfaction how the sheets drew up a little as Merlin’s hands fisted into them. One of his long legs folded up and his foot found the edge of the bed, he seemed to use it to strain himself away. Getting partially back up, Arthur looked at his love to find that his face was screwed up very tight and his eyes were closed.
Concerned, Arthur stopped immediately and started to climb back onto the bed. “Merlin?” he called.
Merlin opened his blown eyes blearily at him, his brows knitted. He looked not a little ruined among the Pendragon red of the sheets, that flush going down to his chest now. “Why’d y’stop?” he slurred, and he raised his hips needily and unselfconsciously.
Arthur all but growled as he realised it was pleasure and overwhelm he’d seen on the other’s face. This was new for them, afterall. He slid back down and immediately took his full length, and did so again and again.
“Oh Gods, Arthur!” he moaned. “You just have to be good at everything, don’t you?”
Arthur took a hold of his raised thigh, pulled at and cupped his balls with the other and let his sucking get wetter, slopier. He traced his fingers a little lower and pressed hard into the skin below them.
“Arthur!” he cried, and then he started to beg, straining again. “Please please!”
“What do you want?”
“You, always, please keep going, please please-!”
Merlin’s whole body clenched and Arthur’s mouth filled. He didn’t let go until his little jumps and twitches of pleasure were done and he had recovered enough to sit partially up and card his hand through his hair. Arthur drew back finally and swallowed.
“One day I’ll find the thing you’re not good at and beat you at it,” he laughed, letting himself fall back, pale limbs splayed, more relaxed than Arthur had ever seen him.
Still on the ground Arthur rested his head on his thigh, he was very hard and he almost ached with need but he smiled, utterly in love. “You can try,” he challenged.
Merlin started to slide and wriggle down the bed, he seemed to want to get close to him so Arthur pulled him by his legs again and helped him to the floor, he was beautifully pliant all the while. They kissed there tenderly by the bed, the sheets below them, having accompanied Merlin all the way down on this second journey.
“Please, I want to-” he gasped between the kisses.
“Mmm, more begging?” he teased, knowing exactly what he was asking to do. “Fantasised about this a long time, have you?”
And Merlin, unashamed and still riding the high of his orgasm nodded his head vigorously yes as his mouth continued to seek him.
Arthur laughed in surprise, kissed him once more and rose to his feet, stepping back just a little.
The other, who had seemed more than half out of it since he came, narrowed his eyes at him, though he was smiling; he knew exactly what Arthur was at. Merlin walked on his knees, cushioned by the sheets, looking up at him all the while. The sight fulfilled quite a few of Arthur’s fantasises too. Just before he reached him, he stepped back just a little more.
“Royal arse,” Merlin complained.
“I thought that was ‘royal prat?’”
“Mmm, how could I forget?” Merlin smirked as he finally came all the way forward. He sat on his partially splayed legs, still a little boneless, and took a hold. He licked up and down his length and hummed, enjoying himself, and Arthur, patient and enjoying himself too, didn’t protest, even though he knew Merlin was being deliberately teasing.
He started to suck and it was worth the wait. The aerial view of his dark head, his curled lashes that fluttered, almost meeting his stomach when he took all of him in, was already sending Arthur into bliss, as did the swell of his flushed cheeks, the very obscene sounds he was making. Arthur held on as best he could, trying to make this last, but soon he was coming too, and hard. He stroked Merlin through it and found himself whispering praises when he swallowed.
Now it was Merlin’s turn to lean into him. He sighed and closed his eyes.
“I love you,” he told him, the words coming out so easily, so naturally.
“Mm,” Merlin smiled, rolling his forehead on his thigh. “I love you too.”
Arthur couldn’t help carding his hand through his hair, as the other had done to him, adoring his contented sighs. “Come on,” he said to him eventually. “Back to bed.”
He stayed where he was, that smile going mischievous against his leg.
Arthur bent and half scooped him up by his armpits.
“Your arm!” he cried, worried, taking at least some of his own weight.
“Can’t help it if you’re going to be lazy,” he strained. He waddled with him a few feet before chucking him to the best of his ability on the bed, which meant half over the side. To remedy this, he picked up the fallen bedclothes and proceeded to roll the man in them. Merlin was chuckling low when Arthur draped himself over the top of him. He found his face in all of it and placed kisses on his closed, laugh crinkled eyes. “Comfortable?”
“Mm, you?”
“Very,” he kissed his nose, enjoying the soft thing he had made him into.
He half unrolled him and slipped below the blankets, and Merlin got below too. They rearranged themselves and soon Merlin was lying on Arthur’s bare chest once more. They were both half limp and heavy, very deliciously spent.
Arthur’s heart was achingly full and he marvelled at it all. In all of their tumbling Arthur realised he had briefly forgotten the immense power the man in his arms possessed, the rare heights to which he had ascended, his very Icarian way of moving about the world; they had just been themselves through it all.
A thought struck him. “Why did you stop floating?” he asked him softly.
“Mm-m?” came the answering mumble, its owner already well on his way to sleep.
He tipped his head to his, drew him closer. “Never mind, you sleep.”
A nod into his chest, no arguments. His breath tickled his skin lightly as it deepened.
But Arthur thought he knew the answer; grounding him and grounded, a tether for his light footed love, Arthur held on, lest he, even with his feet having never having left the ground, fall away from him again.
You have me floating like a feather on the sea
While you're as heavy as the world
That you hold your hands beneath
Once I had wondered what was holding up the ground
I can see that all along, love
It was you all the way down
Leave it now, I am sky-bound
If you need to
darling, lean your weight to me
We'll float away
But if we fall, I only pray
Don't fall away from me
I, Carrion (Icarian) by Hozier
Notes:
Did I really just drop an anvil on a character? Yes, yes I did.
Did I also quote a Hozier song in my fic? Yes, I also did that.
I wanted to make the sex scenes fun in this fic, the mix of intimacy and just messing with each other feels very Merthur to me.
Last Merlin POV flashback coming up next :D
Chapter 22: You Will Not Roam in This Forgotten Place
Summary:
Gwendydd and Merlin celebrate Samhain together. Merlin learns more about his life after Arthur's death, and learns too that Arthur will soon fall (literally) back into his life. Gwendydd shares her thoughts as to why Merlin's feet no longer touch the ground and regarding the true meaning of transformation.
“I might still harbour a little resentment, I know Uther left him no choice but... I really did think he would come for me that night, do something to make it right again, like he always did… But I might also miss the idiot, I can’t help it. Two things can be true at once, y’know..? Really, in the end, I’ll turn him away because I don’t want him to die, I’d be selfish to do otherwise.”
“But circumstances may dictate that you must do otherwise,” and then knowingly she added, “so might your heart.”
Notes:
This chapter goes deep into the random reading I've done in my research for this fic. It follows the concept that Myrddin/Merlin has a place of transformation not where he turns into something else but essentially where he sheds everything he's become. Esplumoir means a place that one sheds one's feathers. I had my own thoughts and emotions about this, they collided with this fic and this chapter happened.
As I said before this is the last Merlin POV flashback, I really hope you enjoyed these devastating italics.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
I know the sound of each rock and stone
And I embrace what others fear.
You are not to roam in this forgotten place,
Just the likes of me are welcome here.
It was Merlin’s fifth year in the woods and by now he was forced to accept it, his body and mind were porous things, the changes within him as natural and inevitable as the changes without. With Bealtaine came the ascent to the warm months and with it contentedness, elation even; with Samhain always came the descent, his own as well as the season’s.
It was close to Samhain, in the midst of his growing apprehension as the date drew near, that Gwenddyd visited him. Aodhán had been the first to see her, it seemed, flying with a cry from his shoulder to the trees. He had been harvesting the rosehips that grew along the embankment of earth below the black alder, he looked around to see what had startled his friend so, but saw nothing. When he turned back to his work there was someone else plucking at the bush. He smiled at those pale and freckled hands, then at their owner. Her hair had grown very long, her red tresses worn loose but for a braided band at the top of her high forehead. She had a grey blanket over her deep blue dress, just like the stone and the night sky that he associated her with. Upon her back was a long necked, simply ornamented gittern.
“Welcome sister,” he greeted fondly.
“Hello brother,” she said in her familiar serene voice, but her smile told him it was merriment that she was here for, and merriment they would have.
She helped fill his basket until it was suitably full before they went inside.
He guided her not to Arthur’s chair (or more accurately, the one he recently divined would be Arthur’s chair), but his own. She sat down and placed her instrument leaning by her side. He built a proper fire for them.
“I think mulled sloe wine would be just the thing, what do you think?” he asked, rising and slapping sawdust and soot off his hands.
“Just the thing,” she repeated, hooking an arm over the back of the chair as she followed his progress through the room.
“This is my prize,” he told her as he retrieved the small casks, things built from the forest and magic both. “The blackthorns finally stopped snagging at me and gave up their goods.”
“Then we’ll drink to your good harvest.”
He put the ingredients into a pot and set it over the fire.
When he took the seat on the left he found she was examining the twisted trunks of the ceiling, her beaked nose pointing up. “I foresaw the making of your esplumoir, rarely have I visited you here but it is always a great honour to see it.”
“My es- what?” he asked, finding it unsurprising, as he always did, that he should not see her for some time and they would fall straight into talking in riddles again.
“The place of your transformation,” she elaborated unhelpfully, her blue eyes, so like his own, back on him.
“Well, it’s certainly that,” Merlin winced. He was an entirely different being now, he convinced himself, to the one he used to be.
“I see you may be misunderstanding me,” she said, leaning forward, her gaze as intense as it ever was. “This is not a place of becoming but of shedding, it means ‘a place to remove plumage.’ Within it you may transform from anything you might become back to that which you really are.”
He threw his head back in the chair. “I adore you sister, I really do, but the way you talk sometimes...”
They drank much of his sloe wine and entertained themselves as the short day slipped into night. Gwendydd played her gittern, its sound somehow both nasally and rich, and Merlin, able at least to keep a beat, drummed on his table as accompaniment. She encouraged him to sing but his attempts earned him the first surprised laugh he had ever heard from her. His tries at the gittern were more successful, though he knew he would never have her skill, her fingers so graceful and quick, her use of her bone plectrum, her fingers moving over the strings, her sense of the music precise enough to reproduce deeply complicated melodies. They exchanged songs, making him think about where he was from.
“Come,” she said, when it was suitably dark. “Let the two of us divine together. As well as your esplumoir , I understand your humble hut is also your observatory.”
“That it is. Still not sure about the first bit though,” he laughed uneasily.
The trees took them branch by branch to the top, much to the surprise of the moths and his poor slumbering blackbird, so his cottage, hut, es-whatever-Gwendydd-called-it, was below them. Though the alder was higher and blocked some of their view she was right, this was his observatory, not too high to leave him cold in the upper air but high enough to lower the horizon, let him see more of the sky.
As she predicted when first they met, he was improving at this, more able now to focus upon certain events or points in time, although the visions frequently went their own course despite his trying.
“I wish to suggest a focus for our divinations,” she said, sitting beside him on the wide branch the trees had supplied. They were both a little tipsy and Merlin wondered if she was finding the height as heady as he was.
“Alright,” he agreed, the alcohol making him brave.
“To understand what I mean about transformation I believe you will have to look beyond the lifetime of the young Pendragon.”
Merlin gulped, maybe he wasn’t so brave. All the same he steeled himself before he looked up.
He sits in an apple tree in summertime, the small round beginnings of apples all around him. A blackbird hops down from his shoulder to a branch and watches him for a moment before swooping away. Suddenly he’s swooping after it on white wings, transformed into a bird.
He rides a dragon, also white, and an adult now, over the countryside. They happen upon a town, sprawling, windows gleaming in the sun. Here and there, there are hints of old walls and at its centre a crumbled castle, once grand, overtaken by a miniature forest of its own.
A woman with short silver hair in armour sits upon a stone. Upon her red cape is the Pendragon crest, it whips in the wind behind her. Annoyed, she gathers it up and sits on it unceremoniously. She has one leg folded up casually below her as she cuts a slice of an apple with a small paring knife and hands it to him. He chastises her for the affront to the crest, and the way her eyes and nose crinkle when she laughs reminds him of Gwen, the way she turns and looks poutingly to the ridge of blue mountains in the distance reminds him of Arthur.
Arthur comes falling into his grove, bruised and exhausted, his red tunic ripped at the shoulder, pleading for his help.
Gwendydd was still deep in her trance when his senses tuned back to the present. The autumn air was damp, the temperature was falling and the moon was in its third quarter. The constellation of the Great Bear lay in the north, lower now in the sky. Just like his real-life counterparts he retreats for the winter, that retreating beginning in the autumn. He won't leave the sky, just fall from prominence, from an easy line of sight here in the woods, still, Merlin knows he will miss him.
He takes a few moments to think about what he had seen, four very clear visions, three following Gwendydd’s request, the fourth an unruly addition. Of the three, the first had been a very literal transformation, the others he supposed were their own kind of transformation, or maybe change was the more apt word: a future ability, to change form so completely as to become something else entirely; Aithusa and the friendship they might one day share after their years apart, Camelot succumbed to the ages below them; a knight of Camelot who seemed to be his travelling companion, if not his friend, part of the inevitable, unavoidable shifting cast of characters that will populate his unending life. The fourth he could connect to the vision he had earlier that same year, of Arthur asleep in his cottage and himself sewing that very same red tunic.
“Myrddin,” his sister said, calling him from his thoughts. “Do you wish to share what you have seen?”
“I do but… How about you go first?”
She hummed. “Very well. I had a vision concerning a squire, a youth who will follow you and his master on a quest. I understand the youth was irking you in some way.”
“Sounds about right,” Merlin sighed, having seen for himself that there was a time he would leave this place, and roam elsewhere, on and on, sometimes with people such as these accompanying him, he wondered if his master was the grey haired woman in the Pendragon garb. “Anything else?”
“The stars gave me no more that concerns your life, I’m afraid. I only saw myself harvesting the mistletoe and stoking the solstice fires, it might be this year, or the next.”
Merlin relayed his own visions and found himself making further connections, through clues and the threads of the final vision. This encounter with Arthur in the woods could be knitted easily with others he’d had since he gained the curse of prophecy: his friend sleeping, battered and exhausted in the chair by the fire and his violent death in Camelot, that would be witnessed, it seemed, through his own eyes. The whole tapestry came into focus, Arthur would seek his help, Merlin would return with him to Camelot and then Arthur would die. “I’ll turn him away,” he decided, paling and drawing into himself.
“And yet you could not bear to have another sit in the chair you divined to be his,” she pointed out, an eyebrow raised, unrelentingly perceptive.
“I might still harbour a little resentment, I know Uther left him no choice but... I really did think he would come for me that night, do something to make it right again, like he always did… But I might also miss the idiot, I can’t help it. Two things can be true at once, y’know..? Really, in the end, I’ll turn him away because I don’t want him to die, I’d be selfish to do otherwise.”
“But circumstances may dictate that you must do otherwise,” and then knowingly she added, “so might your heart.”
“To hell with my heart,” he said immediately, miserable.
“Remember too that you might be incorrect in your interpretations.”
Still sulking, he said nothing. A roe doe barked somewhere in the dark, he pretended it hadn’t made him jump.
“In your first vision you became a bird,” she began, not phased, and he knew her well enough now to know this would bring them circuitously to some point or other.
“Yeah,” he groaned, reluctantly playing along. “I get that this is ‘transforming,’ but I’m not sure what any of this has to do with ‘shedding.’”
She shook her head. “You will change, Myrddin, you will become whatever you may need to become, whether abstractly or in form. If you so choose, you can one day rid yourself of all Earthly heaviness and become a bird of the air... I noticed that you step lightly when you walk, this is not solely the work of the forest but the state of your mind, you are slowly leaving mortal ways of being behind.”
“Maybe that’s a good thing,” he said darkly. “Maybe ‘mortal ways of being’ are too painful for a thing like me. So is this the ‘shedding,’ then?”
“No,” she shook her head again emphatically. “The shedding, true transformation, is divesting yourself of all the untrue things you have had to become and becoming truly yourself . It is in this place you created that you may do this.”
“I’m not sure what-”
“Becoming human again, Merlin,” she explained clearly. He didn’t think she had ever called him by the name his mother gave him. “This does not mean diminishing in power or becoming mortal, but resuming your form as it was meant to be, letting pain and joy both back into your soul when you have renounced them.”
“I have plenty of both already, thanks,” he yawned and reclined upon the treetop, more branches rising up to support him. “I think I’ll choose to renounce, when the option becomes available to me. In the meantime, I’ll ‘step lightly.’”
“And that you may,” she warned fondly, “but your heart-”
“May dictate otherwise,” he finished for her, sighing.
“To hell with it, then?” she smiled.
“All the way down,” he said, closing his eyes.
Needless to say, all of this called for more wine.
***
She stayed to see him through Samhain, continuing their merrymaking like a prolonged spell against the season’s change and all that it brought for him. When she left he was grateful, feeling like she had set him on the right footing for the dark months ahead.
His next guest, he knew from careful examination of the signs, would be Arthur. And he would turn him away, he really would, to protect him. Or else he would help him with whatever quest he had (the details of which eluded him) but he would emphatically not return with him to Camelot, definitely not.
All the while he pondered whether it would be a thing of beauty or of nightmares, an immortal being with a human soul. Then he realised he was that very being, and still he could not decide which of the two he was.
I was gleaming fire when I was caused to exist;
I was dust of the earth, and grief could not reach me;
I was a high wind, being less evil than good;
I was a mist on a mountain seeking supplies of stags;
I was blossoms of trees on the face of the earth.
Black Book of Carmarthen VI
I spent a whole year on the mountain
enduring my transformation,
dabbing, dabbing like a bird
at the holly-berry’s crimson.
My grief is raw and constant.
Tonight all my strength is gone.
Who has more cause to lament
than Mad Sweeney of Glen Bolcain?
The Frenzy of Sweeney, Translation by Seamus Heaney in Sweeney Astray, Section 69
Notes:
I wanted to have Gwendydd deliver this message to our boy.
If you're asking yourself, did Gwendydd say trans rights? Yes she did!
I've gone back into this chapter to finally give my note on Merlin and blackbirds. At first there seems to be a linguistic association with the name; blackbird in French is Merle (the name itself may mean little blackbird, which I love), Merle seems to also appear as a local Scots word for the same. But Merle is likely a later association, at least linguistically. Reminding ourselves that when it comes to figures like Merlin, the roots go a lot deeper in time and everything is complicated and related, deeper connections to blackbirds may come from the variety of adjacent sources like our main man Suibhne who becomes very birdlike in his madness; other names and cultural associations for blackbirds such as druid-dhubh (literally "black druid"), their name in the older Celtic world, a world that also saw them as guides to the otherworld and on personal spiritual journeys; and lastly tales and/or beliefs around the white blackbird specifically which holds mystical power and/or is as a transformed magician who comes to the aid of kings. That last one sounds very Merlin to me! I hint that Merlin will be able to transform into a white blackbird in the future. Lastly the esplumoir part appears in ancient French texts and hints at a place where Merlin sheds his various animal mask/forms, it generally speaks to this Merlin-Bird association.
Memes:
Gwendydd: Speaks in tongues, speaks French
Merlin: Love you too, sisPast Merlin: I won't go home with him, I won't do it.
Present Merlin, in bed with Arthur in Camelot: Well fuck.
Chapter 23: Reaching for the Sky
Summary:
The second wave of soldiers arrives at their door, the battle begins. Upon the ramparts Merlin turns the tide in their favour.
“I know,” Arthur reassured him. “It won’t make me cocky, I assure you.”
“Once upon a time I could trust you to get cocky,” he said slyly, calming down a little, eyes flicking up to meet his.
“Yet another thing I had to learn with you missing from me.”
He nodded, looking sad. “Just be careful, please Arthur,” he pleaded quietly.
“I will be. We have a future to build, you and I.” He left the implication hanging, that it wasn’t just Camelot’s future they would be building.
Notes:
No references this time but I'm here to talk to you about dungeon synth. Do you need wordless writing music for your medieval fantasy setting long fics? Dungeon synth! Do you crave feeling like you're playing a knight from an epic PC game circa 1999? Dungeon synth! Want to really enhance the experience of reading about battles and stuff? Dungeon synth!!
Some of the tracks I listened to over and again while writing and editing this fic, all very different vibes:
effervescent valley - Hermit Knight
mitral heart - Hermit Knight
it's time to rest my friend (the rainbow bridge is calling) - Hermit Knight
Sanguine (Six Spectral Men-at-Arms at the Summit of Mount Almor) - Castle Zagyx
Sancta Sanctorum - Umbría
The Fog Cathedral - Umbría
Cathedral of Glistening Hope - Quest Master
The Radiant Glow of the Submerged Temple - Quest Master
Bealtaine - Covered Bridges
Paper Clouds - Covered Bridges (I bought their Aurora album because I loved it so much, so chill)
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
A day, a night and another half a day had passed since their battle with the wraiths, and still there was no sign of Morgana and her forces.
For the second time that day, Arthur went up to the battlements to speak to poor Lamorak. It was late afternoon and the day was cool and washed blue. Although he was dressed comfortably in his usual, day-to-day garb he wished now for one of Merlin’s blankets as he surveyed the scene below. Camelot was arrayed in greys below. Beyond the citadel it was entirely without life but for the birds, the expeditions he had arranged to gather provisions from the town having ended that morning. The waving line of green that was the woods beyond was equally impassive. The stillness gave him an empty feeling in his stomach.
“Have you seen anything, anything at all?” he asked the grey-haired guard, coming up beside him and making him startle.
“Beggin’ your pardon sire, but you’d have heard already if I had, unless you count who’s been fooling around with who in the stables,” then he looked suddenly like he had remembered himself and he straightened, a little fearful. “I mean er-”
“No, no, I appreciate that you were candid with me,” Arthur waved his hand before folding his arms onto the stone before him. His bad arm was out of the sling Gaius had insisted he wear again, the material had been hanging from him like an odd accessory more than it had supported his arm over these past two days.
“Well, er, you can count on me for that,” the guard said, relaxing.
They kept looking and still there was no movement to be seen beyond the city gates. After a while, a bubble of curiosity escaped him. “Who has been fooling around with who?”
“Well sire-” Lamorak began, shuffling his feet.
“No, no,” Arthur raised his hand again, this time to stop him, deciding against hearing any more, not sure why he asked in the first place. “Best I don’t know… I’ll be back later, probably.”
The guard looked like he believed him. “I’ll be here.”
Their morning had been filled with strategising, their afternoon had been filled with waiting and now as evening approached Arthur and Merlin found themselves finally alone again, eating in his- their , chambers (Arthur suspected that everything that could be communicated about their future sleeping arrangements had been communicated already, and it hadn’t needed words). Their meal was simple, bread, jam and a small portion of dried figs. Merlin sat and picked at it while Arthur paced behind him. The returned man was wearing a mixture of the old, moth eaten clothes that Gaius had kept for him and things borrowed from Arthur so that he wore a pair of his plain breeches that were particularly thin around one knee, his old jacket and a black satin shirt of Arthur’s that the king thought complimented him rather nicely. His feet, of course, were still bare and the king had heard a rumour that the servants who bathed him had tried and failed to scrub them, earning a thorough wetting for their efforts followed, naturally, by Merlin’s hasty apologies and drying spells. Ignoring that, and best of all, was that Merlin had found his blue neckerchief. As distracted as Arthur was, he couldn’t help appreciating how utterly handsome he looked.
“Might be good,” Merlin tried wryly, an arm over the back of his chair and a hand scratching his beard. “To have a few days rest.”
Rest seemed to have a different meaning for them recently and Arthur didn’t miss the suggestive implication, simple joke though it may have been, but he couldn’t think about that now. He turned, his seventeenth trip from the window to Merlin’s chair and back again becoming his eighteenth. “Can you scry? Find out where she is?”
“You’ve asked me that already and I’ve tried. She has protections on her, of course.”
“Oh, of course,” he echoed sarcastically.
Merlin eyed him.
“I do recall telling you I’m not magic.”
The other huffed. “I know telling you to relax won’t help, but I wish it would. Used to be you that was the calm one, I’m starting to feel like someone’s cast a spell and switched something. Tomorrow I might wake up a prat.”
Arthur relented, throwing himself down next to him, allowing himself a smirk. “And I’ll wake up a mad hermit, a poor soothsayer and ticklish.”
Merlin was both unamused and fond as he reached over to his plate, tore off some tough bread, put some jam on it and held it to Arthur’s lips. “Eat your food, Arthur.”
Arthur begrudgingly did as he was told, though not before jokingly licking a finger.
He didn’t react but instead shoved his arm back into the sling as gently but as pointedly as he could.
They continued on in this way until their plates were empty, then proceeded to sit in silence together.
The way Merlin played with Arthur’s sigil in his hands once they were no longer occupied with his or with Arthur’s meal betrayed that his anxieties had not, in fact, left him and he was Merlin afterall.
Arthur worked it out of his fingers one handed and placed it on the table, turning to him so their knees knocked together. The wind was picking up outside and this was the only sound now in this quiet part of the castle, despite the very high occupancy of the lower levels.
“I need to try and use the crystal again,” he said just as Arthur was inching forward, having intended to brush his black hair away from one of his ears and knead it with his fingers, maybe kiss it or nibble at his neck if the other let him.
Arthur began to pull away, intending to resume his pacing or go back to the ramparts to keep the begrudging Lamorak company.
“Doesn’t mean you can’t sit here with me,” he said, staying him with a hand on his knee and cocking an eyebrow as he placed the crystal upon the table, where he had taken it from Arthur wasn’t sure.
“Alright, I’ll stay.”
He could see the moment that the warlock’s senses were focussed on things beyond his reach when all his movement ceased but for the fluttering of his eyelashes and of his chest, betraying his rapid breaths. His pupils when Arthur could see them were bright with magic and flicking over unseen things. The moment dragged on into several minutes and Arthur found himself strangely lonely as he watched him, his face as stiff as marble. He schooled himself, it was a little ridiculous to feel lonely, he had been alone for years and this wasn’t the stuff of loneliness, loneliness was Merlin not at his side, loneliness was being in a room full of once trusted confidants who could not meet your eye. Those days were over. Outside the wind continued its crying.
Suddenly Merlin was slumping into his chair, frowning, eyes back to blue.
“Anything?” the king asked apprehensively.
He shook his head and groaned into his hands. “No. I only saw a delightful brute of a woman in armour and a Pendragon cape following me about.”
A woman with the crest? An image of a girl in a stone cottage with a sword in her hands came to mind. “Describe her for me.”
“Uhm, tall, short hair, brown? I’ve seen it grey too in other visions. Seems I can look forward to her never leaving me in peace,” he obliged, his eyes closed and his fingers kneading his temples.
Arthur was unable to stop himself from grinning. “And she’ll do so by my decree.”
“Eh?” Merlin asked eloquently, dropping his hands to the table and quirking an eyebrow at him for the second time.
“Your vision told us everything we need to know.”
“Which is what ..?”
“It tells us I will survive, or at the very least that I’ll survive this , because that’s an order I’ve yet to give and a knight I’ve yet to train.”
“Arthur, what order-?”
There was a knock on a door, quick and urgent.
“Enter!” the king called as he and Merlin both rose from their seats.
“Sire,” Elyan said, stepping into the room, followed closely by Lancelot, and they knew from the look on their faces that it had begun.
“They were keeping look out at the tower,” Elyan informed them as they stormed through the corridors, a train made up of the knights, Gwen and Merlin behind them and the castle coming alive around them. “It was their messengers who warned us. They’re footsoldiers, no cavalry that they could tell but Sir Leon reckoned they’re around two-thousand strong.”
“We’ll trust his judgement but we should assume that number will only grow, Morgana may have a means to raise our own dead without the walls,” the king told them all, keeping up their pace, the crowds parting for them and bowing to them all hastily on their own quick journies through the castle.
All nodded very grimly.
“And there’s something else,” the knight continued. “Few seem to be armoured.”
“Less planning in this second wave then, very good. What of Morgana?”
“Too far away to know.”
Arthur nodded and gave instructions to some passing guards.
“The bells, should we-?” Elyan asked tentatively, craning toward him to catch his attention again.
“No, Elyan, best not to advertise that we’re aware, word of mouth only. Most important are the archers, be sure word reaches them as fast as possible.”
The knight nodded. “I’ll make sure of it. Other orders?”
“Armour up, all of you,” he asked them, sweeping his gaze backwards at their determined faces. “That includes you, Gwen, Merlin.”
The two had been walking side by side behind him, one nodded in agreement, the other opened his mouth to make his predictable protests.
“No arguments,” Arthur told him, bringing his attention forward again. “At the very least I want you to wear mail.”
He didn’t need to be looking behind him to know he was scowling.
“Do I really have to wear this?” he grumbled low to him so the others in the armoury couldn’t hear. Arthur had coerced him into a mail shirt and red surcoat just a few minutes previous and now he was helping his king into his own armour as he had two days previous, and many times before. “They’ll find out eventually, you know that, they have to.”
“Find out what?” Arthur said, wiggling his right leg, the greaves pinching there a little.
“That I can’t die,” he whispered, leaning in closer.
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything,” Arthur hissed back, remembering their conversation in the tower, it seemed Merlin still didn’t understand. “I put armour on you so you don’t go and get yourself hurt. Can’t have Camelot’s most powerful sorcerer injured in the battle because he has strange notions he needs to join the fray in little more than his neckerchief and my old shirt.”
“I’m wearing more than that,” he protested, flustered, losing the thread of the argument.
“That’s what ‘little more’ means, you dull spoon,” Arthur rolled his eyes. “You don’t seem to get it, do you? It hurts me to see you hurt.”
He looked like he was a little surprised by his directness. “F-fine. I’ll wear the mail.”
“Good, glad we’re in agreement,” Arthur said smugly, a little more loudly, and then feeling another pinch, this time in his left leg he complained, “you’ve gone and mucked up my greaves Merlin, they keep pinching.”
He rolled his eyes. “So, I’m Camelot’s most powerful sorcerer, am I?” he asked, moving on, as he bent down again to examine them in a very unpowerful sorcerer way.
“Mm, among other things,” the king hummed, watching him work.
They didn’t speak for a while.
“Arthur,” he started, breaking the silence, his tone wavering as he fixed a gauntlet into place with nervously shaking fingers. “Just because I had that vision about that knight doesn’t mean you’ll definitely… You know anything could-”
“I know,” Arthur reassured him. “It won’t make me cocky, I assure you.”
“Once upon a time I could trust you to get cocky,” he said slyly, calming down a little, eyes flicking up to meet his.
“Yet another thing I had to learn with you missing from me.”
He nodded, looking sad. “Just be careful, please Arthur,” he pleaded quietly.
“I will be. We have a future to build, you and I.” He left the implication hanging, that it wasn’t just Camelot’s future they would be building.
Merlin blushed, he dabbed the tears from his eyes and cleared his throat a few times before he moved on to the next gauntlet. Arthur, feeling like he was suffering from whiplash, resolved to officially ban all Merlins expressing more than five emotions in just as many minutes at the next council meeting.
The messengers from the tower needn’t have come, the enemy was making themselves known. It was just like the second siege, the fields and the woods were burning, the smoke coming to them on the increasing wind of the dying day. The fire marched over the hillside like a mistimed sunrise at almost the same rate as the swaths of distant, dark, figures advanced. Rage settled into Arthur’s chest, he fed it with each inhalation of the smoky air, exhaled it through gritted teeth. They were too close, it was too late now to meet them on the battlefield, they were coming straight to their door and they would burn everything on their way.
Merlin was by his side, staff in hand, the fires bouncing off the exposed parts of his mail and reflecting in his eyes. When last they had looked upon this view of the ash trees and hills together it had been in his chambers, a lifetime ago on a frosty morning. They were upon the ramparts of the outer wall, all along it guards and knights stood as they did, their torches not yet lit, though the night was advancing fast. In the shadows behind and below others waited in the town, ready to defend Camelot should the walls be breached.
The warlock inhaled sharply through his nose as he took in the scene. His expression was very intense when he turned fully toward him. “If I could only get down there, Arthur, I-”
“Anything you can do from here?” he asked curtly, not entertaining the idea.
Merlin grumbled in frustration. “There might be.”
“Then you have my permission. Morgana burned the land during her last siege, it took years for Camelot to recover. Do you have a way to stop them?”
“How about a storm?” he asked, lips curling.
“You can do that?”
Merlin only raised his head and those curling lips turned into a confident smile.
“Do it, as long as it doesn’t make conditions bad for us here.”
“Don’t you worry, sire, I know what I’m doing,” he cracked his neck and knuckles.
“Wasn’t worrying.” Arthur had seen too much of his power by now to disbelieve him. But despite seeing him float upon the ground, fight with magic and come back to life, he had a feeling that there was much more of his power left to see.
He raised his staff, clearly for the benefit of all around them; the knights and guards all started shuffling in preparation for something big. The yell, as always, that issued from him impressed Arthur with its power. He produced a long string of words but it ended with one he could understand. “ Storm !”
At first Arthur was sure nothing happened, but abruptly the wind picked up, streaming around them and out towards the open air beyond the castle. And once more, as had happened many times since he was reunited with Merlin, goosebumps rose all over his skin. Above, the clouds started to change, gathering into a wide, swirling and purpling thunderhead, a giant in its own right at the warlock’s command. The grey evening darkened further, the temperature dropped rapidly and the smell of ozone overtook the smoke. A powerful deluge localised purely to the burning hills started shortly after the deep rumbles of thunder, the rain so thick it was like a huge silvery curtain. All gasped and cheered, the fires were going out.
But Merlin wasn’t celebrating with them, his eyes were still fixed on the thunderhead. Birds began taking flight from the trees, leaving it in a loud swarm. There was a mighty cracking and suddenly the hills were alight again, this time with many forks of lightning that came down upon the advancing army, some spidery, some huge, splitting the air apart. White light flashed upon everyone on the rampart at different angles, by his side it brought Merlin’s angled features into even sharper relief, on the opposite side and some paces away it highlighted Elyan and Percival’s awed expressions, he was sure Lancelot and Mordred beside Merlin were looking all together less surprised, as was becoming usual. In just a few minutes, one man had turned the tide of their upcoming battle in their favour. Eyes returning to their blue, said man suddenly stumbled back a little. Arthur stepped behind to catch him.
“That should help some,” Arthur joked as he righted him, checking him over as he did it. He seemed to be whole, but tired.
The warlock accepted the aid gratefully, allowing the king to guide him to the wall where he could lean and recover. The knights crowded in behind to slap him on the back in congratulations. Lancelot was a little more gentle and gripped his friend’s shoulder, he pulled away only when Merlin gave him a little nod to signify that he was alright.
The lightning continued on. They were close enough that they could witness the soldiers fall and not get back up, and the ones that remained standing step heedlessly over them, marching ever toward them. Their numbers had been reduced by a third or more, in Arthur’s estimation, an incredible, nigh impossible feat. He was laughing in triumph along with the others when suddenly a sharp shaped thing flew up haphazardly from the land, catching their attention, stark white against the bruised and flashing sky, something darker upon its back. It flew unsteadily forward like a kite battling the wind and crashed down into the woods closer to the castle, beyond the reach of the storm. It was unmistakable.
All celebration gone, Arthur turned to Merlin entreatingly, not sure what he was asking for.
“I’ll find her,” he reassured him, letting go of the wall. “Aithusa can’t fly far with anyone on her back for long, I’m surprised she can do it at all.”
“If you’re asking whether you can go down there again-” the king started.
“ I’m not,” he said. “I can see ahead with my magic.”
“The source of all your ‘bad feelings’ on the road, I imagine?”
“I’m here now, sire, you can stop being clever.” He shook his head, then, turning his attention back toward the woods, his eyes were soon lit up, shifting rapidly this way and that.
“Mordred,” Arthur called, craning back to speak to the young knight. “Are you able to do the same?”
“I can try, sire,” Mordred called back.
They waited, the thunder grew quieter, the rain started to abate and the army drew ever nearer, now at a distance roughly of a trip from the town gates to the castle and back again. Although only a few minutes passed Arthur could feel that the day had stepped over the threshold into night and clearly he wasn’t the only one, for torches were being lit up and down the ramparts. He looked back briefly at the town and the castles and there was light there too, in the streets, upon the ramparts and in the castle windows, he let himself be both calmed and spurred on seeing the signs of life there.
Beside him Merlin gasped.
“Find her?”
“No but,” he frowned. “You aren’t going to like this…”
“Tell me.”
“Some of the dead are Camelot’s.”
Arthur took this in silently for a few seconds. “We were prepared for this, we could only burn the dead inside the walls” he told him, then, stepping back he spoke loudly to all the others, “Camelot’s dead have been recruited to this army, I ask you not to be afraid, our brethren have been dishonoured, fight them as we would any of Morgana’s forces, when it’s done we will give them all of the rites due to them!”
“We needn’t see them up close,” the warlock added. “I can send our arrows to them, even from here.”
“Archers, get ready!” Arthur commanded.
All stood to attention but their expressions were rightfully confused, they were too far away yet.
“Merlin will ensure your arrows hit true!” he assured them.
At that, without a second’s hesitation, the stretch of bow strings and arrows being knocked sounded all up and down the wall.
He gave the signal and the arrows shot into the air with an almost singular high whistle, guided by Merlin’s hand. The caped figures among the dead below, the red rendered blissfully dull in the fading light, fell to the ground.
“Another round,” Merlin suggested.
“And Morgana?”
“I’ll make this quick, I’ll find her.”
“Another!” Arthur shouted.
As before, they all prepared.
“Now!”
And with that, yet more of the enemy fell.
When Arthur looked back Merlin had already resumed his search, the small movements of his pupils and head had taken on a franticness now. Arthur worried for him and swallowed down the compulsion to stop him and ask him to rest.
As soon as the first peal sounded from the citadel Merlin was holding onto Arthur’s arm, shouting into his ear over the bells and the alarm of the people around them. “She went around and over the walls, she’s-!” and in their periphery there was gleaming white rushing quickly toward them from inside the wall. Merlin dove on him, hands immediately around the back of his head to cradle his fall and they hit the rampart hard. There was heat and fire all around them. Above them Lancelot held his shield against the onslaught. He shouted and dropped it, falling down onto Arthur and Merlin, his hands burned, only for the shield to rise up again immediately without human hands, red-orange as it melted, a rainbow patina of projective magic in the air around it, like a soap bubble. The dragon swooped over their heads in a rush of wind, its fire petering out. The shield dropped to the rampart, hissing, reduced to a cooling chunk of metal. There was a thud behind them, and Arthur, still on the ground with both Merlin and Lancelot half-crushing him, craned his neck back to see that the beast had landed and was facing off with Percival, Elyan and Lamorak, their shields already up and their swords pointing forward. The three scrambled quickly to their feet, though Lancelot had to get help from Merlin, who was still gritting through the pain.
Merlin stepped protectively in front of both Lancelot and Arthur, and behind them Mordred too stepped in front of Lancelot so he was at the back of the line and farthest from harm. Arthur unsheathed and raised Excalibur, the blade flashing in the last of the lightning and the beginnings of the moonlight, but Merlin was still moving, shouting a stream of deep dragonic as he shouldered forward, to the utter surprise of the men.
“Stop!” he shouted at the armed people crowding her, and they retreated at his command letting him stand frontmost, utter trust in their movements.
The dragon, scales wet no doubt from the storm, stopped her growling, her feral gaze replaced with confusion, evidenced by a very animal-like twisting of her head. She continued to stalk forward.
Merlin tried again.
She stopped for a time, going low to the ground. Soon however she resumed her slow crawl, eyes very fixed on the man before her.
Arthur stepped cautiously passed the retreating knights.
“Get back, Arthur, are you mad?” Merlin hissed at him, sweeping his arm back but not looking at him, somehow knowing it was Arthur behind him.
“Merlin, what’s happening?” he demanded quietly, holding onto the back of that arm.
“She doesn’t speak dragon too well.”
“What do you mean she doesn’t-?”
“Kilgarrah and I are bad parents,” he answered at the side of his mouth, garnering only questions.
“What?” but Merlin didn’t pay him any heed.
He shouted again, his voice going up like a growl, not a little inhuman.
Aithusa yowled like she was complaining and with a glance back at Merlin she hopped over the edge and was dropping into the air, swooping over the army on her unsteady wide wings and disappearing into the trees.
“We’re safe for now,” the dragonlord declared, sagging into the king for a moment, looking at the place she had disappeared to as though he could still see her.
“Report! Anyone injured?!” Arthur shouted, the alarms were still sounding, making it necessary for him to raise his voice to the limit of hoarseness to ensure all could hear him.
Some hands were raised and groans came from the dark, Merlin tore himself from the wall and hurried to them, already digging in his pack for medicines. Not only was he their most powerful sorcerer and their dragonlord, he was also their medic.
“Merlin, that was incredible!” Elyan exclaimed as he went by, slapping his back.
“How did you do that?!” Someone else asked.
In all the things Merlin was to them, Arthur had forgotten to list mascot.
Percival, who was unharmed, was looking worriedly at his king, they stepped toward each other. “If the dragon came from inside the walls, sire,” the tall knight reasoned aloud. “That means Morgana...”
“I know, Sir Percival,” Arthur said, a hand on his arm. “It’s likely the remaining wraith is here too.”
“What are your orders?” he asked.
The king considered this and then he too was moving again, gesturing for the large knight and Elyan to follow behind.
Merlin was treating Lancelot’s hand, Mordred was assisting further down the line of destruction. The skin was blistered and puffy, and Lancelot, always brave, merely breathing slowly and deliberately when his friend washed it and applied salve. They looked up in askance at the king and his small train of knights.
“Lancelot, I know it's unlikely you can hold a bow but I need you to take command here, are you able for it?”
Lancelot rose. “I am sire.”
“Good, Lamorak’s your head man here and an excellent archer.”
The knight craned and nodded at the old guard.
Merlin, having gathered up his supplies, rose too, grim expectation written all over his face.
“Hand the physician work to our Sir Mordred,” Arthur asked of him. “I need you, Elyan and Percival with me.”
Mordred seemed to hear this because he was already coming forward. Merlin transferred his satchel to him and they spoke quickly to one another, ending with, “Thank you, Mordred.”
“I’m happy to help, Emrys,” the sorcerer knight said with a determined smile, patting the satchel for emphasis.
“Stay safe, all of you,” Merlin asked them, his worried gaze sweeping around, taking the words right out of Arthur’s mouth.
Mordred looked like he was wrestling with something, his face very red, practically glowing in the dark. “Long live the king,” he intoned. “Long live Emrys.”
“Long live the king! Long live Emrys!” Lancelot joined in, louder.
“Long live the king! Long live Emrys!!” Everyone in earshot on the wall repeated.
In the dark of the stairway Arthur expected that Merlin would stay him, steal a private moment, tell him yet again to be careful, but he did not. Maybe he was imagining it but he felt the other yearned to do it, or maybe Arthur wished he would. The last rumble of thunder bellowed out until there was only the cacophonous blare of bells and the sounds of their quick descent to the town, the king who was destined to die young, the warlock who was destined to never die and their loyal knights and friends.
Notes:
The couples who sneak into the stables:
<.< >.>
Lamorak above on the ramparts:
( ͡° ͜ʖ├┬┴┬┴Leon with the citizens out in the tower when Merlin's storm starts up: Umm everyone stay away from the windows please.
Chapter 24: This Will All Be Mine
Summary:
Arthur faces Seren and Morgana.
“So this is your famed round table, Arthur. An empty gesture, I think, playing at equality when lines have long been drawn in blood.”
“My own people defended Camelot with magic,” he countered, moving as she moved, stepping out of the moonbeam and into the dark, closing the gap between them slowly. Merlin was lit grey-blue for a few seconds as he passed under it too, following.
“Don’t think you can buy my forgiveness with your hypocrisy. You’ve long dug your grave.”
“No, I could never ask you to forgive, and I’ve made peace with my grave,” Arthur told her solemnly.
Notes:
A reminder of the archived warning for this fic! This chapter gets graphic!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Years from now, no one will bother
To recall your good King Arthur
Because all of this will be mine
This will all be mine
It was darker in the town beyond the wall but as it had increasingly, the moonlight would soon be illuminating all. Still, as grateful as he was for the moon he had to ask himself why Morgana chose to attack when they would ordinarily be sleeping, and in asking himself he found he also had to ask Merlin.
“Evil doesn’t work in the afternoon,” Merlin grumbled in answer, somehow sounding very like his magically aged self, as they approached the group waiting at the gates. “I mean evil as a noun but it doesn’t work in the afternoon as an adjective either.”
“What do you mean as an-?”
“No evil deeds after midday.”
“If you say so.”
“No evil plans,” he continued.
“Alright, I get it.”
“No evil doings either,” he laughed silently, his tongue in his cheek.
Arthur shook his head at him to the chuckling of his knights, hiding his smile. This was the man his heart had chosen, an immortal warlock who laughed at his own jokes. It was everything to see him cracking jokes with the knights again.
Percival seemed to be finding it especially funny. “Evil doings,” he repeated, shaking his head and wheezing, wheezing that seemed to set off Elyan who let out his held in laughter with a snort.
“I’ll remind you all that we should be on high alert,” Arthur said testily, though it sounded a little half-hearted even to his own ears.
“Yes sire,” Elyan said a little sheepishly but there was much surreptitious kicking between them, whether designed to rile each other up or quieten each other down he wasn’t sure.
Arthur almost forgot the fun that Merlin had a knack for provoking. The promise of more was enough on its own to make him determined to see the next afternoon, and the afternoons after that.
“It’s likely Seren will come to us,” Arthur said to the small crowd at the gates, a crowd of guards and volunteers led by Gwen. He was unsurprised to see that servants made up some of their number. “But ultimately it’s me she’s sworn to kill, keep your distance and allow me to draw her away, Excalibur is our only means of defeating her. If you’re in danger, retreat or hide as best you can.”
“And Morgana?” Gwen asked, her expression hard.
“Treat her the same, she claims no mortal blade can fell her. Should it be needed, an attack with an ordinary weapon can slow her.”
“She’s powerful enough now that it could be true, keep in mind that means her magic too,” Merlin added. It was still a little new to hear him address a crowd like this but it made Arthur’s heart sing with love and pride.
Gwen nodded, the crowd too took this in. “What if they attack together?”
“Then we fight together. Hopefully it won’t come to that,” Arthur answered, and then he looked to Elyan and back to Gwen. “I’d like the stage for the fight to your father’s forge again, if you’ll allow me.”
“Of course,” they consented together.
“I need only that you provide enough support to allow me to make the decisive blow, it will be dangerous, if any of you feel it is better they do not join me, there will be no honour lost.”
Not a soul backed away.
They didn’t get as far as the forge.
Above them the moon lined up with the centre of the haphazardly barricaded street, making the cobblestones bright, almost reflective, while the otherwise black windows on either side reflected back silvery blue. The contrast exaggerated all, grey was brighter and black darker, so when he first saw the dark smudge in the distance he had assumed it to be a shadow until its edges showed a shine. Seren was standing at the opposite end of the street.
He was about to turn and alert the others when Merlin was suddenly at his back, pulling at his shoulder. “No, no not here,” he whispered, panicking into his ear. “I’ve seen this, this is where it happens. Arthur you can’t fight her here, you’ll die.”
“Doesn’t look like I have a choice,” he shrugged him off gruffly, not looking behind him as he stared down the figure, she was coming nearer. He remained still even though the other side of the coin shook him with urgency.
“We can retreat we-!” he attempted.
“There’s nowhere to retreat to.” He half-turned and grabbed him by his mailed shoulder to keep him still. Then to everyone he said. “We make our stand here, together, for everything.”
They all nodded, taking their stances for the fight, alert.
“No! I can-!” Merlin continued to protest before he was cut off.
There was a change in the shape of the shadow before them, the barest shine of metal and the group were dipping and rolling out of the way as a bolt screamed through the street.
Crouched together with their brethren behind a barricade of doors and broom handles sharpened to spikes, the king and the warlock had a very quick, silent exchange, the whites of Merlin’s eyes showing like a frightened colt all the while. They would fight here and they would fight together.
Beside them, Elyan and some clearly capable servants were readying bows. Arthur watched over everything carefully, waiting for her to walk into range. Her slow advancement was as menacing as it was agonising.
Arthur gave a silent signal and they rose, risking all. The arrows flew from the bows. Her armour however proved too strong, forged by some infernal means, Arthur supposed. Although the arrows were obviously ineffective she still did nothing to stop the onslaught, in death magic seemed to have abandoned her, as had fear.
“Again!” Merlin asked of them, and already used to the warlock’s rightful standing by Arthur’s side, they did as commanded without needing so much as a nod from their king.
The arrows flew free a second time, this time aided by magic, leaving golden trails suspended briefly in the air. Three went home, two in her chest and the one in her thigh, the force of them knocking her back. But they only broke her stride for a mere handful of seconds. She snapped off the shafts and kept going.
Arthur tried to find an area relatively free of spikes and other debris. Finding it he walked, ducking along the barrier, anyone in his way shuffled back to allow him through. He heard Merlin gasp behind him and hiss his name before following. The king put two hands on the barrier and made to rise but the other stood up before him and started to wrestle him down. A bolt almost shot one of his ears off.
“Get down, would you?!” Arthur went to the ground again, pulling the warlock with him.
“You’re not going over there!”
“What do you mean I’m not? I’ll face her,” he told him angrily. “If she sends any more bolts my way, redirect them. If you can take off her helmet-”
“No, I’ll do it, please-!”
“I’ve given my command, whether I live or die magic will return to Camelot, you will do as you’re destined to and ensure the rest of Albion will know the same peace.” With that Arthur shook himself out of his grasp. He hopped over the barrier, though hands pulled at him.
He stalked forward, Excalibur raised.
“Another!” he heard Merlin shout and soon arrows were flying around him.
Ahead Seren staggered but she soon righted herself to everyone’s gasps. She didn’t remove the arrows this time and they stuck out of her stomach and chest, the latter confirming that no heart beat beneath her bloodless skin.
Arthur kept walking.
She rushed him.
She swung high and he went low but rapidly her grip changed and the axe almost hit his side, a feint. Not allowing him to recover, she wheeled it around in a blur and went for him again, her footwork bringing her forward, following him after the backward steps he made to dodge her clever attack. He swung again and Excalibur bit into the wood of her axe but only very shallowly. His own attempt to break it however tipped the blade toward his wrist and he was forced to dislodge it lest he be abruptly without a right hand. These were Morgana’s tricks, he realised.
Merlin and he had consulted with Gaius on the matter of Arthur’s encounter with Seren in the dragon’s breath and agreed she had been under the control of the creature residing in her neck, a Fomorroh was his guess, after careful consultation of magic bestiaries. But now, seeing her and the way she moved, either Morgana had replaced the worm or it had made its way back.
He changed tactic. He went left, giving her his side and himself a fuller range of movement.
Their weapons turned above and below each other’s. Just when he thought he had her, she used the blunt end to smack down his blade. She twirled it up and the blade would have come down on his shoulder but for his last second roll forward, risking much to go right past her instead of to one side of another. He had a plan.
Behind her and still on the ground, he pulled his sword back, putting as much power into it as he could before she turned around and he sliced through the tendons of both of her feet, the dragon forged blade going through her greaves with heated sparks. She fell to her knees.
He craned back. “Merlin!?”
Her horned helmet came off and rolled away as her parents’ had to the gasps of the people and in the light cast from the moon Arthur saw the brunette hair falling to hang on either side of her face. Her neck exposed, he quickly took in the sight of the writhing thing below the skin in the moonlight, just a little under the dark slash she had pried it from on the foggy mountain. She was moving however but with regret at the dirty tactic even as he performed it, he kicked her back down and slashed across her exposed neck.
She did nothing.
“Arthur,” he heard Merlin warn.
He came around to face her.
“What are you waiting for?!” Merlin jumped the barrier, even now he defined his orders.
“Stop!” he shouted and to his credit the other did, though he didn’t look happy about it. Behind him the Elyan, Gwen and Percival looked poised to follow him too.
Seren rose slowly, fell and rose again.
Arthur stepped back.
“I’m sorry,” he said to her as he watched her attempts. “I’m sorry for what my blood has done. I’ll make sure they can rest, I’ll make sure what happened can never happen again.”
She tried to take a step but again she went down.
“You were willing to exchange your life to save your betrothed,” he continued. “It was a position you should never have been in, it was my father and I who put you there.”
This time when she rose she stayed up and finally she spoke, he wasn’t sure if she would or could. Again her voice was papery but now it was quiet, it was the same tone she had used when she said ‘end me before I end you’ by that very still lake. “I never had a chance to make that exchange. The cold was unforgiving and the horses were lame, we were too late to save them.”
Arthur nodded, listening and trying to ignore the warlock in the periphery of his vision veritably tearing out his own hair in his stress.
“Fight me, Arthur Pendragon,” she said. “Allow me the chance to have my revenge.” She threw down her gauntlet.
He unfastened and threw down a gauntlet of his own.
They picked them up, donned them once more and raised their weapons.
In her life Seren was never trained to fight and so it was in her death without Morgana’s influence upon her. She did however fight desperately, with all the wildness of grief and revenge, sometimes collapsing, her feet unable to support her. Every time she fell he waited for her to right herself, wishing for the fight between them to remain honourable. In her stumbling attempts her axe managed to hook onto some of the links in his mail and a collection of the iron rings stretched and were ripped away, shining into the air. Avoiding the point a second time, Arthur wheeled close to her, too close for the long handled axe, and with Excalibur moonlit and swinging high he followed through. He made himself watch as her body collapsed down and he saw the moment she too became ash on the wind.
This time there weren’t any cheers. He stood still while everyone made their way carefully over the barrier and approached.
“I’m sorry,” Merlin said when he was standing before him. “I was only trying to protect-”
“I know,” Arthur told him, looking up from the empty black armour to see the other’s unhappy face. He stepped free of it so Merlin had a clear path to him. “Come here.” He hooked an arm around his upper back and pulled him into a squeezing embrace, his bruised arm aching a little again from all of the use.
Merlin wiggled free a little, tugged him down and kissed his forehead pointedly, not caring that they had an audience. “You’re very literally too good for this world, you know that, cabbage head?” He complained softly, lips hovering over his skin. “You have too much integrity for your own good.”
“And you never listen.”
By now they knew the army had reached the walls because something was on fire; a portion of the sky was lit orange and grey-blue smoke billowed up from it into the dark until it became indistinguishable from the clouds that still covered the sky on that side, the remnants of Merlin’s storm. Shouts reached them too, but only when the wind turned in the right direction, there and gone again.
They all looked at each other, worried and shadowed faces in the dark streets. This wasn’t the only worry. A justified anxiety was cloying at Arthur, and there was no doubt it was cloying at the others too; what nefarious thing was Morgana up to? Where was she?
“Sire!” Came Percival’s voice behind him suddenly. He was pointing ahead, up at the castle.
“There!” Merlin shouted, seeing it before he did, already moving and tugging him along and everyone was rushing with them. “She’s in the castle!”
Out from the smoke the windows of the castle came better into view. Out of the windows, Pendragon flags were being waved out. He saw small dark figures leaning out, their hands in the air, their mouths moving but they could hear no sound.
Arthur ran faster and Merlin kept pace.
Their collective pants sounded strange in the stone corridors. The crowds, once they reached them, parted quickly for them. The whole castle was awake and cowering, pleading with them as they passed. The very pungent smells of people who had spent too long in a tight space was almost overwhelming; the people of Camelot had taken refuge in these corridors since the siege. One way or another this would end before morning.
There were red clad guards gathered around the torchlit entranceway to the hall. They had found a battering ram, no doubt from the bowels of the castle, and were employing it against the wide doors, shouting together in time. It was unnatural that the doors should survive such an onslaught.
They stopped when they saw their king’s approach. With the ram still hefted between them, they all bowed their heads, though they panted heavily.
“What’s happening?!” Arthur demanded.
“She came in through the window, m’lord.. She took some of us,” one of them explained, red faced, his hair wet with sweat and his face shining in the torchlight. “She said she wanted an audience with you or else-”
“It’s magically sealed, protected too,” Merlin assessed, looking over his shoulder, one of his hands splayed on the wood.
“Can you break the spell?”
He made a movement like he was rolling up his sleeves, though he was unable to do so dressed as he was. That was a yes.
“At the ready!” Arthur commanded them all, his voice hoarse from a night of shouting. He stood close behind Merlin, watching as his shoulders tensed, hiding his apprehension.
The guards laid down the battering ram and everyone took a few steps back, raising their weapons.
Merlin took an audibly deep breath and shuffled his feet, he looked back at Arthur once in a moment of quiet apprehension, then raised his hand. “Ic ia tóspringe! Tósrpinge! ” Nothing happened, he looked around a little desperately and opened his mouth to speak.
Arthur marched forward. “I’d like to try something else, it’s me she wants… Morgana!” he bellowed, and he reached for one of the massive brass rings. “You wanted an audience, you have it!”
“Wait, Arthur-!” Merlin was saying, moving almost in slow motion.
But he had already taken hold of the metal.
The doors flew upon into a mostly black room. Merlin’s hand was immediately on his arm and as Arthur was pulled by a magical force, they tried to keep a hold of each other. His feet slid on the stone floor, it was too strong and, straining, equally unable to hold onto him as follow him inside, Merlin’s grip slipped down his arm to his hand. Their fingers grazed past one another’s and they were torn apart. Their friends and the guards all clambered forward, but they were met with an invisible wall, even the sounds of their desperate calling were muffled in an instant. He saw Merlin step back, preparing to spell the barrier as Arthur was brought beyond the threshold. The doors slammed shut loudly, Arthur skidded to a stop and the force was gone.
With barely a pause, he raised Excalibur.
There were still shards of stained glass all about. The wind yawned through the broken window and he was reminded of his mental image – her Empty Kingdom, filled with dead.
“Morgana.”
He could just make her out on the opposite side of the room, in the dark behind the round table. She skirted it slowly, holding out her arms as if in greeting or to offer him a hug, placing one foot in front of the other so her hips swayed. “My dear brother, I was in the neighbourhood and I thought I’d invade,” she said, a smile in her voice.
Arthur raised Excalibur and stepped forward, guarding. As he went through the room the moon arrived in the jagged frame of the window and he came to stand in its cast. Morgana stopped moving too, eyeing the blade he held as it caught the pale glow. She tore her gaze from it, only by virtue of knowing her did he catch the twitch in her features.
“The hostages?” Arthur asked, looking for them carefully, being sure to keep her in his periphery. But He already knew even without being able to see for himself yet, his eyes still adjusting to the darkness after the lit entryway, that he and Morgana were the only living beings in the room.
“Hostages? Is that what they were supposed to be?” she answered dismissively, flicking and twirling her wrist. “Well if you want them they’re here and there. All over the place really.”
He followed her very vague gestures and sure enough Arthur started to see the prone forms upon the floor, citizens and guards, near black pools below them.
He was sure his vision flashed red in his fury. “They were innocent!” he seethed.
“So, it’s only now you care about innocents in your walls.”
“Why?” he asked simply, ignoring her.
But he knew, knew it far too well, that the answer was madness, revenge.
She hummed to herself, in a world of her own. Seeing better now he watched her trail her hand over the back of one of the high backed chairs like she was admiring the craftsmanship. “You know, I had hoped to give you my condolences. Until the storm struck down my army, I had thought our dear Merlin dead. Tell me,” she pouted eyes wide in mock innocence, “did I cause him pain at least? Oh, I do so hope I did, he deserves pain, a world of it and more.”
“He’s far more powerful than you can know,” Arthur gritted, having to speak loudly over the moan of the wind, his voice echoing hollowly around the stone.
“I’ll admit he did well to survive that bolt.”
“Your fatal mistake was underestimating him.”
“Hasn’t been fatal yet, Arthur. Yes I may have… Overlooked him in the past, but I know I wasn’t alone in that. Yet here he is again, in Camelot,” suddenly there was a dagger in her hands, she twirled the tip on the pad of one of her fingers and Arthur was sure she had to be drawing blood. “Poor lovesick fool, let’s see if he’ll survive your death.” She held the blade upright and began to chant. Her lighted eyes trailed the length of it like it was something delicious, like it hungered her. The dagger responded by exuding a sickly greenish glow.
He raised Excalibur further, mentally preparing himself to react quickly to whatever she had in mind.
She turned the weapon with a practised flourish so she gripped it in her fist and took a familiar fighting stance.
Arthur gauged the distance between them, mapping out the steps he and she might take to cross it. He took the first sliding, guarded step and so did she. She had a wicked smile on her face as she made to take her second.
Just then the door blasted open behind him with a bang, one side flying across the room and the other hanging from its hinges. Merlin rushed through, calling Arthur’s name, Elyan, Gwen, Percival and a host of others followed behind. He tripped to a stop when he saw Morgana, causing Gwen to crash into his back.
“Ah, speak of the devil and he shall stumble into the room,” she sang, swirling and pointing her dagger at him for effect. “Are you sure you’re really Emrys? Forgive me if I find that a little hard to believe.”
Gwen tried to step around but Merlin shot out an arm and stopped her, they were both glowering hard at Morgana all the while.
“Gwen, old friend,” the witch greeted, arms out again. “How lovely it is to see you!”
Gwen only clenched and jutted her jaw, gripping her sword.
“No hello? Nothing? How cutting, I’m gutted, Gwen, truly,” she feigned mockingly, her free hand over her heart. “And you too Merlin, that’s no way to greet an old frien-”
“Oh shut up!” Merlin begged, rolling his neck. He took a short, deep breath and Morgana was already moving away when he screamed out, “ Cume wideor!” and a blast rippled visibly in the air from his pointed staff.
His target brought a pale hand to her cheek, smearing the blood there from the weeping slice in her skin, cut by a sharp wind. Incensed she levelled her gaze at Merlin and Gwen, “servants these days, they don’t know their place,” she frowned. “Fleoge !”
Arthur looked just in time to see her dagger leave her hands.
But Merlin raised his own hand just in time, needing no spell, and it stopped mid air, just feet from Arthur’s chest, shaking with the forces upon it. He stepped out of its path.
With a quick wrench of her hand she managed to bring it back to herself. She held onto it, bloody murder on her pale face.
Arthur and Merlin began to edge toward one another, Merlin bringing his entourage with him.
“Swefe nu !” she shouted and half of the party fell to the stone.
Alarmed Arthur started to sidestep toward them, fearing them injured or worse, but Merlin, sagging where he stood, raised his hand to stop him. “It’s alright, Arthur… They’re asleep,” he reassured him quickly, holding onto his staff to stay upright, clearly fighting the spell, his eyes flashing intermittently and his knees bending below him.
“And you are not,” Morgana observed across from them. She repeated the spell, head tipped to the side as she looked down upon him, a look of almost scientific curiosity upon her face. She took the opportunity to come forward. Arthur moved towards Merlin despite his earlier protest, eyes on his sister all the while.
At the edge of Arthur’s vision Merlin crumpled and for a sickening moment he thought he would go down too, but he didn’t. In the bare light he saw there was a sheen of sweet on his face.
“It was worth a try,” she stopped and shrugged casually.
“Give up, Morgana,” Merlin said with effort, whipping his brow, though partially letting go of his staff had him swaying. “Your army is almost defeated and you’re alone. Arthur put Seren to rest, she’s no longer under your control.”
“Well, in that case,” she reasoned, looking at Merlin, then at Arthur. “I’ll just have to take one of you away from the other, a love for a love.”
“Magic should never be used this way, how much was your will and now much was hers?” Merlin spat, ignoring her threat, but his voice had gone low, like she had crossed a line.
“Magic is mine to do with as I will, as it is yours.”
“You’re wrong, it’s a perversion, what you’ve done. Seren came here seeking revenge for Astyrex and you-!”
“And I made her useful to me,” she finished.
“You’re mad,” Arthur breathed, cutting in.
“I’m so glad you noticed!” she smiled toothily. She started walking again, following the circle of the round table, gouging a line in the wood with her dagger as she went. “So this is your famed round table, Arthur. An empty gesture, I think, playing at equality when lines have long been drawn in blood.”
“My own people defended Camelot with magic,” he countered, moving as she moved, stepping out of the moonbeam and into the dark, closing the gap between them slowly. Merlin was lit grey-blue for a few seconds as he passed under it too, following.
“Don’t think you can buy my forgiveness with your hypocrisy. You’ve long dug your grave.”
“No, I could never ask you to forgive, and I’ve made peace with my grave,” Arthur told her solemnly.
Her expression wavered and she stopped her carving. In that moment, he couldn’t help but feel there was some part of her crying out to him. Despite everything, he found some equally small part of himself wishing he could find and hold that part tightly. “Good,” she said instead.
Morgana was the first to throw a punch, so to speak, a fiery blast that shot through and heated the air. Arthur hit the floor and rolled from it, swearing he could smell his own hair singed as the heat passed over him. He was glad Gaius had healed him for he knew he would not have been capable of such quick movement had he not. Merlin retaliated with blasts of his own, reminding the king of the fight these two had in the woods, here however no poisonous mushrooms would come to their aid. The warlock was trying his best to draw her fire but she focussed her attention on Arthur, ensuring the two were kept apart, her attacks increasing when either of them stepped over the invisible line she seemed to draw between them, bisecting the hall. Another blast went by Arthur’s ear and set a tapestry burning behind him, lighting the room dramatically.
Seeing the near miss Merlin stepped forward and raised his hand. “Enough!” he shouted.
There was a small but loud squeak, wood against stone, before a herd of chairs from the roundtable were rushing forward. Morgana was knocked prone but she was shouting and Arthur readied himself, sure he could feel the static, her power gathering in the air. But with a raise of Merlin’s hand her spell fizzled out with a spark. He exchanged a triumphant smile with Arthur in the face of her clear irritation. Arthur used the distraction to edge forward, but she was on her feet again quickly.
A flash, a flaring light upon her face in the dark.
Then an impact to his chest, and pain, pain, pain.
“No!!” Merlin screamed, stumbling and kicking toward him.
He staggered and gasped, in his chest was Morgana’s dagger, blood already upon the mangled mail that it had pierced, in just the same location Merlin’s wound had been.
Morgana’s hand was still raised like a claw, she twisted it at the wrist and he screamed as the blade turned slowly in his flesh. Excalibur slipped from his fingers to the floor and in his pain he could think only of Merlin’s staff doing the same when he had thought him dying, but Arthur was not immortal. Kings die for their causes and I’m willing to die for mine, he heard his own voice again in his mind. He fell to his knees involuntarily under the witch’s satisfied smile.
“An eye for an eye,” she brightened, shining eyes on Merlin.
“Poison,” Arthur heard him say, seeing his face whiten.
“Clever boy, and enhanced by magic too. He won’t last long, but do anything, come any closer, and I’ll end him now.”
Beside Arthur Excalibur clattered a second time, startling him. He tried to make sense of this and realised Merlin had been in the middle of raising it with his magic, intending to fell Morgana with it. He stood still, his now useless raised hand shaking, his terrified gaze shifting desperately from Morgana to Arthur.
Instead, Arthur moved, raising himself suddenly and painfully. A wash of shock then hardness went over Morgana’s expression. He picked up the sword in as swift a movement as he could manage.
A darting blur shot through the air before she could react. She cried out as it plunged into her, stumbling back into the round table, toppling a chair. It had been the bastard sword Gwen had wielded. Through his pain Arthur silently commended his bravery after Morgana’s threat, secretly expecting him to be paralysed by it.
Arthur took the remaining steps and found purchase on the table too. There was a strange acrid foam alongside the blood in his mouth. He gasped for any air that he could not get. Fighting with himself not to give in and double over, he raised Excalibur, though his muscles, his chest, screamed.
“That was a mistake,” she growled, righting herself and spitting blood from her mouth. The sword was still obscenely through her middle. A hand on the hilt, she attempted to pull it from her as she backed away from the slowly advancing king, following the circle of the table. Her eyes flicked to Merlin. “This won’t kill me, you’ve only killed him!”
When Arthur got too close she twisted the blade again in him again and though he screamed he was already mid-lunge.
She stepped back, crying again in pain, his weak stab just missing her side.
But across the room Merlin’s hand was raised again, paying back the favour and twisting Gwen’s sword just as she had done to Arthur. She screamed. He stepped forward again and was finally, almost, within arm’s reach again. There was a raw anger Arthur had never seen before upon his features.
While she was doubled over, Arthur took his chance again, and again she barely stepped back.
They were both taking horrible, wheezing breaths as they stared each other down. She bled, so did he.
Arthur could no longer feel his legs, a sensation of being in water coming over him. Even the pain was beginning to feel distant. Shortly, he knew he would be getting better acquainted with the floor.
Morgana spat more blood. “Time is running out Merlin,” she warned, almost calling out to him as she continued to back away, seeing Arthur’s growing weakness, her eyes betrayed her however, and got stuck on Excalibur as she looked between them.
What a strange stalemate they were in.
She grasped the sword again and this time she pulled the whole thing free with a long pained scream, all with her gaze fixed on Merlin, by now the bigger threat with Arthur’s energy waning. The metal came out slick and dripping with her blood and more pumped freely from her. She laughed maniacally, holding her stomach with one hand and the bloodied sword with the other, a horrific vision of madness and power. This was the woman who had raised the dead of an entire kingdom for her gain.
Suddenly a shadow passed over the moonlight, briefly darkening the nightmarish scene, the tapestries only smouldering now behind them. The dragon was outside, calling, looking for her friend. Morgana looked up and seemed to be calculating, thinking. She folded into herself, unable to remain upright with all of the blood she was losing.
Arthur could feel Excalibur begin to shake and slip from his bloody grasp under Merlin’s magical hold. Do it, he willed him without looking at him, end this, even if she ends me. His whole body was burning but for his numb legs, so it was only the shift in his vision that told him that he was falling. He tried to keep himself upright, especially with Merlin’s decisive blow imminent but his legs were suddenly buckling and he lost purchase on the table and, blood assisting his downward slide, he slipped from it and to the stone floor.
“Arthur!” he heard him shout. But the feeling of his sword being pulled from him remained. Kill her, he continued to plead with him.
“Stop. I could kill him in an instant with the flick of my wrist or we could draw this out and fight, either way he dies.”
The pull stopped.
“There’s a third option,” she continued, clearly on her own journey toward the cold stone.
Arthur tried to cry out to him but the shadow returned and darkened the room almost entirely and, as though some truce or agreement had been made in the intervening seconds, Merlin was suddenly kneeling at his head, bending over him, shielding him from the ensuing shower of glass. He whispered his name and spells over and over, the word love slipping out amongst his words, the light of his eyes flaring into the shadow his form created with the moonlight to his back. One hand was soothingly in his hair, the other was on his chest, near the embedded dagger.
A familiar wind brushed over them and he heard rather than saw the dragon once again landing upon the round table above with a growl.
“No… Go, don’t let her-” he protested weakly, his heart beating impossibly fast, his mouth filling once more so he had to spit out the foam and the blood just to speak.
“How lovely, you’ve finally realised you’re in love with each other. Sharp as spoons, both of you.” Morgana snorted above them, laughing as she pinched her nose. “Pity it’s too la-”
Merlin straightened and Excalibur left Arthur’s weak grasp, only to stop halfway to its destination to Morgana’s chest. Arthur raised his head painfully to see that the tip of the sword was pointing towards the dragon, who had swooped in to protect her mistress, poised either to attack or defend. There was a very animal corneredness in her eyes where he had once seen pure intelligence. He was sure, or perhaps he knew, that he might look the same if a person he loved was similarly threatened.
“Aithusa!” Merlin screamed his strange booming commands at her, tears flying.
The dragon only growled, her haunches raised as she shrank projectively in front of her mistress, who was now holding on to her.
“I thought you said little can harm you these days?” Merlin growled out, his tone shaky but mocking.
“Whatever you and I are now, we both still bleed.”
“He’s not… Not like you-” Arthur gritted out and Merlin stepped over him protectively.
“Shh shh,” she hushed in mock concern. “You should save your strength, Arthur, you can’t have much of it left by now... Seems we’re at an impasse Merlin, what will you do?”
Excalibur shook in the air. But just when he thought he would let her go Merlin leapt over him for the sword. The dragon lunged for him but he was speaking dragonic again and this time she stepped backwards, uncurling around Morgana until she was behind her, leaving her exposed. Merlin swung at the witch, roaring, and metal sliced against metal as Morgana employed the sword that she had pulled from her middle.
Though she held the blade two handed she managed to sneak one hand out and her magic had him stumbling backward. He stayed upright, sliding and kicked off the ground once he had brought himself to a stop and closed the gap again quickly. They circled each other, though Merlin was always sure to keep Arthur in his protection. The dragon looked on, circling too, always behind Morgana but getting no closer like a fence had been erected between her and the fighting sorcerers. She yowled almost-words at each blow.
Arthur could only bite his tongue to bleeding against the pain as he watched, his heart labouring hard. His body began to seize then, his back arching. He was given an upside down view of the wall, the Pendragon banners hanging there, embers blackening and eating away at them. He thought Merlin might be calling his name.
“The poison is doing its work,” he heard Morgana say. “As I had hoped it seems I’ll get to watch his demise.”
Merlin’s steps stopped, he was hesitating.
“What will you do, Emrys? We could keep doing this, if that’s what you want.”
There were no words from Merlin, but his breathing was loud, panting and coming in quick.
Arthur tried to call out to him but it came out as a desperate gurgle.
His steps got closer to him, as did hers, coming forward as he retreated.
“Say it,” she urged. “Tell me to leave.”
Hands were suddenly on him, pressing upon his wound. He cried out at the pain it caused to a litany of whispered apologies. “GO THEN, WITCH!!” Merlin screamed, and Arthur, even in his state could feel him jerk, knew that his hand had flown out, was sure he could feel tears or spittle or both landing on him.
Arthur tried to fight him off, to stop him, but it was as though an unseen force had taken hold of him, keeping him down. His vision even behind his eyelids was whiting out.That night, that night.
“Enjoy your tearful goodbyes, you two, take it as my gift to you both,” she said after a moment, an underwater sound in Arthur’s muddled head.
The whooshing of wind from the dragon’s wings sent a deep shiver over him.
The breaking of yet more glass heralded their exit. There can’t have been much glass left now. Just as before, shouts sounded outside and he could hear the whistle of arrows.
Excalibur fell to the stone beside him as Merlin dropped it, forgotten. “Arthur, oh Gods…”His voice shook.
The tightness of Arthur’s muscles finally let up and he went limp. He panted, his heart in his ears. “Should have… Killed her.”
Merlin’s hand was on the back of his head, he raised it carefully and Arthur found his head pillowed on the other man’s lap. Merlin closed his troubled eyes, ignoring him. He seemed to concentrate for a few seconds. “Please, Gaius, Mordred, please, quickly,” he whispered, tears falling from his lashes.
Arthur couldn’t hold on to his anger, couldn’t think about the victory that had slipped from their fingers because Merlin was crying. He tried to hush him. He saw a glint above him, a shard of red glass in his hair, he tried to raise his arm to pick it out but he was too weak and it fell back down.
“Don’t try to move, they’re coming. Gods, the poison, I should have taken my bag… Mordred will have it, he’ll be here soon.”
“You’ll do it… Merlin?” Arthur asked half-deliriously.
“Do..? Do what?”
“Bring magic back.”
“No Arthur, we’ll do it together.”
Arthur said nothing, he felt like he was going, to where he wasn’t sure.
“Arthur?!”
“...Thank you, Merlin,” he managed.
“Thank..? You can’t thank me, you aren’t allowed to! My place is by your side! Everything I do, my magic it’s all… Oh, you know by now, idiot! I don’t need a thank you for that. Just hold on… Please!”
“I love you,” he tried to say, but it came out in a slur he couldn’t be sure Merlin heard it. He felt very heavy.
“No, no! Arthur, please, you can’t-!! Arthur? Don’t please-!”
But his voice was retreating further and further away and if Arthur could have been said to have a coherent thought before he circled the weird pulling nothing before him it was that he was sorry to not see the beautiful, golden thing they would create together, sorry that their time together was to be cut so short and I’m glad, I’m honoured, to have spent my last days with you.
***
Arthur was unconscious but breathing, Merlin tried to rouse him but to no avail. He shook him lightly, but the king’s head only rolled limply in his lap, his skin over-white with the blood he had lost. His spells when he tried them had predictably failed. Was he to lose him after all? Lose him to his own ineptitude as he had lost before? With nothing to wrap the wound with, no way to treat him, he pressed upon it with his hands, the dagger between his fingers. Arthur was reduced to colours in his swimming vision, pale gold, dull silver and all too much crimson.
He’s unconscious, Gaius, hurry. Even in his mind his voice was choked and desperate.
We’re close, hold on my boy.
“Merlin?” he heard Percival’s voice at the end of the hall.
Across the room he saw the knight rousing where he had been facedown on the floor, a still sleeping Elyan half-draped over him. “P-Percival wake the others, Arthur, he’s-”
“He’s-?” he asked, cutting himself off in frightened suspense and halting in his attempts to crawl out from under his fellow knight. His startled eyes took in the evidence, the king lying still, the blood all about.
“Injured, poisoned,” he told him, marvelling at himself that he could keep his voice so steady, but hearing all the same the steeliness in it. His hand still held the pressure. “Morgana’s gone. Gaius and Mordred are on their way.”
What would he transform into, if Arthur died now? He thought back to Gwendydd telling he can choose to be as he was meant to be, and Arthur himself telling him to remain human, but Merlin didn’t think he could do it. He would roam the Earth undying, less than human, less than wraith, without a purpose, because what purpose would he have with his love gone? As sure as the king had been that he couldn’t achieve his destiny alone, Merlin was sure that the prophesied golden age could not happen without Arthur, however much he had wished for those who survived him to bring it about.
Arthur gasped in his sleep, breaking him out of his thoughts. He’s still breathing, he’s still here, he berated and reassured himself.
“Oh God, Arthur!” Gwen was awake and tripping toward them. In Merlin’s rumination time had contracted, and he hadn’t seen or heard Percival waking everyone.
She reached them and she went immediately to her knees to examine Arthur, putting a hand to his neck to check his pulse. Merlin let her, feeling himself retreating from the very reality of it, watching her fearful ministrations with involuntary but growing detachment. When she found it her eyes only relaxed a margin. She opened her mouth to say something to him, her hand reaching out to him, but Gaius and Mordred appeared at the door, robe and cape flying behind them respectively, and Lancelot came in after them. Gwen briefly cupped Arthur’s cheek with one hand and Merlin’s with the other, her brown eyes tearful but telling him all the same to have faith, to take courage, before she rose and ran to her husband, speaking to him quickly and standing back.
“Millfoil,” Merlin sputtered immediately as Gaius and Mordred knelt on either side of the king.
Mordred dug it out easily and handed it to him. “Yarrow… Morgana did this?” he asked, swallowing, eyes stuck, wide on the dagger.
Merlin finally let go. He unpopped the cork with his teeth and could only nod dumbly as he carefully opened Arthur’s mouth. Giving him the elixir, he massaged his throat as Gaius had taught him to do long ago. Merlin had made this remedy in the woods, alone, thinking that perhaps it would save him from a temporary but painful fate at the vines of some awful nighttime flora, never knowing that it might be used to save Arthur’s life. Arthur was right, he really was a terribly ineffective seer.
Arthur swallowed. He kept going.
“More may be required but the poison should at least be slowed,” Gaius assessed aloud once the bottle was finished. “We’ll have to clean and compress the wound. Getting that knife out is vital. One of you will need to remove it, then the blood stemming spell. Merlin, your healing magic..?”
The warlock shook his head shamefully. “I can’t.” He was still thinking of his friend the stag dying in the forest. Back then, he had cursed his magic so hard afterward that he could swear it recoiled inside him like a struck animal. He imagined lashing out at it again, taking his magic, himself, in a stranglehold and shaking it, demanding to know why it, he, was so ineffective.
“Sir Mordred, the spell, I trust you know it?” Gaius turned to his second option, not wasting time to reassure Merlin about his shortcomings.
“I do, sir,” he confirmed with a curt nod.
“Ready?” the physician asked.
Mordred took a hold of the dagger. Merlin realised while he was wallowing in his own ineptitude he had not volunteered to do it. He tensed, seeing the weapon in Mordred’s hand, along with Arthur’s tenuous life. He would need only bring his fist down on the pommel to end the King of Camelot, and neither he nor Gaius could react fast enough to stop him. A scroll of images, visions he had had, appeared across Merlin mind's eye, visions that told him why he should fear the young man, that he could be Arthur’s end. Before he could stop him and ask to do the task himself, Mordred turned his face toward him. His pale blue eyes were serious and sincere. Merlin’s heart arrested briefly in his chest, he remembered the confused boy he had betrayed and the youth Arthur had trusted. He had thought long about what had twisted Morgana so, the part he had to play in it, but he hadn’t seen that he had almost done the same to Mordred, blinded by the future he tried to prevent. He understood then their opposing roles in sending him down that path or this; in this young man’s face he saw a love and loyalty he knew only Arthur could inspire.
The sorcerer knight hesitated before he spoke, too astute, seeing his apprehension. “If you’d prefer I not do this, Emyrs, I-”
“No, Mordred,” Merlin answered. “I-I trust you, just…”
“Be careful,” he finished for him with a determined, reassuring look. “I will, I promise.”
With only a moment’s hesitation, he nodded his assent and Mordred readied himself.
But Merlin couldn’t watch, he turned away before he could see the blade slide out. He heard it all, however. A strong nausea came over him, he guided Arthur’s head carefully to the floor and slid and crawled partially away. Behind him, Mordred and Gaius were speaking the spells he could never master. He looked everywhere but at Arthur. His gaze alighted on the bodies not far from him and his stomach rolled anew. Across the room were the frozen, ashen faces of their friends, all uneasy spectators, hands on each other for reassurance. Gwen and Lancelot’s attention, he found, was on him.
“That should… do it,” Gaius said suddenly behind him, his breath labouring. “A litter, bring it here.”
When Merlin dared to look he saw no outward change but for the absence of Morgana’s dagger, Arthur was still pale and unmoving upon the floor but he trusted that they had succeeded and he was no longer bleeding. He and Mordred helped Gaius into a chair to recover. He kneeled again by Arthur and brushed his hair back from his cold but sweaty forehead, though his fingers were sticky with drying blood.
At length the litter arrived and Merlin helped to lift his love carefully onto it, feeling the need to be at least somewhat useful. Elyan and Percival took it up.
Merlin made to follow behind alongside Gaius and Mordred but a light tink sounded at his feet, loud in an emptying hall where the dead were starting to outnumber the living. When he looked down he saw that it was a piece of red glass that had fallen from him. He managed to recognise the curve, it was straight from the Pendragon crest, the very tip of the dragon’s wing. He stared at it, all the while Arthur and his entourage disappeared through the doors, their voices and steps sounding out in decreasing echoes as they passed down the corridor without him, too occupied with their charge to notice that he was not among them. His next breath came in like a wavering, gasping thing, as did his next and his next. He had seen Arthur’s death over and over again in his visions, more times than he could count, but knowing he may be living it, witnessing it in person, it was all of his fears realised.
He was so close to losing the man he loved, Camelot its king, magic its saviour, destiny its legend in the making.
“-lin? Merlin?” Gwen was calling him and she found that she was before him, not pity but love and pain upon her face. Lancelot was a step behind her with much the same expression. He shouldn’t stand it, their pain, Arthur’s, his own.
“Gwen, I-!” he doubled over, holding his stomach, his body tense and racked with shaking.
“You can breathe, it’s alright,” she told him in a light, quiet voice. Before he knew it she had coaxed him out to the cold entryway, away from the bodies, from Arthur’s blood clear on the round table and on the floor. It didn’t matter, it was still on his hands, he should be able to clean it but he doubted he could utter the spell in this state.
He shook his head, he wasn’t lacking air, it was only that his treacherous lungs were stuttering and working outside of his control. Only that his body was absorbing all of this pain. It was his body, he should be able to stop it with just a thought but his next inhale was just as unsteady as the last. He cursed at himself.
“Let it run its course,” Lancelot advised him, placing a careful hand on his back.
But Merlin despaired, he didn’t think he could take any more, he was feeling too much. He knew he needed to catch up too, get to Arthur in case the worst happened, but his feet refused to go no further.
“Would it help if..?” Lancelot raised his arms a little.
Still feeling that his body wasn’t quite his own, it seemed to make the decision for him, and Merlin found himself moving toward them. His friends closed their arms around him and let him sob gratefully into their tight hold.
Gwen and Lancelot lead him slowly toward Gaius’ office. On their way they witnessed through the gallery windows the disk of the sun as it appeared over the town walls. Camelot grew quiet as it was slowly cast in bronze and hundreds like them, awake through the battle, had no doubt stopped or turned their heads to witness it just as they did. Merlin tried to shy away from it, shun it in his grief, but his skin prickled then settled with the change, his aching body wanting every bit of warmth the sun could offer him, like a parched man finally, finally reaching the shores of a crystalline lake. A new day had dawned, Camelot would soon be at peace once more and Merlin stood with his friends in the light.
Gwen left the window and looked back at him, offering him her hand to hold with a kind smile of encouragement.
He didn’t take it. He was still gazing out. “I have to go to the wall, the fight can’t be over.”
“By now there’ll be few left,” Lancelot tried. “I saw it myself. Camelot has won.”
Merlin shook his head. “Arthur promised Seren he’d put her people to rest, I can make good on that promise for him, do it on his behalf.”
The couple were silent, they glanced at each other and seemed to come to some silent agreement. “We’ll be with him until you get back,” Gwen promised.
“Thank you, both of you,” he said, facing them. He began to push past them.
“Wait, Merlin!” Gwen gasped, stopping him. “Your feet… They aren’t touching the ground...”
She was right, his body felt light, the heavier aches of gravity and of his humanity both must have silently flown from him in all the turbulence. He felt they were still there somewhere in his awareness, like pain suppressed by a strong potion. He stopped only briefly, knowing he should explain. Gwendydd’s words about his becoming something other than what he was supposed to be, of his slow renouncement of pain and joy, came to mind but fell away from his lips when he tried to voice them, feeling suddenly that they were incomprehensible.
“I know,” he said instead and he left them behind him.
Notes:
And the fight is over.
Surprise present Merlin POV switch >:)!
"I was in the neighbourhood and thought I'd invade" as well as the exchange between Merlin and Morgana "You're mad" ; "I'm so glad you noticed" is from QfC.
Are we not proud of Merlin for fighting and at least partially following Arthur's wishes?
Just saw the fic reached 100 kudos, thank you all!!
This fight was actually very fun to write, having Excalibur there really raised the stakes. Arthur and Morgana's fight was part of the earlier ideas I had for his fic and I wrote some of their key lines in one of the first drafts. I always wanted to make it gory and over the top so that it sits quite different with previous encounters.
Chapter 25: I Stand Alone
Summary:
Arthur is recovering slowly in Gaius' office and Merlin is struggling. Gwen comes to the rescue and Merlin tells her the secrets he's been harbouring.
“But you’re all mortal,” he whispered sadly.
She was quiet for a few moments. “I know, but there will be more of us, there always will be, I’m sure of it.”
“No, no one can be like you, Gwen,” he shook his head tearfully.
“Mm, you’re right, maybe not,” she laughed strangely lightly, settling her head back down on his shoulder, forcing him back down with her. “You’ll meet others and they’ll be themselves and you’ll love them too.” Even after all of this time there was no doubt they still loved each other, that they were some unnamed thing between friends and family, kin of a kind. Merlin held her a little more tightly.
Notes:
Additional tag for this chapter is platonic love and platonic cuddling.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Arthur was pale and sweating in his sleep on Merlin’s old bed beyond the open door. It was evening, a day, a night and a further day had elapsed since he faced Morgana. In the courtyard citizens gathered with candles, holding a mass vigil. Slightly below ground as the Court Physician’s office was, Gaius and Merlin could see their legs, and the hint of the warm flicker, the blurry orbs of light staving off the dark of the spring evening. Despite the crowds, all was very quiet. They were across the table from each other, taking their meal together just like they used to and Merlin’s pottage, lovingly prepared by the man who for all intents and purposes was his adoptive father, was growing cold.
“Do try to eat,” Gaius appealed, frowning at him.
“It um, sorry… S’hard,” Merlin explained half-coherently, a hand pulling at and messing up his own hair in his distress as he gave up and dropped his spoon.
Gaius reached across and put a hand on his arm, squeezing. “Don’t fret, my boy, Arthur is on the mend, it’s just a matter of time now.”
Merlin tried to be comforted by the words and by the soothing glide of the old man’s thumb over his arm. He took up his spoon and tried again to finish his food. He managed three more bites before anxiety and nausea overtook him once more.
Seeing this, the physician sighed and pushed the bowl aside for him. He peered at him askingly, kindly. “Why don’t you tell me about your time in Tír nan Cailleannach instead?”
“That’s uhm... That may be a little hard too, I’m not sure if I can right now.”
“It may help,” Gaius said simply.
He wasn’t sure what exactly it would help but he tried for him anyway. He took a big breath and started. “When I left Camelot, I uhm, I went to enchant the sword with protections for Arthur but I collapsed in the woods… I had a vision...”
Merlin couldn’t decide if he felt light or hollow after divulging the happenings of the last few years, but the feeling was like the first time his feet had stopped touching the ground, like something had been dislodged from him and in its place there was an airy emptiness. He had left out the revelations of his immortality. That, he decided, he needed to save for another time, not wishing to over tax his old friend’s heart, which he already felt like he had selfishly cracked open again and again as he relayed one lonely hardship after another. If the very tight, tearful hug he received when he was done was anything to go by, he had made the right decision.
It was late now and he was in his old room, sitting in the chair by Arthur as he had the whole day previous. Merlin dutifully wetted the ailing man’s brow with a cloth and swept away the sweaty hair there. It didn’t wake him, he had been kept dosed with a tincture of valerian and hops to keep him asleep and relaxed. Gaius had given him a further one of peony to keep nightmares at bay, the king’s fever seemed to be conjuring them and his occasional distress, his thrashing and tangling himself in his soaked sheets, was counteractive to his healing.
Gaius appeared in the open doorway, with the candlelight behind him he cast a soft shadow into the small room. He cleared his throat. “Do you plan to retire to bed?” he asked tentatively.
Merlin shook his head no and continued his worried ministrations. The physician’s form left briefly, when he came back he stepped through the threshold and, going behind he placed a grey and pilling blanket around Merlin’s shoulders. The newly blanketed man looked up and behind at him with watery eyes, choked up by the gesture. Gaius smiled sadly down at him and gave his shoulder a short squeeze and a pat before making to leave.
“Thank you, Gaius,” Merlin called thinly after him. “Good night.”
The physician only raised a dismissive hand as he left as if to say, ‘don’t make a fuss’ before closing the door behind him.
By the light of his magic in the early hours of the morning, Merlin checked and redressed Arthur’s wound. Below the pungent smelling poultice the skin was pinkening, and although slowed by the poison and the temporary weakness of the patient, he was reassured to find the magic was doing its work. He covered him up again, feeling guilty that all of this movement had set the unconscious man to shivering. He pressed his lips to his forehead (a superior way of gauging temperature, after all), discovering the heat there. He hoped this was the turning point. He watched his prone form, his features sharper than they usually were in the weird light and in his dehydrated state and Merlin continued his solitary vigil.
He thought that maybe the morning would deliver him, but it did not, Arthur still slept, a little more fitfully now than before. His fever had broken overnight under Merlin’s careful tending. As he was no longer in danger he had not given him another sleeping potion and he hoped the renewed liveliness was a sign that waking was finally near.
As the morning became afternoon there was a polite knock on the office door. Through the open door of his room he saw that Gwen and a highly haggard looking Sir Leon had stepped in.
They spoke to Gaius for a little while, asking after the king’s health before Gwen was leaning into the doorway, Leon on the step behind her.
“Hi Merlin,” she said, taking in his no doubt visibly exhausted form where he sat by their king’s beside.
“Hi Gwen.”
“How are you doing?” she asked carefully.
In answer he shrugged and looked at Arthur, at his pale face and slack features, at the uncharacteristic messiness of his blonde hair.
“Have you slept at all?”
All he could do was shrug again sheepishly.
She sighed and tipped her head to the side fondly. “Come for a walk with me, Merlin, please?”
He looked up, frowning. “What if he wakes up?”
“Then he wakes up,” Gaius offered plainly behind her, coming forward beside Sir Leon. “That you’re out walking with our Lady Guinevere surely won’t trouble him.”
“I’ll stay with him in your stead,” Leon offered quickly, though he yawned through his words.
Merlin knew he was making a meal of his lips, but he was nervous under his friends’ worried gazes.
“We’re running low on henbane,” Gaius changed tact. “If you want to be useful to your better half go and find some. You may have to venture a bit further than the gardens, there’s not much left if I recall.”
“Did you just call him my better half?” he asked, head going up in bewilderment.
“You must be mistaken,” his old friend denied in mock offence to the soft chuckles of the other two.
“It’s not like I’d argue with you,” he grumbled, looking down again, eyes tracing over said better half where he lay.
“Come on,” Gwen urged, holding out her hand, somehow her very kind eyes brokered no argument.
Merlin relented. He kissed Arthur’s hand before he left, a soft hearted gesture the man would no doubt tease him about if he had been awake.
Gwen and Merlin walked arm in arm under a typical Albion sky, cloudy on one side and sunny on the other, though that they both walked was inaccurate for Merlin just brushed the grass. The air smelled like rain. Merlin had an empty wicker basket hanging from the crook of his elbow and was having flashbacks to his apprentice days and the occasions he truly went on errands to gather herbs and it wasn’t just a convenient excuse for his extended absences. They reached the meadowed part of the gardens where the henbane should have been growing undisturbed but Gaius had been correct, it had all been recently cut for pain draughts. They gathered what they could. Then they rose and did a lap, hoping to find more.
“They burned so much before we drove them out. I’m glad they didn’t burn this,” Gwen said, her nose near some honeysuckle as they passed. “I’m glad it’s still here.”
“Me too,” he agreed, taking in the pink of the dog rose beside it and everything else in the well tended beds. This had been Morgana’s favourite part of the garden, but neither spoke of her.
They found no more henbane.
“Shall we sit down for a bit?” she pulled gently at his arm.
“Let’s,” he sighed, grateful, feeling very tired. He found a nice patch of grass for them and helped her down.
Gwen’s lilac dress arrayed itself almost in a perfect circle around her once she was on the ground. One of her hands immediately began carding through the grass.
He settled down beside her and tried to be led by her obvious calm, letting his heart slow over the few minutes of silence they shared. He watched as her hand stopped its repetitive motions and snuck over a few inches in his direction. Her fingers reaching a daisy, she plucked it, bringing it back to her with a soft smile. Merlin stared at the stem between them sadly, thinking darkly on how beautiful things tended to be plucked from life early purely because they were beautiful.
She looked from Merlin to the daisy and back again astutely, her face falling. “Oh... I’m sorry,” she said to him with very genuine distress.
“No, no, Gwen, it’s fine, it’s only a daisy,” he reassured her with placating hands, shaking his head at himself.
“If you say so,” she frowned, looking unconvinced.
“Sorry, no, it’s just, I’m feeling a little...” Fragile , he thought.
“That’s alright,” she reassured him, clearly hearing it without him having to say the word aloud. “You can talk about it, if you’d like.”
He wrestled with himself for a while, half of him wished to keep his mouth closed, the other half wished to tell her everything. Again it was her kind eyes that decided it. “Arthur was on death’s door,” he began.
“But he’s not anymore, he’s alive because of you,” she countered, it seemed she would listen but she planned to meet his dark thoughts with thoughts of her own.
“I let Morgana get away, Gwen.”
“But we all lived to face her another day.”
He swallowed thickly. “If Arthur dies-”
“He won’t, not now.”
“But he will, at some point he will.”
“Oh Merlin,” she sighed sadly, taking one of his hands in her own small, warm one, the other still held on to the daisy. “I don’t mean to talk of these things really, but who’s to say it won’t be the other way around? It may be you who dies before him, especially with the way you carry on sometimes… I mean you really need to take better care of yourself, I know Arthur would agree with me... But, what I’m saying is we never know when it’ll come, or who we’ll survive, we’ll all just live while we can and love each other while we’re at it,” she blushed fiercely at herself suddenly, ducking her head. “Um, that’s what I think, anyway.”
Wise, he thought, his tear ducts pricking with the onset of tears . She didn’t know yet, no one but Arthur knew. Was it too much to tell her?
“Come on, silly,” she sang fondly, recovering, unaware of the horrible war within him. She crawled forward, her dress trained behind her.
He put an arm around her and they lay down together in the grass, her head upon his shoulder. At his chest she twirled the daisy between her fingers.
A very light rain, a fine mist, started to fill the air. Neither moved. “I have something to tell you, it's about me,” he said eventually, his voice very strained.
Without needing to see her he could feel her brow twitch in concern. “You don’t need to say it now, whatever it is it's worrying you, I can tell.”
“No, I want to.” The sky above was shifting, darkening, offering him a brief distraction before he told his friend this immense, transforming thing.
“Alright then, I’m all ears,” she said, readjusting a little so she could look at him better.
After all of his work to slow it, his heart was thudding hard, for some time he struggled to speak and then suddenly the words were on his lips. “I’m immortal, Gwen, I won’t ever die.”
She stopped breathing for a moment, her head rose off of him and her face was frozen in shock, inches from his.
“If Arthur dies now, I’ll be alone,” he continued. “And it’ll be for a very, very long time.”
“He won’t die now, Gaius said he was on the mend,” she supplied, her voice pinched like her breath hadn’t quite returned to her. Her eyes still looked very far away as she tried to comprehend his words.
“But he will,” he said again, gasping, unable to stop himself. “I don’t want this terrible life Gwen, the grave is better than a life of want.”
“Don’t say that,” she admonished weakly, breathless.
“It’s the truth.”
“But Merlin,” she said slowly and very emphatically, looking directly into his eyes. “You’re not alone.”
He blinked and there were tears there in an instant, very hot as they fell over his cheeks in the cooling air.
“You’re not alone,” she repeated, poking his chest. “You have me and Lance, and I know you have Elyan too, he adores you as well, in his own way. I can tell Mordred believes in you and will give you his support; Leon will stand by you like he does Arthur, I know that too; and Percival, he’s kind hearted and a good friend, you can rely on him if you ever need to; we’re going to have to find Gwaine, but you know as well as I do there’s no doubt there either, and of course you have Gaius, your mum and your people at home.”
“But you’re all mortal,” he whispered sadly.
She was quiet for a few moments. “I know, but there will be more of us, there always will be, I’m sure of it.”
“No, no one can be like you, Gwen,” he shook his head tearfully.
“Mm, you’re right, maybe not,” she laughed strangely lightly, settling her head back down on his shoulder, forcing him back down with her. “You’ll meet others and they’ll be themselves and you’ll love them too.” Even after all of this time there was no doubt they still loved each other, that they were some unnamed thing between friends and family, kin of a kind. Merlin held her a little more tightly.
“What if I can’t anymore after you all-?”
“What if that’s my wish for you?” she interrupted him. “To love the people who come after us? You wouldn’t deny a dead woman her wishes, would you?”
“Gwen!” he exclaimed in horror and surprise.
“There you see?” she said, a smile in her voice. “I think we have an agreement.”
Merlin put his free hand over his eyes, the tears still flowing. “How is it you’re so...”
She waited.
“So wonderful?” he finished.
She only continued to twirl the daisy. He could feel the shoulder of his shirt, or more accurately the incorrectly sized, patched up thing he had pilfered from Arthur to comfort himself, wetting where she lay. She cuddled closer, her form shaking a little with her silent crying. He watched the flower and thought that he would like to make her a bracelet of them, but there were no more to hand. He looked to the flat leaves near his feet where she had plucked it. Then, before his eyes, the damaged stalk began to repair itself and the closed ball of the new bud that formed there opened around the yoke-like centre as though time had been sped up. He stared at it, head raised off the ground.
“Merlin,” she whispered suddenly, astounded, she had seen it too. “Did you do that?” She rose to a seated position again and examined it. She reached over tentatively and plucked it when he didn’t protest, mouth dropped open, and handed it to him.
He took it and did some twirling of his own, confused. “...In Tír na Cailleannach, the woods moved for me… They didn’t grow for me though, life would have been a great deal more easy if I could have done that... I-I didn’t foresee this.”
“Foresee?” she asked, looking dizzy. Thunder boomed out above and the rain began to fall in earnest, but she didn’t react, her brown eyes were very firmly on her impossible, immortal friend.
“Ah that’s another thing,” he simpered, raising on one elbow. “I might be able to see the future.”
“Might be able to?!” she exclaimed.
“I can see the future.”
She considered this and then smiled in amazement, throwing her head back to look at the heavens, like her whole view of the world had been turned on its head, and it probably had been. “Can you stop the rain?” she laughed eventually, palms toward the sky.
“Probably… But I won’t,” he said, supplying his own smile as the rain increased to a half-sunlit shower. He raised his hand, he gave her a conspiratorial wink and suddenly the rain ceased to hit them. Over their heads, drops fell onto an invisible curve and fell streaming away to the side.
She was speechless as she watched it.
“Come on,” he said, rising and offering his arm again, the magic going with him. “Let’s make more of that henbane, then I’ll walk you home.”
She took it and got to her feet. She leaned close to him. Her hand went up and tentatively she touched the magic, gasping at whatever she felt there, magic being so familiar to him and so foreign to her, he couldn’t know what it was she felt, but when she looked at him again there was pure, child-like wonder upon her face. As they walked, the garden grew greener, more alive behind them. They plucked daisies on their way and by the time he had brought her to her door, accompanied by increasing peals of thunder, she had a bracelet of them around her wrist. Little did she know however, he had secretly charmed the gift against decay with a quick whispered spell and she could have it forever, should she so wish. With one Gwen delivered home, he turned in the direction of the Court Physician’s office, a basket filled to the brim with every medicinal plant the gardens had to offer.
Notes:
This one is so short and simple but it's one of my favourites, I hope you enjoyed it too. Can you tell I really love Merlin & Gwen?
"The grave is better than a life of want" is taken from one of the verses of the Welsh triads from the Mabinogeon quoted in Thomas Bullfinch's work. The triads were likely mnemonic poems that detailed three subjects or figures/people. The Mabinogeon is a collection of Welsh tales that were translated by Lady Charlotte Guest from original manuscripts, the title having come from a "medieval copyists error" but the publication having earned her a great deal of respect from the literati of the time.
The title of this chapter was my working title for the entire fic for months, I think the current suits it better.
Poor Merlin, look at what he has to contend with:
Gwendydd: you can let joy and pain back into your heart
Arthur: you're very human, you shouldn't lose that
Gwen: you'll love the people who come after us
Chapter 26: And Love Just Took Me By Surprise
Summary:
Arthur wakes up.
Beyond, the office door clicked and creaked open. There was the obvious sound of someone knocking into something and apologising to it softly.
“Speak of the devil,” Gaius turned towards the door.
“Funny, that’s what Morgana said.”
Notes:
More smut! Again if you'd like to skip, stop reading at "he caressed over it" (it being a scar) and pick back up at "Imagine doing that..."
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
Here in the night, I see the sun
Here in the dark, our two hearts are one
It's out of our hands, we can't stop what we have begun
And love just took me by surprise
The castle corridors were bigger now, wider, Arthur noticed, as he walked along them. This wasn’t the only change. Trees had broken haphazardly through the stone, where exactly they started and ended he wasn’t too sure. But portions of the floor and some of the walls had collapsed with this improbable intrusion of nature. With the castle exposed now to the air, beyond and below Arthur could see the town was in disarray and fires were marching over the hills against the dusk, though incongruously the roofs were still white with crystalline snow. He kept going, navigating the intruding branches of mighty wych elms that spanned the outside walls, yews that had broken through the floor and stands of birches growing straight out of the centre of the corridors, spying one desolate scene after another through the growth all the while.
He realised that there was someone walking with him, the sound of armoured footsteps other than his own following close by. When he came to stop in front of a wide opening in the stone, the other person did too. This collapsed section showed them a view of the castle courtyard and the town beyond, the figures lying or crawling in the streets and again the fires, drawing nearer and darkening the air, air filled with pained moans of the sick that reached them occasionally on the wind.
“This is the treachery of sorcery,” his father said, hands behind his back, his cold eyes glowering at each indication of chaos they alighted on. They were wearing twin crowns.
“What is?” Arthur asked but even as he spoke he knew what he was referring to, the thing that felled a whole kingdom. Dread was awakening in his insides and he felt nauseous with it. A cold, smokey breeze buffeted them, this time he couldn’t tell the screaming of the wind through the corridors from the anguish of their people. A shiver went right through him, head to toe.
“Are you blind, child?” he snapped, spitting. “This sickness! This disease! It can only be the work of-!”
“No,” Arthur interrupted him simply, turning toward him, taking in not for the first time the frown lines on his face, the animal fear in his rapidly moving eyes.
“No?!” Uther met him face on, incensed, the sounds of the leather of his gloves snapping as he balled his fists. Familiar, familiar all of it.
“It’s sorcery that will cure it, it’s for lack of it that the people suffer.”
“You cannot seriously believe-!”
“I do. It’s its own sickness, what you have wrought unto them, unto the land,” he told him, his own voice sounding very calm to his ears.
“Magic, it corrupts, it twists, you must-!”
But the king, King Arthur, was already walking away, leaving a seething Uther calling after him. His voice was soon swallowed by the yawning wind.
Now as he walked, the trees bent and creaked toward him in a reverent bow, growing denser until they blocked out the red-orange of the fires and the desolate town. When he looked back, he found he had left a rounded tunnel of brown and green in his wake. His father was nowhere to be seen.
At the end of the corridor was a dwelling place made of five trees, the verdant, very living patch it sat in was slowly overtaking this portion of the castle, filling it with sweet blackbird song. All of the greens were mint and emerald in the fading light, and all else was retiring into shadow. He walked through the garden path, the grass and clover underfoot otherwise untrodden, for the feet that travelled down it rarely touched the ground. Above him the black alder towered, the ceiling gone, and the stars were beginning to make their appearances and he stopped to see the ones of his namesake. He reached the low door with the antlers atop it and at his touch it swung open into safety and warmth and love.
It must have been the thunder that woke him, hearing the echo of it over the sound of the driving rain. The ceiling, the tight walls were both unfamiliar and familiar until he came back to himself some more and realised he was lying in Merlin’s old room. There were layers of blankets over him, the topmost being Merlin’s first blanket, no doubt lovingly placed there by the man himself. Arthur stroked it admiringly, both rough and soft. He held on to a piece for comfort.
Leon was sitting in a chair by his bed, long legs out straight in front of him, his arms folded and his head resting on one shoulder, asleep.
Arthur found he was almost deliriously thirsty, his tongue was sticking to his teeth and his eyes were so dry they were scratchy. He shuffled himself upright, finding that he was more stiff than in pain. He reached for the pitcher of water and a cup that sat on an upturned crate beside the bed.
There was a sharp nasal inhale of sudden waking. “Sire?” Sir Leon asked sleepily, stirring. The bleary-eyed knight seemed to take in the sight of his king for a moment until he realised what it was he was trying to achieve. “Here, allow me.” He half-rose from the chair and poured out some water.
“Than- Uh-hum!” Arthur cleared his disused throat. “Thank you.”
He handed Arthur the filled cup carefully, being sure that he had a good grasp on it before rising. “l’ll fetch Gaius.”
“Wait, Leon,” he stopped him, voice still thin. “Tell me, Camelot, everyone..?”
He sat back down and gave his highly abbreviated report, a small but glorious collection of words. “Safe, the fight is over, we won.”
Relief and triumph come over him like in a wave. “Good, good.” Was all he could say. “And Morgana?”
“Escaped, but Merlin doubts she’ll be back anytime soon.”
Arthur turned his head about, not seeing the man. Even knowing it was unlikely anything could have befallen him (at least nothing permanent), Arthur couldn’t swallow the worry that rose up in his throat, he could hear it in his own voice when he asked, “Merlin?”
Leon chuckled lightly, though not impolitely, clearly he had heard it too. “He’s safe too. He stepped out with Gwen, from what I understand some air was sorely needed. I imagine he won’t be gone long.”
The king took this in, relaxing, no doubt the warlock had to be bullied and coerced into leaving his side, he was grateful to his friends for having managed it.
“Will I-?” Leon asked tentatively, pointing with both hands at the door.
“Oh, yes, do call for Gaius.”
“Well sire, I hear I can officially welcome you back to the land of the living,” Gaius congratulated as he entered, Leon behind him.
Arthur paled, thinking of the strange dream he had featuring his father, maybe it hadn’t been a dream. “Did I-?”
“Did you..? Oh! No, sire, I do apologise! I don’t mean it in the literal sense,” he looked at him fondly, “though I will tell you now it was a near thing, you gave us all quite a fright.”
The king relaxed again, at least somewhat.
“Let’s have a look at you, then,” he said, moving the chair forward and taking a seat. With his soft hands he checked his pulse and gauged the state of his fever. “Good news, you’ll live,” he surmised with a sly smile when he was done.
“Good news indeed,” Arthur breathed.
“Now it’s Sir Leon I’m really worried about,” the physician spoke in a mock-whisper, leaning forward in his chair and pointing a thumb over his shoulder at the head knight, only just behind him in this small room and very much in earshot. “This fellow has been running the kingdom, sire, if he would only let me see to him-”
“There’s no need for mag-” Leon started, tripping on the word and almost tripping again as he backed out of the room. “I mean, you’ve done all I need, I feel just fine.”
“Alright, alright! I won’t push the matter,” the physician gave up, throwing his hands into the air.
“Well, if that’s all?” the knight said, halfway out of the door already, looking like he wanted to politely flee.
“One more thing,” Arthur halted him.
Leon forgot his escape attempts immediately and gave him his attention.
“Once I can return to duty, I’ll grant you that time off.”
“I thought you’d forgotten,” he joked, leaning casually in the frame.
“Not on my life, sir. Hold me to it,” Arthur smirked, then he sobered, feeling immensely grateful for his friend. “Thank you, Leon, for everything.”
Leon only bowed his head once, smiled knowingly and left.
“Don’t worry sire, some people will need time,” Gaius said once they heard Leon leave the office.
“Of course, I know not to expect a change overnight,” he said, but he was a little distracted, his wound itched and he was setting about tentatively exploring it with his fingers, seeing if he might be able to apply enough pressure to relieve it.
“It’s mostly healed by now but the skin will be tender,” Gaius told him, hawk-eyed despite his partial blindness. “Best leave it alone, if you can.”
Arthur grumbled wordlessly as he retracted his hand. “And the poison?”
“Out of your system, thanks to the preparations Merlin brought with him and Mordred delivered.”
“Merlin… Leon said he stepped out for air, where is-?”
“Don’t scratch at it!” he batted his hand away gently, eyeing him reproachfully and shaking his head. “Really, sire.”
It seemed Arthur had unconsciously brought his hand back. He presented Gaius with both of his palms like he was making a show of being unarmed, and placed them atop the blanket under the physician’s annoyed gaze.
“As to your better half, he’s been worrying himself into a stupor, Guinevere coaxed him to the gardens for some sorely needed respite, and by respite I mean mine own, he was practically wearing holes in the floor, as much as anyone can occupying the air like that.”
“My better-?” If he had been his father, or even a different version of himself he might have taken offence, but he only laughed, though it was a little painful to do so. He didn’t miss that Merlin had started floating again. “He’s certainly that.”
The old physician gave him a very self-satisfied but knowing smile and patted Arthur’s knee in a show of fatherly privilege.
Beyond, the office door clicked and creaked open. There was the obvious sound of someone knocking into something and apologising to it softly.
“Speak of the devil,” Gaius turned towards the door.
“Funny, that’s what Morgana said.”
“Gaius?” Merlin called into the empty office.
“Here!” he called back, a smile of anticipation playing over his features as he rose stiffly off the chair.
And then he was there, a basket coming through the door first as he backed in, pushing open the half-closed over door with his bottom before slipping into the room. “I’ve something to show you, I-!” he started in a half-whisper, obviously being mindful of the man he assumed to still be sleeping before his eyes alighted on Arthur.
He smiled at him tiredly from the bed.
With jerky movements Merlin pressed the basket full of provisions into Gaius’ hands and made his way over to the bed. Gaius was already slipping out of the room as he hastened to give them privacy, though he was looking with utter bewilderment into the very full basket as he did so. The door closed over, the latch lifted and dropped and they were alone.
Merlin ignored the chair and perched instead on the bed, facing him, emotions doing battle upon his features. Arthur rolled his eyes at him and opened his arms weakly to receive him. He came carefully forward so he could press their foreheads together. Because he was above him hot tears fell onto Arthur’s face. “I love you,” he said plainly.
“Just ‘I love you?’ No ‘I love you, you prat,’ or ‘I love you, you supercilious toasting fork?’” Arthur asked playfully, doing his best Merlin impression, which he fancied was a rather good one, country accent and all.
Merlin snorted, bumping their heads together lightly and affectionately, and caressing his thumb over his cheek. “All of those things too.”
Arthur took a breath, he opened his mouth and shut it again, uncharacteristically unsure.
“You don’t need to say it...” Merlin said slowly, his smile slipping as he started to move backwards.
“Merlin you birdbrain, I’m wondering if my breath is too offensive for a-”
Merlin leaned in and cut off his thoughts with a very soft kiss, if those bitten sandpaper lips of his could be called soft.
“I love you too,” Arthur said low to him.
“Idiot? Dull spoon?” Merlin joked equally low, a breath between their lips.
“No. I love you, Merlin, Myrddin, Emrys, Merlinus Sylvestris-”
They kissed again, longer this time.
“Do you want me to tell you the thing I learned?” he rocked back, breathless, poorly containing some excitement or other.
“Hm?” Arthur asked, feeling a little drunk as he watched the other man’s still rather lovely lips, damage and all, with hooded eyes.
Merlin only laughed and rocked forward again to peck his cheek before explaining. “The plants the- well, anything like that, they listen to me here too, I asked the henbane to grow, or maybe more accurately to heal itself,” with this he just made a wide gesture that suggested growth and flourishing, “I don’t know how or why but-!”
“I don’t see why that’s a surprise.”
“Uhm, what do you mean?”
“Didn’t you say you were more a part of-” he made a circle with his fingers meaning ‘all of this,’ making exactly the same movement Merlin had, though this time there wasn’t a cottage made of trees around them, “than anything else?”
Merlin’s chuckle was bittersweet, his eyes were very tired but they were sparkling. “I am, but I’ve been feeling a part of all of this lately, too.” And with this he looked around at the walls, breathing shakily but deeply, before returning his very full hearted gaze to the other half of the coin. Camelot, her people, our destiny, the look said.
“Mm,” Arthur hummed happily, sure he looked much the same. He thought about his floating but decided to leave the matter be, whatever was going on inside Merlin’s heart Arthur believed that he would at least try to hang onto what made him human; no matter the heights he might find himself occupying, as Gaius had put it, Merlin would eventually return to the ground because Arthur had asked him to.
The half-aerial immortal looked sleepy, about ready to curl up in his lap with his soft smile, the way he was slumping and tipping.
But Arthur had to ask something of him. “Tell me, the fields, the forest without the walls, what kind of state are they in?”
“Burned,” he frowned, sitting up again. “And not a little drowned, sorry.”
“You should go. Use your powers to restore it.”
“Really? Now? Is that an order?”
“Maybe it is, the people don’t deserve to suffer under Morgana’s revenge. I can change the laws for them, I can ensure we share our food with those whose lands have been burned, I can provide them with shelter even, should they need it, but I can’t reverse what she has done.”
“And I can,” he finished, like a held breath released.
“Yes, at least I hope you can.”
“I can, I can do it, but you, you’re-”
“-out of woods, Merlin,” Arthur stopped him before any further worry could take hold. “Please, go to them. But tell me all about it when you get back, I’m already bored stiff.”
Merlin laughed a little nervously, but then nodded. In lieu of leaving however, his hands worried at the blankets and reached over to plump up his pillow. Arthur watched him amusedly through all of this but then softened when they their eyes met, seeing his attempts to assuage his anxiety had failed.
“Don’t think I haven’t noticed, by the way,” the king started, echoing his own words and Merlin’s, as the other man started tucking him over-tightly into the blankets.
“Noticed what?”
“You stole my shirt.”
“S’my shirt now, I fixed it didn’t I?” he teased, looking down at the over-wide and slightly too short Pendragon red thing he wore. It had a collection of patches, sown by his own hand on one shoulder, unable to help a little laugh.
With that, Merlin’s movements slowed and he calmed himself further by stroking his cheek and carding through his hair with his big, elegant hand. Arthur suspended any teasing and suffered him these ministrations, remembering Gaius’ words that his death had been a near thing. He couldn’t help the sigh he let out at the coolness against his temple, the aching gentleness of the other man’s fingers describing tiny lines and circles on his scalp. He had half a mind to ask him to stay but Merlin rose off the bed, bent to kiss his forehead and was gone.
Gaius came in not long after and helped get some broth and more water into him, leaving him strangely exerted by the time he got to the bottom of the bowl. The physician told him he should continue to rest and the exhausted patient didn’t need to be told twice.
Alone again, Arthur lay his head back more heavily into the pillow and listened to the rain, allowing his mind to wander. He was sure he saw him then, the storm lashing against him, soaking his borrowed clothes, the end of his staff buried in the mud. He watched the blackened stalks uncurl and regain their colour, and the charcoaled soil turn a rich brown once more.
When Merlin returned he was dry but the smell of rain came over the room as he entered.
“Back already?” Arthur asked, trying to sit up.
“I was gone for hours, it’s practically night now,” Merlin informed him, sitting where he had earlier and helping him up carefully. “But it’s done, or at least I did all I could.”
“I dreamt about it,” he told him sleepily. “It was beautiful, you were beautiful.”
Merlin arched an eyebrow. “I might ask Gaius to check your pain draughts, he’s probably giving you too much.”
“Probably is… So it’s ‘practically night’ is it? Are you tried?”
The other just let the fatigue show on his face in answer, letting his dull eyes and his over-paleness speak for itself.
“What are the odds of us sharing this ridiculously small bed of yours?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, my bed’s upstairs, very soft it is, fit for a king… You’re mostly healed, we could probably head back there.”
“Why didn’t you say so earlier?”
“You probably still can’t make it on your own, you know what with the blood loss and the poison, and I’ll remind you you sent me an errand.”
“Fine, help me then.”
It was slow going, getting from the office to the king’s chambers, even with Merlin’s support. The castle was blissfully quiet, many of the citizens having returned to their homes. Not that he cared that anyone would see their ungainly walk, mess of slung arms as they had become, his tiredness ensured he was beyond embarrassment.
“I could carry you, sire,” he teased him when they were about half-way and Arthur was taking a short rest against the wall.
“No you will not,” the king half-growled, stealing himself for the next leg. Maybe he wasn’t beyond embarrassment.
“A bath would be heavenly,” Arthur mused as Merlin carefully undressed him in his chambers, just now working on loosening the laces at the top of his shirt.
“You’d fall asleep in it. Or fall asleep waiting for it,” he told him, eyes on his clothes.
“You’d just have to be in it with me.”
“What, in case a rescue is needed? Arms up.”
“Precisely,” he agreed, his shirt being pulled up around him.
Merlin came back into view and was beginning work on the shoes he had put on expressly for their journey through the castle, pressing close to his leg to help the still dizzy king with his balance as one shoe came off, then the other. “I doubt I’d fit with your eh, royal self in there.”
“I’ll choose to ignore that you called me fat again just now. But you’re right, we wouldn’t both fit. First order of business tomorrow then, bigger bathtub,” he declared mock seriously, highly pleased with himself that he had set the other to laughing.
“I can spell you clean,” he said once he was done but his eyes were still crinkled when he looked up at him as he worked off his breaches efficiently, still very practised at this.
“Mm, if you would please Merlin.”
“Alright,” the warlock rose to standing again and cracked his neck, unnerving him just a bit. “Clǣnsa ferjgt. ”
Instantly the unpleasant clamminess left over from his fevering was replaced with a post-bath dryness and warmth, though the smell of soap was absent. His breath had freshened, even his undergarments had a recently laundered feeling to them. Merlin too looked like he had been given a good scrub.
“Happy?” he asked.
With this Arthur paused and he knew he had a smirk on his lips but a true smile in his eyes. “Very,” he said.
The other caught his meaning and looked like his heart was going to burst. Finished with his task he came forward, putting his arms around Arthur’s hips so he could smile at him unreservedly, all shyness burnt away in the turmoil of the last few days.
“But now I’m wondering why you made me wash under that godforsaken waterfall when you could have just done this,” he added.
Merlin only laughed again and helped him across the room to the bed.
The curtains were closed magically against the still bright night as they settled into bed, Merlin was in a stolen nightshirt Arthur rarely wore and Arthur was just in his smalls. The recently injured man had examined the shiny pink skin of his healed wound when the now serial shirt thief was raiding his wardrobe, it was a raised, darker pink area sitting within the expanse of older scar tissue on his chest and no more. A fatal wound, healed by magic.
“I foresaw you coming to the woods,” Merlin said to him softly, unbidden, as though he had asked while he wriggled and tucked himself at his side. “I saw you in my net and asleep by the fire just the autumn before.”
Arthur grumbled, then let himself laugh lightly. “Explains things, you were awfully casual about my falling into your pond,” he frowned and wrapped his arm more tightly around him, “and you vowed not to come home with me, because of what else you saw.”
“Yeah. When I told Gwendydd about it she told me my heart may dictate otherwise.”
“It would say she was right.”
“She might have been, though I won’t tell her so.”
Arthur chuckled and craned a little to kiss an ear. “Mm, so, prophet o’mine, what’s next for us?”
“I don’t know yet... Sleep?” Merlin buried his head further into the crook of Arthur’s neck.
“Just sleep?” he drawled into the same ear.
The other made a small noise, overwhelmed under his naked adoration.
He planted more kisses on his neck where his beard thinned out.
Merlin’s hand was in his hair, his hips buckled a little when the king kissed over his Adam's apple. “Arthur may-maybe we should wait til-?”
“You’re tired. Do you want to stop?”
“No, but-”
“Well then, we’re in agreement.” He continued where he left off and did some more kissing, and moving now, with the slide of his hands over his chest, he intended to find sensitive things.
Then Merlin all but growled, giving in. “On your back.”
“On my-?”
His bedmate rose as he pushed him gently down, managing to peel off the white nightshirt as he did so. He could be graceful when he wanted to be, it seemed. He straddled him and leaned down to kiss him, long and tender.
“It’s going to be like that, is it?” Arthur breathed in between the kisses, squeezing his hips and taking in his lovely lean torso, the scars he knew now to have been gained in protection of him. There was one his eyes stuck on, a huge burn in the centre of his chest, its edges jagged all the way around like an illustration of the sun.
Merlin seemed to notice and when he bent to kiss him again, nodding all the while to answer his question, he guided the king’s hand to the pink skin. With Arthur’s hand on it he seemed to suddenly breathe more deeply, as if this act had finally chased away some long ago hurt. Arthur decided he would chase them all away if given the chance and he caressed over it. The kiss deepening, Merlin started to grind against him, working both of them quickly hard. Breaking away he shimmied down, his hands dragging along his body as did so, grazing his nipples on the way. He found the edge of his smalls and pulled them down, freeing his erection, and freeing his own in a not so smooth movement that involved one leg and then the other going in the air and his forehead against Arthur’s thigh. Soon his undergarments were waving like a flag of surrender from his ankle before he kicked them off. Watching all of this with suppressed laughter Arthur surmised that the man’s previous grace had been more random than selective.
“Laugh all you want,” the warlock mock warned him, a little red faced but trying to hide it as he nipped the skin of his king’s thighs.
“I will,” Arthur promised, smile so wide it hurt his cheeks.
Merlin nipped a little harder but the nips turned into kisses and he started to make his way toward his goal. When he finally took hold of him and licked him Arthur groaned with relief. Not long after he was surrounded by the wet and the warmth of him. He watched his lips working up and down, his length disappearing and reappearing and threw his head back with the pleasure and spectacle of it all. Merlin rose off him, took him in hand again and pumped slowly. Arthur looked up to see his eyes were very blown again, Merlin had some serious bedroom eyes but Arthur wasn’t stupid enough to tease him about it right at this moment.
“I’d like to try something, if you’re open to it.”
“Oh?”
“I can… Make myself ready for you, with my magic.”
Arthur immediately understood his meaning. “Oh.”
Merlin kissed then licked him a little playfully, tapped him against his stuck out tongue, he knew his offer was too tantalising to pass up. “What do you think?”
“Yes, Merlin, yes, use your magic, but next time let me open you up, I want to see what you’re like when I fuck you with my fingers.”
The other was briefly surprised but then his already darkened eyes grew darker before they lighted with magic. Suddenly Merlin gasped and whimpered, falling forward again onto Arthur’s thigh, he felt hot breath there and when he rose again slowly he saw how he was flushed and his dick was pink, straining and leaking precum.
“Mmm, don’t need to ask if it’s done or not,” Arthur chuckled.
“Hah,” he breathed, still recovering, but he was lining up their dicks now, stroking them together.
“Felt good, did it?”
“What do you think?” he breathed out a laugh, glowing with his blush.
“Might have to ask you to do the same to me sometime soon, so I can feel it for myself.”
“Mm, I’d be happy to oblige, sire.”
“Merlin.”
“Hm?”
“No more ‘sire.’”
“Fine,” he leaned down and put his mouth to Arthur’s ear. “I’ll use my magic to make you ready for me, Arthur.”
Even though Merlin was teasing him, it still made Arthur shiver. He couldn’t hide it either because he got a laugh in return.
Sitting up again he started to rise.
“Oil?”
He shook his head, eyes very full of self-satisfaction and mischief. There was no need for it.
Arthur watched, rapt as he lined himself and guided Arthur to him. He could feel the press and then tightness, slickness.
Merlin panted atop him for a while and Arthur was happy to wait. He rubbed up and down his legs, cupped and squeezed his arse, enjoying the muscles there. Merlin started to move but he took his time, coming up and lowering himself down, running his hands up and down Arthur’s torso as if admiring it. There was also care in his little caresses, a sweet tenderness that was only the territory of the deeply in love. Their hands met again and again on their slow travels. He got into a slow rhythm, no longer overwhelmed. He went over him once more and they kissed long and hot, the combined pleasure proving a little much and causing both of them to moan into each other. Arthur licked his neck too as he made small experimental thrusts, to which the other responded by righting himself and riding him a little faster and harder. Merlin was a vision above him, body moving, head thrown back. Arthur knew he wasn’t going to last very long. He took a hold of his hips as his muscles began tensing and Merlin seemed to get the message. Instead of slowing down to draw this out however, his hand went to his own bouncing dick and he kept up his pace. They locked eyes and just as Arthur thought he was about to come embarrassingly early Merlin's rhythm stuttered, his eyes closed and he was spilling onto Arthur’s stomach, his fist working admirably through it all. Arthur followed him with a few upward thrusts, cumming inside him.
A bump of their foreheads, a short kiss later and Merlin climbed off, flopping down beside him. “Clǣnsa ferjgt,” he spelled again. Nothing happened. He laughed at himself tiredly and tried again. “Clǣnsa ferjgt.”
And once again they were both clean.
“Imagine doing that when we aren’t battered and exhausted,” he yawned, tugging the bedclothes out from under Arthur and putting it over them both. It was true, they had never done this properly rested and hale.
“Won’t that be something,” Arthur mused as they sunk into the bed, their shared pillow and into sleep.
Notes:
I decided to split this chapter in two and raise the chapter numbers to 29.
Clumsy Merlin is my favourite Merlin and if I ever write in this fandom again he will never not be clumsy.
Also about the smut scenes, I enjoyed breaking the general PG-ness of their interactions with each other with sudden dirty talk, it's very fun haha.
Chapter 27: I See a World We're Meant to See Together
Summary:
Merlin tells Arthur about another vision but this time, he's smiling (and crying, because of course he is). Arthur faces the council and the two sides of the coin have a night under the stars.
“You leave, you die,” he continued eventually, gasping at the weight of the revelations he was divulging and holding on very tightly. “But you come back, Arthur, you come back!”
“I… How?” Arthur tried, astonishment rendering him basically speechless.
Merlin’s eyes briefly took on that half-awake, twilight quality that he’d come to associate with his prophecies, not a little eerie when there was barely a breath between their noses and he was looking very directly into those eyes. He spoke slowly. “When Albion’s need is greatest, you’ll leave Avalon, you’ll come out of the grey water on a grey day in your armour, straight into a distant future I can’t make sense of... and back to me.”
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
A month passed, then another half a month, they rebuilt, and they built anew and Arthur, a self-profaned expert in the subtleties of Merlin’s moods, knew something was on his mind. Whatever it was, he watched him try to keep it to himself for a few days until he’d had enough and resolved to tease it out of him.
They were in the gardens together, the heat of the day turning from pleasant to a little over humid. Merlin’s skin was freckling as it always did this time of year and his was turning what the other, highly ridiculous man, had called ‘bronze’ in a fit of passion.
Arthur was sitting against a young alder, enjoying the shade and the sound of the barely-there-breeze in the leaves. Merlin was lounging in the grass a little off to the side, in the middle of making yet more of his infinite daisy chains, soon the king could expect to be forcefully adorned with them. He had a very far away gaze on his face as he worked.
“Out with it,” Arthur demanded when there was no one in earshot.
Merlin looked up. “Out with what?” he said cautiously, instantly on edge.
Arthur didn’t deign to continue, he knew his other half too well, and his other half knew him.
“Alright,” he relented quietly, fidgeting and sitting up. He took a look whistling breath. “I had a vision, or, a few really.”
“What did you see?”
The other’s eyes filled instantly, but rather than some kind of grief or heartbreak there, to Arthur’s surprise, he smiled. He abandoned the daisies and scooted and wriggled forward into his arms. His head came to rest on his chest and Arthur buried one hand in the dark curls and brought the other around to hold him. He found that he was shaking.
Usually Merlin’s visions told them of dangers to come. Sometimes they were violent and bloody, and Arthur had spent a few nights since they arrived back together hushing him through his distress and panic and soothing him back to sleep. Headaches, listlessness and sickness tended to proceed these particular episodes and the king had tended him through these too. Other times however Merlin’s visions were curious, small insights into a time after he would be long gone. These Arthur enjoyed puzzling over with him, not only because they were interesting but because he hoped when Merlin finally reached these faraway times, that he would remember their conversations. This vision though, whatever it was, was clearly something else entirely.
“I’ve seen it, you going beyond the blue veil to Avalon. You’re young but not this young, not as you are now. But there’s something else, you-” he choked on his tears, struggling to speak, but when he tipped his head up his smile persisted.
Arthur wanted to protest, tell him it was unfair to keep him waiting, but instead he held him gently, letting him tremble and wet his chest.
“You leave, you die,” he continued eventually, gasping at the weight of the revelations he was divulging and holding on very tightly. “But you come back, Arthur, you come back!”
“I… How?” Arthur tried, astonishment rendering him basically speechless.
Merlin’s eyes briefly took on that half-awake, twilight quality that he’d come to associate with his prophecies, not a little eerie when there was barely a breath between their noses and he was looking very directly into those eyes. He spoke slowly. “When Albion’s need is greatest, you’ll leave Avalon, you’ll come out of the grey water on a grey day in your armour, straight into a distant future I can’t make sense of... and back to me.”
The king breathed shakily. He hated to ask, but he needed to. “Are you sure?”
“I am,” the seer said without hesitation, readjusting a little so they could see each other better. “I had to focus my divinations on it for a few days but I’m sure of it now... You’ll come back. I’d heard you called the Once and Future King, now I know what it means.”
“And why can’t you make sense of this future, what does it look like?”
He only shook his head, the glassiness of his eyes gone.
“And what will I be doing then, in the meantime,” Arthur asked, brushing his curls aside gently, “while you’re here and I’m in Avalon?”
“You’ll dance,” he smiled again, his words watery. His smiles, his smiles.
“Dance?” Arthur echoed, wrinkling his nose.
“All the time,” the other elaborated unhelpfully, giving him images of exhausted dead, unable to sleep. He tried not to think about the dead of the Empty Kingdom, but judging by Merlin’s very serene expression it was likely an unfair comparison.
“Doesn’t sound too restful,” he thought aloud.
“Why rest when you don’t tire and time means nothing?”
“But why would I dance, Merlin, when you’ll be here, waiting?”
“You’ll dance because your Earthly troubles will be gone, you won’t feel pain or grief, you’ll shed all the worries of your time in the mortal world.”
“That’s not going to happen,” he disagreed.
“What if I asked you to?” Merlin asked very softly.
Arthur felt like he was chewing on something bitter, he sighed. “Fine, I’ll dance for you. What else then?”
“You’ll eat honeydew and berries, sup on goats milk.”
Arthur scrunched up his nose even further. “Do you take me for a fool, Merlin?”
“A little.”
He squeezed the man in his arms until he got a protesting squeak out of him. “Will I remember any of it, when I return?” he asked when they had both calmed down, his lips pressed to his forehead.
“I’m not sure, I hope you do. I want you to tell me I was right about the goat’s milk. You probably won’t admit it even if you do and I am though, would you?”
“Hm, probably not.”
Suddenly Merlin was climbing up, his eyes a little startled. He put his hands over Arthur’s ears. The newly deafened king pulled a face and tried to figure out what on Earth he was up to, but the other was looking away, head cocked to the side, frowning and listening. Arthur’s heart quickened, was there some danger? He heard only the sea sounds of his love’s hands.
Then the hands were gone and Merlin was drawing back a little from him, his mouth pulled in something that wasn’t a smile or a frown, embarrassed.
“Are you going to tell me what all that was about?” Arthur asked.
“Cuckoo.”
“Cuckoo?”
“It’s after midsummer.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“It’s unlucky to hear a cuckoo after midsummer.”
He sighed fondly. “Am I going to have to put up superstitious bumpkinery for the rest of my life?”
“Not a word but, yeah, ‘fraid so, this one and the one after.” There was no question that Merlin would be by his side until the end of his days, and beyond now, it seemed.
“I’m the king, I can make it a word.”
“Oh yeah? Go on, define it then,” he challenged as he settled back down again onto Arthur, who put his arms around him once more.
“In a word, Merlin,” he said, kissing his head pointedly. “In several, the superstitious nonsense and general nonsense of country boys. I’ll raise it at the council meeting, with any luck they’ll be exhausted by the time we get round to it, it’ll pass without a problem.”
“I’m sorry,” the bumpkin said suddenly, tone changed.
“More apologies? Go on then, what are we sorry for this time?”
“I didn’t mean to tell you all of this before-” he cut himself off, indicating with a small rise of his head at the castle, very white in the summer sun.
“Never mind that,” Arthur reassured him, rubbing his back slowly and thinking about the task ahead. “If anything it’s spurred me on. It can’t be denied, magic brought me into this world, it kept me in this world more than once, tens of times in fact, and now we know it’ll bring me back into it… Anndd now you’re crying again.”
“Of course I am, clotpole,” he sniffed, drumming on his chest once with a weak fist. “I’ve dreamt of this for a very long time.”
“More visions?”
“No, proper dreams… This is what we’re meant to do, and it’s everything I ever hoped for.”
Arthur entered the hall and approached the round table in his official finery, Excalibur at his side and a daisy chain on his wrist, followed closely by Leon and a waspy collection of old men. They formed a circle around the table and all at once they sat down, but their attention was clearly and immediately drawn to the window above them, their heads all tipped up like a herd of deer before they bolted, a few gasps sounding out between them. The glass had long been swept up but the window was still broken, casting a plain jagged panel of sunlight onto the table, making him recall how the moonlight had done the same thing upon the floor the night he faced Morgana. The town’s glassworkers were likely just now working on the replacement. With so many other rooms to choose from, Arthur should rightly have held the meeting elsewhere but he decided the window served as an unavoidable reminder of all that had occurred, a perfect backdrop to the discussion coming. He tried to hide his satisfied smile.
“Let us begin,” he said loudly to the group.
“Let’s. We have much to discuss,” said one of them, taking the exact opening words Arthur had anticipated. The man had very deliberately sat directly across from him. So this is how it would go. He exchanged a discreet look with Leon, who was grimacing with discomfort already.
“We do,” Arthur agreed cautiously, gesturing for him to continue.
“We understand there was magic here, being practised within the walls of the castle, in this very room,” the man continued to the vigorous nodding at a taller man on his right. Of all of the attendees it was these two who were still most fastened to the cruel laws that defined his father’s rule, it was they who had voiced their dissent at his increasing leniency over the years as all other voices around the table had retreated into increasing silence.
“Yes,” the king affirmed plainly, being sure to look every one of the councilmen in the eye as he projected his voice so all could hear. Outside blackbirds called, the sound coming to them through the shattered window, giving him courage. “I would not be alive save for it, dare I say you would not either. It is no secret that it was magic that won us this fight.”
“Must we remind you that it was magic that you fought against, sire, the dead did not wake up and begin marching on Camelot on their own,” the tall man spoke up, his voice thinner than his friend’s, his tone relatively but deceptively polite for all the prejudice that Arthur had heard issue from him over the years.
“I understand that, however-”
“Used in service of Camelot or not, the penalty of magic is death!” The first man raised his voice suddenly, slamming down his fist like a meaty gavel.
Arthur glowered despite his attempts to remain poised, images of his friends on the pyre involuntarily but inevitably crowding his mind.
But it was Leon who spoke next. “Would you truly put the people who defended us to death?” Magic still seemed to unnerve the knight a little, a holdover of years of training, of years at Uther’s side, evident in his hesitations, in the uncharacteristic stubbles in his step. Despite this, however, Leon had come to the fore as one of Arthur’s primary supporters in this, much to the king’s pride.
“We would see the laws enforced.” Came the answer.
You can try , Arthur thought darkly, thinking of Merlin and his immortality and the people he himself would protect with his own mortal life.
All of the others were silent, eyes shifting nervously between their fellows. Speak, you cowards, Arthur thought.
He tried to steady himself, authority returning to his voice as he remembered the words he and Merlin had rehearsed over and over again in their chambers. “It’s these laws, sir, that have made enemies out of the innocent. Every villain, every attack has been of our own making. What other response but revenge would there be to losing your freedom, to losing your loved ones? The way I see it, the choice, gentleman, is simple. Keep the laws as they are and await the next evitable attack, or repeal these laws and see the beginning of the end of invasion and revenge. What’s more, the repeal will allow those who would protect Camelot with their magic to do so officially and without fear of consequence. We cannot of course erase history, but the repeal will act as a deterrent and as a declaration of peace both.”
There was much whispering, but loudest was the guffaw of the man across from him.
“If you have something to say, please say it, this is the round table afterall.”
“King Uther would never have allowed-!”
“My father is dead, sir,” Arthur reminded him plainly.
The murmuring continued.
The dissenter stood, the scrape of his chair echoing throughout the hall. “We looked the other way when you knighted peasants and vagrants, but this is a step too far! There is reason for laws, they are our principles enshrined, and here you are violating them once more!”
Arthur’s ears pricked, the words interesting him, he decided to pursue further. “I know the laws, but please, enlighten us, what are these principles?”
The man remained defiantly silent, crossing his arms.
“Are they recorded?” Leon pressed further, backing him up.
“Not writ sir, sire,” the tall man beside him stood as well, bowing a little to both, providing the answer while his friend remained reticent and purple-faced in his rage. “But what need would there be? Magic unbalances, it is dangerous, it gives the people what should be in the hands of the noble and the noble alone.”
Arthur tried to suppress the twitch of his brow at the very blatant statement, he clasped his hands together before him. “Please, tell me what you understand as noble.”
“This is absurd,” the first man spat, finding his rather grating and croaky voice again. Arthur mused at how much like a frog he was.
“This is a discussion, sir. I’ll remind again you are at the round table. I’ll also ask you to please sit down, if you would.”
“To be noble, it is given from birth and proven through deed,” he provided, spitting as he spoke, choosing not to heed him by remaining on his feet, though his tall companion was starting to look a little uncomfortable standing beside him.
“And have not my knights proven that they are noble through their deeds?”
“A mule may prove a dependable steed but it is no war horse.”
Beside him Leon kicked a table leg in uncharacteristic and poorly suppressed anger.
“A wonderful analogy!” his friend exclaimed in delighted praise. “Couldn’t have said it better myself!”
“Thank you most kindly,” he dipped his head to him.
“So the principle is fear, and the thing that should be kept from the people is power,” Arthur surmised before his head knight jumped to chew the man out, feeling him straining beside him like a growling hound.
The councilman’s mouth opened in offence and shock. “I said nothing of the sort!”
“What would happen then, in your opinion, if power, magic or otherwise was given freely to all?”
“Chaos!” he shouted, going from purple to red and throwing his hands. “A subversion of order! The people cannot govern themselves, you are simply handing pitchforks to them.”
“So it is as I said, the principle is fear for the power they could have. But if it was given to them once more, what would they have to rail against? Magic helps them provide for themselves and they will no longer have to fear the pyre.”
“A blinkered view if ever I heard it!” he shot, looking purely disgusted.
Arthur raised a hand, the hand with the daisy chain, in a plea for civility. “Sit down, please.”
The two stared daggers at him for a few moments before sitting down, the smaller of the two grumbling under his breath as he did so.
“I invite you all to look at this table,” the king began anew.
All the grey heads, plus Leon’s blonde one tipped down.
He pointed at the clear line running all along the right from where he sat. “That gouge there, this is where my half-sister Morgana, the daughter of Uther, dug her dagger before it went here,” he said, putting a hand over his own chest. He indicated the deep marks before him and at other points, “And this, this is from the claws of the second to last dragon in the land, a creature on the brink of extinction, brought to fighting by the same fear, the same kind of persecution as Morgana faced in these walls. And the stain before you sir,” he pointed to the vocal councilman, “that stain upon the wood in front of you is my own blood, shed in revenge for a lifetime of fear, despite the best efforts of the servants it could not be lifted. People died in this room on that night, and I very nearly joined their numbers.”
He let all of this sink in and be discussed, feeling satisfaction at the way the annoying man and his companion leaned away from the stain.
“I would have all of this end,” Arthur summed up. “I would have us finally acknowledge that the laws have not protected Camelot but harmed it, caused those who suffered under them to seek revenge for their pains and their losses. That it is not magic, but the blind persecution of it at the heart of the evils that have befallen us. What say you all?”
This triggered much hushed discussion. He heard, “he’s gone mad,” and “he’s enchanted,” as equally as he heard, “he has a point,” and “the laws no longer serve us.”
The man across from him opened his mouth to speak once more.
“We’ve heard much from you, sir, if it’s alright by you I should like to hear from the others.”
“You spoke about my knights,” Leon said, clearly taking his opportunity to challenge the man who had insulted his men. “Your analogy was crude, but even you admit that they have been loyal, that they have proven themselves. I’d challenge you to find better ‘mules’ elsewhere, I know you could not. I believe the sorcerers who saved us are the new wave of Camelot’s protectors, they are good people and I’m certain there are many more like them ready to join King Arthur’s cause.”
The oldest of them, who had been sitting silently on their left up until now, straightened where he sat and cleared his throat, his thin voice very steady as he said his peace. “It wasn’t that long ago, gentlemen, merely thirty years, that the prosecution of users of magic of which young King Arthur speaks was written into law. All of us here surely remember when magic was practised in this court, many if not all of you were treated in one way or another by Gaius or by the most talented physician Alice. True magical talent was hard to come by, even in the days that it was used openly, but I imagine at some point or other your baths were warmed by magic, your bed clothes were laundered by it, your food was grown with the aid of it. You will not remember this time, sire, the ban having coincided with your birth, but there would be something severely amiss here if all at this table who were there to see it were to claim they do not remember it.
“Magic was a convenience to all,” he continued. “The laws and their enforcement, I’d postulate, had little to do with it. There was a point where we decided that fear was useful to us. But I say that the fear now is ours, and threats to our lives will only continue if these laws remain as they are. Did we not all hide in our homes in the country or find ourselves with the masses here in his very castle, or in that forsaken tower as I was? No more!
“There are those here who, in their stubbornness, will vote against this motion, to them I say you are free to remain fools, far be it from me, or our king to offer you safety from curses, magical creatures, sieges and whatnot.”
“Very well said, sir, thank you,” Arthur tried not to gape, astonished. “Truly I had no idea…”
“Though they are few, sire” his supporter explained with a suddenly sly expression that made him look younger than his years, “there are some at this table whose heads aren’t permanently residing in their rears.”
The king blinked in surprise and the old man settled back down again, clearly enjoying the chaos he had caused unfolding around him. Those who chuckled and those who looked offended revealed much about the position of their heads in relation to their rears. If he hadn’t known Merlin was waiting for him just outside of the doors, Arthur might have thought that this was him in disguise. Instead it seemed that he had more allies than he had first realised, even amongst the dusty old council.
Arthur swallowed and took a breath, allowing himself to feel encouraged, this felt like as good a time as any. He raised his voice and spoke the motion. “To the proposal to lift all bans on magic, to treat all true crimes regardless of the method with equal and fair punishment, to cease the persecution of innocent magic users?”
“Aye!” said the eldest man to the left.
“Aye,” “Aye,” “Aye!” Came the agreement around the table, Leon voiced his agreement, clearly, loudly and the ayes swept past him anti-clockwise until it came time for his father’s loyal man to speak.
“Nay,” he intoned predictably and defiantly.
“Aye,” said his tall friend beside him, head raised but looking highly nervous.
“Aye, John?!”
“Aye, my friend,” he shrugged. “I can’t deny the truth of it, magic never caused us trouble in the past. What I don’t believe is we will survive another invasion. Not I, anyway.”
“You’ve lost your mind!”
“I am of noble stock, as are you, and I may have applauded your words earlier but our nobility does not make us warhorses, far from it. The invasion will come, and two old men hardly capable of raising daggers, let alone swords, to defend themselves? Well… Please, my friend, consider the motion.”
“Do you honestly believe-?”
“Yes, their words have stirred me, I’d prefer to die happily of gout than at the hands of some revenge maddened wizard.”
The shorter man growled and looked around the table, his face going a deeper and deeper shade of purplish-red, so much so Arthur was considering taking him aside later to recommend a trip to Gaius. “Fine! But mark my words all of you, there will be consequences to this madness!” he shouted and then finally he barked out, “AYE!!”
“Aye!” “Aye!” The rest joined in, until all had voted.
Arthur took a breath like he’d been underwater, amazed at what had just occurred. It was done.
In the background, at the edges of the room, he caught sight of the servants he had failed to notice earlier pushing each other playfully, smiling in celebration. He smiled too, wishing he could join them.
“Thank you all, thank you,” Arthur said, still a little breathless, his heart light and fluttering in his chest. “This will be a new golden age for Camelot and for the land, know that it has started today at this very table.
“Now,” he cleared his throat, pushing through a bout of elated laughter that threatened to take him over, “moving onto other matters, I should like to propose the redirection of our tax collections to further the rebuilding efforts, some parts of the town still remain burned and derelict… There are reports that our harvest will be unharmed this year thanks to the efforts of one of our sorcerers… Who, I believe is more than deserving of a position on this very council as the representative of his people, if he is willing and this council agrees. I also intend to discuss our laws regarding the position of women in court and our laws on marriage…”
And as predicted, with the council members suitably exhausted, all motions however significant, passed. A seat too was secured for a certain sorcerer.
***
There was a small crowd ready to greet him and his head knight once the council was dismissed. To their credit, they didn’t pounce on him immediately, but waited until the last grey haired council member had left before they crowded into the hall.
Just as he had prepared tirelessly for the council meeting, he had prepared for this moment too. He stood before them, Leon to one side, and took a breath to give them the news, declare loudly his victory. ‘It’s done,’ he planned to say. ‘ Magic may flourish in Camelot, as it was always meant to,’ but between one breath and the next he had found himself at the centre of a circle of his cheering friends. Though bewildered he smiled and cheered with them, Lancelot clapped him on the back, looking drunk with happiness, Percival veritably lifted him off of the ground when he went in for a hug, too caught up in the moment to care that it was technically not appropriate.
As expected however a wildly happy, tearful Merlin soon came through the crowd and everyone moved for him. He threw his arms over Arthur’s shoulders, kissing him to everyone’s cheers. “You were perfect, everything you said,” he told him in rare simple praise, unembellished with light hearted insults.
“Were you scrying on me?” Arthur asked, noticing now the pink crystal in his hand over his shoulder, piecing things together.
“Only the interesting bits,” he answered, wiping away tears. “I’ve had enough of standing through those dull meetings to last my unending lifetime.”
“Funny you should say that,” Arthur smiled conspiratorially.
“Hm?” Camelot’s newest member of the council blinked.
The crowd was shuffling again and the two had to let go of each other, though they both knew it wasn’t for long.
“Sire!” Gaius pushed to the front to put a hand on his arm. He looked deeply choked up. “Merlin showed us the proceedings, might I say how very proud I am of you.”
“Thank you, Gaius,” he placed a hand on his shoulder in turn. “I should let you know that as of today your position is restored, you may practise your craft to the fullness of your capabilities.”
The old physician couldn’t summon words immediately, emotion overtaking him. He hid his face with his wrinkled hand. “It was Alice, not I, who was the expert in the art,” he sniffled eventually.
“That can be remedied too, in fact, should she be willing I would welcome her here immediately and with full honours. Too long have her like been persecuted and driven from Camelot, it was only by luck that the fate of the kingdom of Astyrex was not ours.”
His eyes filled once more, Merlin stepped forward and rubbed his bended back reassuringly through his uneven breathing. Eventually he raised a hand in apology to both of them, unable to contain his emotions. “I need a moment, if you’ll both excuse me?”
“Of course, Gaius.” And he and Merlin both let go of him and he shuffled away.
Mordred was the next to approach. His usually pale visage was replaced with a rosiness Arthur had never seen. He bowed deeply to both them, his knee upon the stone. The crowd hushed a little but he was unembarrassed. “I had thought the golden age long predicted to be lost, instead I am here to witness the start of it. It’s a great honour. I will stand with you, sire, you and Emrys. Allow me to reaffirm my loyalty to Camelot and to both of you, I will defend your cause with my life.”
“Thank you Mordred, I’m glad, more than glad, knowing that we have your support,” Arthur said solemnly on behalf of both of them. He relaxed a little and smiled slyly. “Though I’d planned to re-knight you formerly, you managed to beat me to it.”
“Re-knight me, sire?” He rose his head in askance.
Arthur nodded. “As Camelot’s first sorcerer knight.”
He breathed shakily, emotions playing over his face, but he did not immediately rise.
“If you would not mind waiting, I would like to invite your people to witness it, should they wish.”
“I-sire… Of course. Thank you.” he stuttered, his rosy cheeks turning red, though he was smiling. He tipped his head down a little more, hand on his heart, before rising and rejoining the crowd.
Merlin stepped forward, positively glowing and addressed the crowd. “I think it’s time we make merry!”
Yet more cheers sounded out, this time raucous and disordered.
As they exited together Lancelot made his way beside Merlin. “I’ve wished so long that this day would come for you, Merlin,” Arthur heard the knight say.
“I did too, but I never imagined this, did you?” he beamed, going with the current of their celebrating friends and looking very lovingly at Arthur.
Drink flowed and a feast was had. Arthur asked the hard working servants to sit and join them. They agreed warily and stuck like glue to Gwen for the first minutes until they too relaxed into the festivities. In all of his attempts to overturn the oppressive laws of Camelot, Arthur had managed to forget to declare today a holiday. Still, it was already an occasion to rival any on the calendar and he planned to celebrate again next year and the year after that. The night evolved and devolved and after more than six years they were treated to Merlin’s drunk singing once more and they all joined in, if only to drown it out and spare their ears.
Merlin’s cheeks were red from wine as he stood by a window in their chambers, looking out at the very dark night sky. It was a new moon again and the stars were bright and far more numerous than was usual, this night clear and crisp, like it had been borrowed from the months ahead. Arthur couldn’t resist coming up behind him, wrapping his arms around him and nuzzling into his neck to warm him.
“Do they have anything to say, the stars?”
“Always do... I just wish we could be out under them,” he frowned like it was impossible.
“What’s to stop us?”
“What? But it’s the middle of the night,” he pointed out, turning his head to squint back at him dubiously.
“I’m the King of Camelot and you’re…” -the future King Consort, he thought- “Emrys. We can do as we like.”
“I’m not sure I’d say that exactly...”
“Woe! I invite my love for a romantic night beneath the stars and he argues with me!” Arthur whined dramatically, he might have had quite a bit of wine himself.
Merlin laughed, dancing a little with him, leaning on one foot and then the other.
If Lamorak was surprised that the king and his other half were sneaking off to the forest in the middle of the night he did an admirable job keeping it to himself, or maybe he wasn’t surprised at all. They were just another pair of love birds, afterall, the only difference being these two had decided to spare the horses and forgo the stables.
Their bedrolls side by side and Merlin tucked beside him, they gazed up at the sky together. Beyond the branches of the beech trees, Arthur traced the many branching lines of the Great Bear. He studied the vaguely round part within the constellation, remembering Merlin’s words. It was still hard to believe that his destiny could be written so plainly in the sky, that it had been there many eons before his birth and will still be there for every creature that will lay their eyes on it for eons to come.
“You said my round table could be found in the stars,” he whispered, almost unable to bear it but for the love and support of the man who had managed to tangle their blanket at their feet and was just now kicking and fidgeting to fix it.
“Might have,” he agreed, distracted, still kicking.
“Tell me about it.”
Merlin stopped his movement, leaving one of Arthur’s feet exposed to the night air. “I’ve told it to you before. Anyway you’ve already lived that part, it’s your story.”
“Well if you’re going to be like that-” he pretended to get up.
“Fine, fine!” Merlin rolled a little onto his front and draped himself over Arthur. “I’ll tell you a story about how great you are, you big-”
“Good, as you should. It’s not just mine, it’s yours too, and you are the custodian of these stories after all, past and future.”
“Is that what I am?”
“Yes.”
“Among other things?”
“Lots of them.”
“Custodian,” Merlin played the word over his tongue. “That sounds a little lonely.”
“I didn’t mean you should keep them for yourself,” he rubbed along his side, up his ribs, down his arms and back again, still looking at the stars. You shouldn’t have to carry the pain of your prophecy and the stories of your long life alone. “You should share them, seems to me they’ve been uttered in secret all too long. The people should know, it’s all theirs too.”
“I’ll tell them,” the custodian promised, eyes suddenly bright again, his smile fond.
“Now let’s hear that story.”
Merlin took a big breath. “In a land of myth and a time of magic there lived a great big prat and a handsome but long suffering warlock who for some reason best known to the gods who devised him, loved the prat.”
Arthur took hold of the other’s chin and tipped his face so he could see it better. “Properly please,” he asked, though he was battling laughter.
Merlin slid up a little over his chest, the blanket only tangling further, and kissed him softly before settling his head back down. When he spoke it was with that now familiar, faraway tone of prophecy, from the heavens, through the ages and now upon his lips. “The stars tell us of a great king. They rise, the pole star will ascend the heavens with the constellations of the king’s namesake upon the higher cycles of the Earth, foretelling his rise and the golden age that he will bring. His age will go on and on and reach its peak in the far future when the pole star comes to occupy the truest central position in the heavens.
“The Great Bear foretells the round table in the curve of his legs. But more than that, the Little Bear occupies a centre in the sky around which the constellations and signs of the year rotate, just as it is at the king’s round table, each has their turn. There will be many a leader after the great king who will follow his shining example.
“The Little Bear rotates too with the Dragon, but this is an even slower dance. One day, the Dragon will overtake the Bear but the Bear will always ascend again, as he is supposed to, just as the Once and Future King will rise again.”
Merlin went a little boneless against him. His breath heaved with emotion. Arthur held him close and waited for him to recover. “I sounded just like Gwendydd through most of that,” he laughed nervously when he eventually spoke.
“So, the Dragon, is this for Pendragon?”
“It could be,” he said shakily. “I don’t know.”
“Hm,” the king considered this, but somehow, with the story as he knew it, that didn’t seem quite right. He brought over the hand that was not trapped beneath the other man to cup his face lovingly. “Or is it you, dragonlord ?”
Merlin stopped breathing for a moment. “It’s… I mean, it’s possible?”
“I’d say it’s more than possible. So if I’m right, what happens when the Dragon rotates above the Bear?”
“I don’t know… Maybe I get to do something great and you have to help me. But that’s too far in the future…“
“I wouldn’t mind that, to repay the favour,” Arthur said honestly, pouting at the line of the Dragon above, but all of this had him thinking. “Do you know if these cycles will ever end?”
“Uhm, how would I know a thing like that?”
“Seems like something you could know.”
This made him silent for a second time.
“Well if they keep… what do you say? Rotating... and the Bear rises again and keeps rising…?”
Merlin scrambled out of his hold and rose up on his arms, the blanket sloughing off to one side, forgotten. His mouth was open with shock, his eyes wide with amazement and tentative happiness. “You’ll keep rising too?!”
Arthur laughed heartily. “Maybe I should say sooths from now on, I seem to be good at it.”
He rolled away to lie flat on his back beside him, stunned beyond belief. “I… I’d need to spend a long time trying to divine it, I’d need to consult with others, maybe make a trip to Gwendydd but…”
“But you think I’m right,” he finished when he trailed off. This time Arthur rolled over and half onto him, mimicking their celestial counterparts. He took up the blanket and tucked it around them, properly this time, so they would be warm even as the summer night descended inevitably into a chill. He pecked him on the cheek. “I have another sooth for you.”
“Stop calling everything a sooth,” Merlin complained half-heartedly, his arm over his eyes, his voice betraying he was on the very verge of crying yet again.
“I sooth we might be destined, you and I.”
This opened the floodgates and Merlin kissed him between heaves of his chest and waves of elated laughter, Arthur could taste the salt of his happy tears.
After some time they settled down, their hearts slowing as they listened to the sounds of the night.
“S’your turn now, oh great interpreter of sooths, tell me the story of us and our destiny,” Merlin asked him softly, wrapping his arms around him tightly.
Arthur grinned and began. “In a land of myth and a time of magic there was a handsome and courageous king and a terrible, insolent servant turned wildman who for reasons apparently written in the stars, he came to love…”
Notes:
And with that the main story ends! Coming up we have an epilogue and a true ending. I really really loved writing both, the epilogue is a lot of fun and the true ending wraps up the whole story and we see glimpses of the future.
Arthur going "beyond the blue veil" is kind of taken from a poem by Tennyson as quoted in Thomas Bulfinch's Age of Chivalry in his chapter on Arthur. I have no idea where I got the exact wording and the blue part from, I even searched the Excalibur script (an excellent read from what I can tell) and came up nothing. Anyway, this is also where I took some of the astrological info.
Goats milk is in abundance in Avalon apparently as are carefree dancing dead. The honeydew appears in folktales and mortals who partake in this and other foods end up with their souls trapped there.
There's some folk belief around Cuckoos being unlucky to hear after midsummer.
What Merlin says about the constellations are part of further research I did on the topic, I hope you liked my addition about Merlin being in the stars with him <3.
2024 update: So @ollyrewind on Tumblr made my absolute year and drew the night under the stars scene. I'm so so thankful, she captured the moment so beautifully. Please check out the rest of her phenomenal work!
Meme:
Arthur: I won't dance in Avalon when I know you're waiting for me.
Merlin: *hands him something.
Arthur: What's this?
Merlin: Uno reverse card, sucker! Now you gotta do something difficult. If I find out you aren't Morris dancing when you're dead I'll be very upset.
Chapter 28: Epilogue
Summary:
Peace has returned to Camelot. These are five small stories in which-
1. Merlin's wildness and the misguided help of the people he loves causes some issues
2. Reunions are had
3. There are harvest celebrations in Ealdor
4. Arthur has a question he wants to ask
5. Our dorks declare their love, again and again and again
Notes:
Estatic to be finally posting the epilogue! In a lovely bit of serendipity, I'm uploading this on the day of the Autumn Equinox when the third story is set. I wish I could say I planned this.
This has lots of references, all of them are at the end. I've left some out where I feel its been explained well enough in the text.
This is not the end, there's a true ending coming up!
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
The Noble Savage
It was early in the month of weeds, the mowers waited in anticipation of mowing, blackberries were turning on the bushes and just as the land built toward its final verdurous season so too did Merlin. Everyone he met had the sense that he was radiating life, his hair and beard had grown that bit wilder too and just as he seemed to cover up in the colder months, they all learned that in the warmer ones, he had a tendency to strip off.
In the early days of rebuilding there had been little time to catch up with one another, but soon they all found themselves exhausted and in need of quiet. Even Merlin, a ball of energy as he had been, could be counted among the weary. When he could, he retreated from the endless days of court, and repairs and anything else that might demand his attention, to Gaius, dining with him a few times a week in the office or simply spending time with him when he could.
Age had changed his old friend’s face, he was frailer about the shoulders and he moved more slowly these days, but if he had any intention to retire he apparently hadn’t voiced it. It seemed just as he would always be a physician he was also never not a physician, not even when the two had finished their evening meal and they should have been cleaning up or having an easy chat before each retired for the day. Merlin had noticed that he had been under the other’s increasing scrutiny all evening, the dreaded eyebrow presiding over all since he had arrived, but why he was under scrutiny he wasn’t sure.
Gaius finally gave him his answer when he slid a small green bottle over the table pointedly.
“What’s this?” Merlin asked, picking it up.
“Artemisia absinthium,” he answered, over-enunciating each syllable in his usual way.
“Gaius, this is a treatment for worms… Or to induce hallucinations.”
“Precisely,” the old physician agreed, folding his arms and leaning back in his chair.
“I don’t have worms.”
“You’ve been in a wood six years, my boy, can’t be too careful. You came in here half-naked today and you’re as skinny as ever, it's a clear sign if you ask me.”
The wildman put down the medicine loudly. “I’d been working in the garden, it’s hot, in case you haven’t noticed! And besides, I’ve always looked like this, I’d know if I had worms,” he said again, as though saying the same thing twice in a different way would convince him.
The other ignored him. “And another thing, I’d like Alice to give you a once over once she arrives.”
“I don’t need a once over!”
“I beg to differ,” he shoved the bottle towards him again, gesturing. “Go on.”
Merlin gave up. He grimaced and put some drops of the mixture into his water. Shortly, he was feeling a little woozy.
That night no worms appeared as Gaius had predicted, though it did have another effect.
“-erlin! Merlin!” Arthur shook him awake in the middle of the night.
“W-what? What is it?”
“You were having a nightmare, you were whimpering like a puppy and you’re sweating like a pig, what-?”
“Worms,” Merlin mumbled into his pillow, more than half-delirious.
“What?”
“Everywhere, worms, just so many worms.”
“And what’s this?” Merlin sighed when Gaius came to their chamber door late the next morning with yet another potion. His night had been horribly sleepless, and his attempt to catch up on sleep through the morning was fruitless.
“Peony, for your nightmares,” he explained, sounding just like the pundit he had apparently been last night at dinner, though there was a sheepishness there that had been there before. “Fifteen drops into your wine tonight.”
“Is this your way of saying sorry?” Merlin leaned into the jamb and took the proffered bottle.
Gaius touched his arm and simpered a little before hobbling away, that was as much of a yes as he was going to get out of him.
***
“A gift?” Merlin asked, examining the paper wrapped shape that his other half had placed on the table before him as he and Arthur sat together at the table in their chambers. It had been a few days since the worming incident.
“Of sorts,” Arthur answered enigmatically across from him.
Merlin eyed him suspiciously but unwrapped the package. It was a pair of brown boots. “I don’t want them,” he said immediately.
“Merlin you-”
“Nope!” he said, dropping them back onto the table, getting and walking from the room with his hands raised to broker no further argument.
“You can’t be a wildman forever!” Arthur called after him.
“Watch me!” he called back.
The boots on his mind, it took just two more days of cold stone, a surface that just didn’t have the same give as a forest floor in that it had no give at all, for him to finally admit defeat. Since arriving back, Merlin’s feet had daily pained him as though they had been flogged, it was stubbornness and pride alone that kept him barefooted. His other half had left the dreaded footwear conspicuously where Merlin had abandoned them. When he took them up the king to his credit didn’t say a thing, just smiled from his desk.
“Thanks,” Merlin said, red-faced with them under his arm.
“You’re welcome,” the other said, eyes not leaving the parchment before him.
***
The next visit, less than a week later, had been to the home of Gwen and Lancelot. The couple were each in their own way ecstatic to have him back, but Merlin had his suspicions that they were in cahoots with Arthur and Gaius. They still lived in Gwen’s old house, despite their titles and the benefits those titles might afford them. Gwen had still been fixing her hair when she answered his knock.
“Breakfast might take a while,” she said around a hairpin in her mouth, hastily putting another into place as she ushered him over the threshold and inside. On her wrist was the magically preserved daisy chain he had made her in the gardens. “We woke up a little late.”
“You both deserve your rest,” he told her as they hugged, being sure to keep the bouquet of tansy, wildflower sorrel, ox-eye daisy and rowanberries he had picked for his friends from being crushed.
She led him into a heart-warming domestic scene, with Lancelot kneading bread on the counter, a pleasant, beer-like smell of yeast in the air.
Inside he found that though the interior had transformed somewhat to accommodate the couple, some details were blessedly the same, like the old worn table and the flowers that hung upside down and against the walls, as Gwen liked to do. Lancelot, a romantic, seemed to be ensuring she had a steady supply of them and Gwen, sentimental, seemed rarely willing to part with them. The soft floral smell filled the warm home. That Merlin had turned up at the door with yet more of them meant the space rivalled even the most lush of meadows, not only in volume of flowers but in its ability to set his hay fever off.
He passed them to her. She scratched at the nobbly yellow flowers of the tansy and smelled deeply.
Would that I could do that , he thought, his eyes watering.
The two sat at the table together.
“ We have a gift for you too,” she said, with an old emphasis on the word ‘we.’ She gripped his hands briefly before retrieving a package wrapped in cloth that had been hiding on the bench beside her.
Merlin noted that Lancelot was glancing apprehensively over his shoulder, still working at the bread. When their eyes met his friend managed to convey a very clear ‘it wasn’t my idea.’
“More gifts then,” Merlin said under his breath, though he was certain they didn’t hear him.
“Hm?” husband and wife said in unison.
“Nothing.”
He untied the bundle under their nervous watch.
It was a hefty stack of floral scented soap.
***
“Sir Leon,” Arthur addressed his knight, who had asked for a private audience, over the desk in his chambers. Merlin was elsewhere, probably in the newly rebuilt stables talking to the horses, knowing him.
“Sire,” he bowed. “If you’ll grant me speak freely, I have a… matter which I must discuss with you.”
Arthur furrowed his brow and swept away his work. “Of course,” he said, leaning forward attentively.
Leon shuffled where he stood. “It’s a… sensitive topic, sire.”
“It’s not like you to beat around the bush, tell me.”
“It’s Merlin, sire, he...” And with the knight’s pause, panic rose in Arthur, what was wrong with Merlin? “It’s quite often he traipses around the castle half-naked, some find it... improper.”
Arthur let out his held breath in a barely suppressed laugh.
“If he would only wear a shirt,” Leon continued cautiously.
“I’m working on it,” Arthur reassured him, trying not to smile. “I’ll have a conversation with him tonight.”
“Well um- good,” his friend nodded awkwardly. “Thank you sire, I-I’ll take my leave.”
Said conversation that night ended with Arthur getting a tunic to the face.
Merlin had stormed out of the room, only to return in the dead of night and slip into bed beside him, flinching away roughly when Arthur made an attempt at a reconciling touch.
Merlin wasn’t in bed when he woke.
By the time the bright summer evening rolled around, Arthur had decided his rising panic was justified, though he tried his best not to show it outwardly.
“Merlin has disappeared,” he said to Leon and Lancelot in the throne room after the day’s affairs.
“I sincerely doubt that, sire,” Leon attempted in a careful tone.
Arthur was silent on his throne, leaning on one of the arms and trying to look purely pensive in front of his men, but his own voice was loud in his mind, no, he has, I know it.
“If he’s left it would be for good reason, he’ll come back,” Lancelot took his turn to try and reassure him.
“If he’s not back by morning I’ll call a search,” the king decided, sitting straighter.
The knights exchanged a look.
“Perhaps he wanted to spend some time alone?” Leon posed.
“Where does he go when he wants to be alone?” Arthur asked them both.
The two looked at each other and Arthur saw the silent drawing of straws that went on between them as they decided who would speak. Leon seemed to come out the loser. “You know him best, where do you think he might go?” he asked.
Forlorn and wandering the grounds in the last of the light, Arthur eventually found him latibulating in a half-forgotten corner of the castle gardens, a very high walled fox-proof area once used to keep chickens, though not in Arthur’s lifetime. It was somehow still known as the chicken yard. The man had his back turned sitting on the stone edges of one of the flowerbeds. Arthur stepped cautiously forward.
“I’m not some hart you’re hunting, Arthur,” he called, annoyed, not turning around. “You don’t have to sneak up on me.”
Arthur huffed and came forward Merlin had a very closed off expression upon his face, only barely looking at him.
“Can I?” he asked carefully, indicating the space beside him.
“S’your castle,” the other answered off-handedly.
He sat down beside him, being sure to give him at least a little bit of room. They didn’t speak immediately. Arthur trailed his eye over the ivy covered walls and the bindweed that had entirely taken over one of the beds, choking only itself. “Would you prefer to be alone?” he asked eventually.
“Yes,” Merlin said quietly, looking down at his feet, his boots empty beside them, and Arthur started to shift away, but a hand was tugging at his tunic to make him stay. “Wait, no.”
The king sighed, raising his eyes to the pink sky framed by the garden walls, and softened.
“I’m sorry.”
“I don’t see why you need be,” he said sincerely, feeling suddenly stupid at the intensity of his panic earlier, Merlin was perfectly entitled to be alone, to escape should he wish.
The wildman only grumbled in response.
Finding a break in the silence Arthur finally voiced something he’d been considering for the past few weeks. “Maybe you should leave Camelot.”
When Merlin turned to him utterly stricken, Arthur realised immediately the verbal blunder he had made and his hands flew out to correct his mistake, pulling him in and cradling his head as if from further misunderstandings. “That’s not what I meant,” he told him, his nose in his very overgrown hair. “I want nothing more than to be by your side and for you to be by mine in turn.”
Merlin snorted into his chest. “That’s usually what by your side means, Arth-”
“Shut up, Merlin… Look, I know it’s been… a challenging transition and you have people you want to see, or find. Would you consider it? Travelling for a little while?”
He sat up, untangling himself, and was silent for a while as he considered. Then he bumped Arthur’s side relentingly. “What a prat, being by your side in turn, can’t be one way.”
“I think you’re forgetting, oh great and powerful warlock, that you managed to do just that,” he reminded him, tapping the sheathed Excalibur by his side and kissing the other man’s brow at the same time.
“Oh, I did, didn’t I?”
“What do you say, then?” the king posed again.
“About being alone or travelling?”
“Both.”
“I just need a few more hours here… I’ll think about the other thing.”
He gripped his thigh affectionately before rising. “Take however long you need.”
“I was planning to,” the other muttered, still a little testy.
Arthur smiled and left, heart full.
It was late when Merlin returned to bed, smelling of earth. Arthur slid towards him slowly, and he grumbled as he settled at his back. Having enough of this mood he wrapped his arms entirely around him, snaking one under the curve of his neck and pulling him close. In the dark Arthur found his ear and nibbled it playfully and was quietly triumphant when he heard a yielding huff and felt the tension leave the other man’s body. He pressed a few kisses onto the nobbley bones of his spine right up to his neck, Merlin’s hair tickling his nose when he breathed in. He pushed lightly down on his shoulder and Merlin went to his back. Slipping his arm out from underneath him, he moved over him and kissed his lips once, slowly, and then he was travelling down again, to his chest, his stomach… Only for Merlin to flip them and for Arthur to learn that Merlin’s recent vigour in his day to day life extended to the bedroom.
***
Sir Leon was newly returned to his full duties and not a little testy. All was in disarray and getting things back in order had already taken months, and would take many months more. But it was the shift in energy, the contrast between the chaos and the light mood that had followed Merlin’s return that seemed to give him the biggest headache. It wasn’t that he loathed to see the king and his knights happy, not at all – he simply couldn’t muster the energy right now to match theirs. That was why Sir Elyan, who was bouncing on his heels and practically off the walls, was irritating him so.
“You all really need to see this,” Elyan said again, unrelenting in his attempts to convince them to delay their post-training meal in favour of a trip to the castle gardens.
“Calm down. Since when have you been interested in plants?” Sir Leon groaned.
“You’ll come with me, Lance,” he stated rather than asked of his brother-in-law, who was removing his armour close by.
Lancelot set his mouth in a line and shrugged, rolling his eyes, knowing he didn’t really have a choice in the matter.
“If Sir Lancelot is going, I’m going,” Mordred said, stepping forward in his everyday garb, the removal of his armour having been assisted by magic.
“Oh, but when I ask you it’s just a straight no,” Elyan remarked, annoyed.
The youth shrugged much like Lancelot had, a poorly suppressed smile on his face.
“Oh come on!”
Leon shushed Elyan, trying to get out of his armour faster so he could leave, he found himself contemplating whether he should enlist Mordred to help him.
With Merlin temporarily gone, the knights had all been braced for a change in the king’s mood. They weren’t expecting fits of anger and cruelty that might have been expected in Uther’s time, but perhaps a return to the tense, quiet days of the last six years. But Arthur was as light and airy as ever and Leon was grateful to see something of the competitive and energetic young man the king he had once been. The only thing that seemed to change with Merlin’s departure was his routine, every day, Arthur found the time to go alone to the castle gardens. Elyan suspected there was something there worth seeing, and that something had to do with Merlin.
“Sir Leon, are you sure you wouldn’t like to take a look too?” Mordred said, craning into the doorway and into his thoughts as he left with the small group.
“Fine,” the Head Knight relented.
“So when Mordred asks-!” Elyan continued his complaints.
Leon heard the exclamations of his fellow knights before he turned the corner to the chicken yard.
“What’s-?” He started to ask but he went silent when he reached the gate.
When last he saw the yard it had been full of leggy plants struggling in the shade and under the bindweed. Now, the stone walled yard was positively verdant with life, opening onto a meadow of tufted vetch, tall tansy and soft beds of wild carrot, bisected by a short path of clover, its edges yellow with birdsfoot trefoil. He followed his knights down the path, a pack of men treading carefully and appreciating everything with open awe. By the pond (he couldn’t remember there being a pond before) there was yellow vetchling and meadowsweet, and the song of an unseen frog somewhere in the vicinity. Continuing, taking the curving path behind a willow, they came upon an area reserved for medicinal plants: ribwort plantain, henbrane, yarrow, coltsfoot, self-heal, woundwort and plenty more, spilling from the stone flower beds.
“So, are you glad you came?” Elyan asked, looking specifically between Lancelot and Leon, highly pleased with himself.
Lancelot clapped him on the back as he watched the quick progress of a dragonfly, its metallic body catching the sun, speechless.
Off to the side, Percival was trailing his hand through the tufted vetch, loosing some red and blue butterflies into the air. “Merlin did all of this?” he asked, though he needn’t have, no one else could have done this.
Mordred was smiling knowingly, he opened his mouth to answer.
But just at that moment a small shape came at them through the willow branches and before they could react a blackbird had landed on Leon’s shoulder with a loud peep and a bounce of its tail.
“Um, hello,” he said to the bird cautiously, head turned and body stiff.
Aodhán scrutinised the knight with one of his very dark little eyes and warbled at him.
The Bearded Stranger
The alewife was whipping tankards at the cold hearth when Merlin entered the alehouse in a dingy hamlet, made all the dingier by the rain. The alehouse had been purpose built, a rarity, and the broom above the door had indicated that it was currently open to the public despite the early hour. This was a place that would look a great deal better in the dark, the floor and tables had lost their varnish where they were worn, and the punters looked decidedly pale and blotchy, or were otherwise dosing where they sat. The smell wasn’t too great either.
Merlin shook some of the rain from his clothes at the door before approaching her. There were pots and pans hanging all about her head seemingly from the shadows of the low rafters. He glanced into the corners of the place and saw the man he was looking for, head in his arms asleep on a table in the corner. She only gave Merlin a passing glance when he came to a stop before her. He cleared his throat awkwardly and held up two fingers, indictating himself and the other man. “Ale, one for me and one for him.”
“Oh?” She turned and raised an eyebrow, hanging the tankard in her hands on a hook, suddenly interested. She took the coin he offered from the bag of coin Arthur had given him and she filled two tankards from a keg off to the side. “It’s trouble you’re looking for, I see.”
“Yeah,” Merlin agreed but he couldn’t help the smile on his face. “He’s an old friend.”
“I’m sure,” she said slowly but she looked very much like she wanted to see how this would play out.
She went to the table and slammed the vessels down loudly, ale sloshing over the sides. The sleeping man woke with a start, taking in the alewife and then the drinks on the table blearily. “From the man back there with the black hair and the ugh… ears,” she informed him, pointing a thumb back in Merlin’s direction.
“What?” he croaked, peeking through his hands as he kneaded his eyes and yawned.
Merlin walked forward as she peeled away.
The man stumbled out of his seat at once, seeming to grip the table for support before meeting him in the middle. He held out his hands and looked him up and down, incredulous. “Merlin, you bastard!!”
“Hi Gwaine,” Merlin grinned fondly.
Gwaine’s hands were moving more than his mouth, gesturing at him and running them through his own hair as he paced and tried to gather his thoughts. “I-? Merlin-?! Where were-? How-?!”
“Great questions, and I’ll answer all of them.”
“I- God… You know, I’m just going to-!” and with that he hugged him fiercely, rocking him a little. “I spent a long time looking for you, you know.”
“I know,” Merlin said, tearful.
“You know, we’re going to need a hell of a lot more ale,” he said into his ear.
“Yeah, yeah we will,” Merlin chuckled into his shoulder.
They tore away from each other and sat down. Merlin’s chair was a little sticky.
Gwaine still looked a little stunned as he raised his ale. “To you!”
“To… Alright,” Merlin ceded, laughing. “To me.”
They drank deeply.
Gwaine slammed down his drink and then leaned back to breathe, he took in his friend for a moment and then said, still gesturing and shaking his head. “I-I’m liking the beard,” with a weird inflection on the word beard.
“Oh?”
“Yeah… Didn’t think you could grow one, if I’m being honest.”
If Gwaine spilled some of his drink down his front when he next took a sip it definitely was his own drunkenness and not Merlin’s magic.
They were kicked out for their rowdiness by the late afternoon and decided to see if the local tavern would have them. They wouldn’t until Merlin produced his hefty bag of coin.
“That would be Arthur’s coin then?” Gwaine eyed it on their way inside, no doubt noting the unmistakable red of it as they stepped down into the vaulted space. It was preferable to looking at all of the judgemental faces that were turned their way, their scruffiness and clear drunken state setting them apart from this particular crowd.
Merlin cocked his head at him, his eyes narrowed and he grinned. “So what if it is?”
Gwaine mirrored his look before turning to the man behind the bar, “grape wine, your finest.”
“Hey!” Merlin protested though he was already sitting down with him.
But his friend was suddenly quiet, he put his elbows on the table, rubbed the back of his neck.
Merlin waited.
“If you ask me to, Merls, I’ll stop hating him, but I’d do it for you.”
A pair of glasses were put on the table by a quickly retreating serving boy.
“You can hate him, if you want to, I wouldn’t stop you. I know he can be an arse-”
Gwaine gave an exaggerated nod of agreement, reaching for the wine and taking a few gulps.
Merlin huffed. “But there’s people who miss you, if you could do it for them-”
“I said I’d do it for you, ” he pointed at him before sitting back, pausing. “Y’love’im, don’t ya?”
“With all that I am,” he supplied emphatically, deciding to speak from the heart.
Gwaine choked a little, hammered on his own chest with his fist and recovered. “Hgh! You know… Only you could get away with saying something like that.”
He shrugged, drank a little.
“I’m sure it’s true though,” Gwaine continued, looking more sober than he ought to be. “And I’m sure all that you are is a lot more than meets the eye.”
He looked him in the eye wearily, yes, there is.
“You’ll be there?” his friend asked suddenly, before the conversation could turn to Merlin and all the things he was.
Merlin perked up, happy to be rescued from the inevitable divulging of all of his secrets. “I said there’s people who miss you there didn’t I? I’ll be travelling for a little while longer, but I will be.”
“You make it sound like you’re the only one.”
He laughed into his drink.
Gwaine kicked him a little under the table and it was Merlin’s turn to spill drink down his front.
They spend two nights in the local inn on account of needing an entire day to nurse their hangovers.
***
Gwaine leant in close, passing his eyes over Merlin’s face, and then following that up with the brush of his fingers over his bearded cheek. Their eyes met and he grinned. Satisfied, Gwaine put down the razor and leaned back to admire his handiwork. “I’d say that’s done. What do you think?”
“Trust the well-groomed to do a good job,” Merlin said, touching the side of his face, noting the even cut of his beard.
“Well-groomed?” Gwaine drew back in mock offence. “This is all natural, rugged beauty I’ll have you know.”
“Thanks all the same, Gwaine.”
“Have to be looking your best,” he winked.
“Yeah,” Merlin blushed, looking at the floorboards of their room at the inn. This was their last morning here.
“Nervous?”
“Plenty.”
“I guess I’ll be seeing you in Camelot,” Gwaine rocked casually back in his chair.
“I guess you will.”
“Don’t hurry back, alright? I’m a big boy, I can look after myself. I’m looking forward to seeing the look on the princess’ face… Though I guess he’s a queen now?”
Merlin laughed, pure joy crinkling his eyes.
***
“It can’t be!” Hunith cried, her voice already cracking, rapidly cleaning her hands on her apron in a gesture of nervousness that was just so beautifully familiar as she stumbled to him across the cottage threshold and immediately enfolded him. “Merlin! Merlin, my baby, my boy!! I missed you!”
She tugged at him and he bent so she could plant a shaky kiss on his forehead, her hand in his hair.
“Missed you too,” he said wetly.
Revel Revel
Merlin had spent over a month in Ealdor when his message arrived in Camelot, passed on from the permanent guards that were posted there as they had agreed. Arthur took a few days to tie up his affairs and coax a long-suffering Leon to take care of things in his stead. He reminded himself to give the man those days off when he returned, deciding that his recovery period shouldn’t count and that it was long long overdue.
It was late on the evening of the equinox when he arrived at the village. His retinue turned around on arrival, leaving him to enjoy this time alone. Despite the hour there was still some light left in the day, and light again from the moon that rose yellow over the land. He found that the villagers were in the midst of a gathering in the short-shorn wheat field. Everyone was so rapt that they did not notice their new king joining them. It was not the moon that they were looking at, settling behind them he could see that they surrounded a kneeling figure, he craned and spied a head of dark curls and long fingers working at some wheat.
He watched as a hand sickle like a crescent moon was passed through the crowd to the person in the centre, and like a voyeur of mundane things he witnessed Merlin hold the braided sheaf, a thing that looked like a small broom secured by red threads, and cut it. He must have used magic, Arthur realised, to have made it before the wheat was cut. He stood and when he held it aloft everyone erupted into cheers, jostled and hugged him. He smiled from ear to stupid ear, accepting their boisterousness with grace.
The grain harvest was over and it was time to make merry.
Arthur was smiling too, being swept up in the small crowd that for some reason was shouting “a neck, a neck! We got one!” when he heard someone clearing their throat politely by his side. He turned to see Hunith whose eyes went wide when he met hers, as though she hadn’t been quite sure if it was him or not until she was.
“King Arthur!” She bowed hurriedly, though no one else had noticed, too occupied with carrying her son off in the direction of the animal shed that had been cleaned and set up for the feast. She worried at her apron, feet going one way while her head went the other before she seemed to make a decision and she flew towards the others, hands out and calling for Merlin.
He saw her push through and then the crowd reversed direction. For a second Arthur worried that his presence would change the tone of the occasion but there were only small bows directed his way as they parted, all manoeuvres barely breaking their happy jostling, their joy too great to be overridden by formality. Arthur didn’t think the man’s smile could get any wider until their eyes met. He ran forward, a train of villagers behind him, and all but tackled the king to the cheers of the onlookers.
Ealdor had traditions, some were borrowed from here or there and some were entirely its own invention, but Arthur understood it had been this way for many many years. Throughout Merlin’s lifetime, throughout Hunith’s and the generations before them, the last sheaf was braided, symbolically drowned then hung in a barn that was cleared and decorated for drinking, feasting and dancing. Arthur had thought it was known as Harvest Home, but these people seemed to call their particular tradition Ingathering.
That sheaf was now pinned to the wooden wall of the shed, dripping water, as the merriment proceeded below it. Arthur was offered a seat at the feast table in no particular position of importance, only that he was between Merlin and a few toothed old woman who sometimes patted him on the arm when her laughs overtook her, which was all he could have asked for. Hands passed dishes up and down the line of mismatched tables, ale and sloe gin were copious and flowing in volumes rivalling any occasion in the castle. Toasts were said to the harvest, to Merlin, to the gods of the season, to Arthur, to some specific neighbours for their contributions, to the few toothed woman, to the various departed, to Hunith, to a mild winter to come, to Merlin again and to a particularly beloved dog, a dog that was just now making an obstacle course of their legs, going from stranger to stranger and hoping for scraps.
Up and down the tables, Arthur noted there were some plates heaped with food but with no reveller attached to them, one of which was directly across from Merlin. The mystery was soon solved when the jug of sloe gin had yet again reached them. Merlin rose from his seat and, pouring the alcohol into the empty cup across from him, he said, “there you go, Will, drink up.” When he sat back down he was smiling, his eyes just a little wet. Arthur decided to smile too, and they both raised their cups in cheers with Merlin’s brave departed friend. Other cups raised with theirs, Hunith’s on Merlin’s right and the people across from them who Arthur noticed bore a resemblance to the dear man.
Once they had time to digest they cleared the tables to the edges and the dancing commenced. Women far outnumbered the men here so the gender divides that some of the dances called for were abandoned in favour of fun. Arthur, always a quick learner, of course took to every new jig like a duck to water. Merlin danced exactly as he expected him to, he was gawky and he forgot his steps, laughing at himself whenever he went wrong, which was often. The king both watched and became a part of the waving and whirling, though he found himself always trying to catch sight of a certain someone or better yet, inveigle and worm his way about so they could be partners briefly before the dance dictated they peeled off. He remembered Merlin’s words, his swimming eyes, telling him that in the next life he would dance before returning to him, he decided if the immortal man he loved couldn’t be his dance partner in that next life, he should be so now.
The dancing soon devolved into pure drunkenness, singing had turned to shouting and the instruments had been long grabbed by the amateurs. Sitting back and catching his breath for a moment Arthur watched, an easy smile on his lips. Merlin was the most human of anyone he had ever met, immortality and light feet be damned, because here he was, buoyed up on the shoulders of his neighbours, pink-faced and laughing hard through some local song. When he noticed Arthur looking and they grinned at each other across the straw strewn shed, all he could see was joy, all he could feel was joy.
As the night wound down, couples had begun breaking off, whispering to each other before disappearing. Just when Arthur was thinking that he wished to do the same, a dance-bedraggled Merlin appeared before him with dark mischief in his eyes and a half-formed excuse to his neighbours about the king being tired from his travels. They fled together into the bright night of the equinox moon, music and voices behind them.
Of Parents and Sons
Arthur stayed in Ealdor for just under a week. On the last night Arthur and Merlin were fixing the pig pen in the last of the purple autumn light when Hunith called for one of them to help with dinner. They both made to stand up.
“You finish up here,” Merlin bid him, transferring a few iron nails from his palm to Arthur’s and unburdening himself of the piglet that had been in his lap, rising. “It’ll be good for you.”
“I’ve made no secret of enjoying the pleasures of the simple life,” he said haughtily, though he flashed him a side smirk.
The other man released a stream of air from his nose at that. “Come in when you’re done, you donkey,” he shook his head at him. Then he uttered a quick spell to rid himself of mud and was gone.
When he was done Arthur did as instructed, though not before he stood in the doorway for a moment to smile at the mother and son working at the hearth, with their easy postures and their soft talk back and forth.
They settled in for their final evening meal together.
Hunith made them sit and tuck straight in as she dished up. She skirted the table behind them with a pot, a wooden spoon inside it, humming with satisfaction that they did as they were told. She placed her hand on her son’s head, tussling his curls a little, when last he had worn it this long he had been a boy. Then, as though it was the most natural thing in the world, and with the same measurement of motherly love to the very ounce, she did the same to Arthur’s head. They both froze, Hunith’s hand still in his blonde hair, then Arthur’s spoon slipped from his fingers when Hunith yelped and snatched her hand away.
“Forgive me, sire!” she cried, hands wiping on her apron again as she hurriedly bowed. “I forgot myself for a moment!”
“No, please,” he said, equally as hurriedly, rising from his seat with placating hands as she retreated. “It’s perfectly alright. I’m not offended. Quite the opposite, I’d rather you didn’t think of me as a king here.”
“I couldn’t possibly do that, sire, what with the border change and-! Please, would you accept my apology?”
“Mum,” Merlin said from the table behind him, humour and affection making his voice soft. “It’s alright.”
“Oh, quiet you,” she shushed him before looking again at Arthur in a vague panic, who said nothing in response, only bowing his head a little and smiling before returning to his seat. Hunith took a few moments to do the same, giving a ragged smile as she sat across from them.
Offering his assistance with the washing up later, Arthur found himself alone with Hunith, Merlin was outside scattering scraps for the pigs and no doubt having a deep meaningful conversation with them. The two were side by side, Arthur’s hands in a basin of water upon the table, and Hunith drying the tableware with a cloth.
“I was hoping I could speak with you,” Arthur said to her, voice low.
Her eyes narrowed as they met his. “You are in my home and we are speaking, are we not?”
An involuntary lopsided grin spread across his face, so the sass was inherited. “It’s something of importance to me I wish to ask.”
She furrowed her brow and stopped her drying, putting down a bowl. “Please, go ahead.”
“It’s no secret I care for Merlin very much... I’m not whole without him. I know in my heart that we are together for life. That life we have together need not have a name, but I feel it deserves one,” he tried to gauge her reaction to this, but her eyes were scanning him like she was reading, trying to understand. He turned to her fully, dipping his head in respect. “That is to say, I wish to call him husband and for him to call me the same; I mean to ask your son for his hand in marriage.”
“I’ll have you know my son is no blushing girl,” she said quickly, her voice suddenly stern, she looked away and leaned on the surface before her like she was catching her breath.
Arthur’s heart stuttered, feeling a rejection looming. He wished to tell her everything in a rush, to explain himself to the fullest, but to his surprise his voice came out measured and sincere, saying all he needed it to say. “I know that, he is a man and your son. There’s no tradition to ask for a blessing like this for marriage between two men, but all the same I’m asking. With time he may have asked me too, it might have looked a lot different, some ritual out in the woods no doubt, and I have no parents to give their permission. Would you grant me yours?”
“It’s the father you ordinarily ask, you know,” she said a little sadly.
“None of this is particularly ordinary, of that I’m aware,” he said. “I also intend to visit Balinor’s place of rest before I ask him.”
She startled at that. “You really care for him that much?” she asked, examining him sidelong. Hands worrying at her apron again as she had done many times that day, that week.
“No,” he answered, surprising her yet again. “I cannot put into words or actions just how much I do.”
Hunith was very quiet and stopped all motion to look directly into Arthur’s eyes. She looked tired, the years of worrying about her missing son suddenly plain on her face. Her first concern, Arthur realised, would be for her son’s welfare and happiness, but there was warmth in her expression too. He felt acutely as though he were presenting his unguarded heart for her scrutiny, and he decided he should let her see it, turn it over in her work worn hands.
“He’s a good man,” she said then after some time, turning to face him fully, “he deserves nothing less than to be loved for all that he is.”
Arthur heard the implication in her words. “All that he is, I will love him, do love him.”
“Promise m- No, swear to me.”
“I will, on my own life.”
She blushed a little at that, maybe not expecting him to go just that far. She paused again. “I worry for the life he will have, but I know my boy, and I know he will be by your side regardless of my answer tonight,” she sighed a little, a letting valve to their shared tension. “You have my permission, Arthur Pendragon, so long as-”
“Anything,” he said readily, meaning it.
Her smile curled, the resemblance between mother and son was easy to see in that smile. “So long as you will grant me permission to call you son as well.”
Arthur choked on nothing.
Just at that moment, Merlin came in the door, bucket swinging as he sang tunelessly. Stopping, he looked up at them in askance, clearly sensing he had interrupted something.
Arthur cleared his throat loudly. “Ha-ugh , h-here, let me finish this for you.”
Hunith thanked him and peeled away from the basin.
They met eyes again across the room and Arthur bobbed his head yes a few times very gently so Merlin couldn’t see. Her eyes were twinkling as she turned her head to hide her smile.
“What was that about then?” Merlin whispered to him in the dark later when they had all settled down for the night.
“Mm?” Arthur played dumb, making a point to readjust himself casually on the pillow they shared.
“Earlier, after dinner.”
“Oh that. I like your mother very much,” he said by way of deflection, but every word of it was the truth. He managed to find Merlin’s nose and flick it playfully. “You’re very lucky to have her.”
“Well she’s mine. Don’t let those head pats she gave you go to your head… Cabbage head,” he teased, poking him in the ribs in revenge.
“I’ll try,” Arthur lied, glad it was dark because he was grinning like the cabbage head he surely was, thinking of a day in the future when Hunith could do as he had granted and call him son too.
Hunith clung to Merlin tearfully before they parted, Merlin leaning down again so she could put her arms around his shoulders, “I’ll be back soon, I promise,” he gasped, sounding strained as she no doubt squeezed the immortal life half-out of him.
“You better be, come back to see the Mari Lwyd at least ,” she said, pulling away, then her eyes flicked to the king, who was standing just a step behind. “It’s your job to be sure he visits his mother.”
“Mum, you can’t order hi-!”
“Of course, my lady,” Arthur bowed, and with that he took her hand and kissed it.
“You made her feel very special back there,” Merlin said to him when they were a ways down the forest path, riding toward Camelot.
“She is very special.” Arthur corrected.
Merlin tilted his head at him, bewildered. “And what on Earth did you say to her to make her comfortable ordering you around like that?”
“You heard me, I asked her not to treat me like a king.”
“It had to have been more than that.”
“Sounds like she doesn’t care too much about class and rank, like someone else I know.”
Merlin started to protest when Arthur interrupted him.
“I’d like to take a detour, but only with your permission. I’ll understand if you would rather I didn’t, or would prefer to go alone.”
“I don’t understand, where do you want to go?”
“I would like the chance to apologise to someone, and to you. When your father died, I was cold, thinking only of Camelot, I berated you for crying. I would like to visit his resting place.”
“You’d-? Arthur…” Merlin trailed off, bringing his mare to a stop.
“Will you allow me this?”
“Yes,” he agreed tearfully.
“What’s the Mari Lwyd anyway?” Arthur asked a little later when he felt the need to break the silence.
“Horses’ skull tied up with ribbons and a cloth and paraded through the village.”
“Ah, yes. Sounds... delightful,” he lied, crunching up his face. These bumpkins and their bumpkinery.
***
The stones were as they had left them all those years ago. Still, Merlin tended to them, repositioning anything that felt loose and placing flowers in the gaps, the very last of the woundwart, harebell and tufted vetch so that the grave quickly looked wild with blues, pinks and purples. He handed some to Arthur who respectfully did the same, working at what would be the man’s feet.
Arthur understood now that Balinor had saved his life in his secluded cave. Had he known back then, he, young and stupid as he had been, might have met the favour with his sword. Instead he had met it, unknowingly, with coldness and disdain, and been heedless of Merlin’s grief to top it off. When the man died, Arthur realised, they had both very much been their fathers’ sons.
He felt undeserving to be by his grave like this, even more undeserving to dare to wish his son could be his. He started to falter in his quest, his heart sinking.
At the head of the grave Merlin was moving the largest stone so that its flat side was showing. He started to speak his strange words softly, his hand over the rock. When he took it away the constellation of the Dragon was carved deep into the stone, deep enough to weather the ages.
Before Arthur could give him privacy, Merlin was speaking. “Father, I wish I had known you, anything you could have taught me about our people died with you. And before you ask, Kilgharrah’s really a very poor teacher… I would have said that your line ends with me, but it won’t, it looks like I’ll be knocking around a long time... Kilgharrah grows old and he’s told me he’s not long for this world… When I can I promise I’ll reunite with Aithusa, who I hatched and named, and we can be the last of our kind together.”
Arthur tentatively put his hand on his arm as his tears started to fall. They rose together.
“Thank you, Arthur,” he mumbled into his skin, leaning into him and holding his hand.
“May I?” Arthur asked, and Merlin nodded against his temple. He went forward, the other didn’t let go of him, squeezing his hand encouragingly instead. He squared himself and bowed respectfully.
“Sir, you are long owed an apology, an apology for my behaviour... and for the atrocities committed by my father. I am sorry, you and your people were peaceful and didn’t deserve the treatment you suffered. Words aren’t enough, and though nothing I could ever do could hope to be enough either I will try to atone through my deeds. Your son is by my side, as undeserving as I am to have him, he’ll help me bring about the peace the land has long awaited. I’ll try to do this in your name and in the name of all the others that were lost.”
“You’re not undeserving, Arthur,” Merlin said, distressed, holding on to him like he expected him to try to flee.
And Arthur relented. They wrapped their arms around each other’s backs as they stood at the graveside. Merlin put his head upon his shoulder.
This question had to be silent, but he asked it anyway, because Merlin told him he was deserving and he trusted him, and always had. I have come to love your son and I vow to keep loving him for all that he is. Would you grant me permission to be one with him for the rest of my life, and again in the other lives that are destined for me?
The wind rifled the wildflower petals.
Two Halves of the Same Coin
It was as though the autumn had suddenly taken a hold of the land when they reached the familiar woods around Camelot. The leaves had grown dry and orange, the clouds were blue grey with coming rain and they had to wrap themselves against the cold. They were taking their last rest before the final leg to the castle and had chosen the spot specifically for its view of home, the castle walls glittering in the shifting sunbeams that fell over it in the distance. There was the smell of wet stone that came to them on the breeze; the rain had fallen there first, it seemed, and would soon be upon them.
They gazed at it, sitting together on a high stone. Merlin, highly sensitive to the cold and to the change of season, had started to shiver not long ago but Arthur had brought him close, draped his cape over him like a blanket and promised in sweet whispers to keep him warm until the spring. Then Merlin turned to face Arthur. Confused, he gave him his full attention.
When he spoke his voice was high, soft and not a little shaky. “Before we get back, I have something I need to ask you. The druids have a ritual...”
He slipped off the rock. No, surely he wasn’t about to-?
“It makes two souls one. Well, not literally as far as I know, you know, symbolically one. Arthur-” he said, dropping to one knee on the forest floor, a stray leaf in his hair and Camelot as his backdrop.
Oh my God.
He held up a very thin coin, the heads of a coin from Camelot, to be exact, without a doubt cut perfectly in two with magic, rather than snapped in half as was usual. “Would you hopefully symbolically join your soul with mine? More than they’re already joined?”
“I…” Arthur panicked. His thoughts raced, he had to say something, he couldn’t stand that Merlin’s shaky smile was faltering as the seconds ticked by.
“If you don’t want-?”
“No, no, don’t misunderstand, it’s-”
Merlin was looking like his idiot heart was breaking.
“Yes, Merlin, yes! Yes!” he cried, jumping from his sitting spot, grabbing him by the neckerchief and bending to kiss him hard. “It’s just that-”
He fell to his knee too.
Merlin looked utterly dazed.
“Merlin, you already have my mother’s sigil and you already have my love in this life and in the next, and the next, but would you-?”
In answer Merlin surged forward to kiss him, unbalancing both of them in the process.
“Do you even have to ask?” he laughed as they tumbled together and Merlin’s hair collected yet more leaves, the Pendragon cape he wore tangling tightly around them both. When the rain reached them they were still lying upon the ground, bruised from kisses and love bites, and they didn’t care one bit.
***
They had two weddings.
The first was in the spring of the following year in Camelot. The hall had been so heavily garlanded with the many gifts of the season that Arthur was reminded unavoidably of the dream he had once, of the castle overtaken by the forest. Merlin had been radiant framed in the greens and yellows of the altar. Their friends and people of Camelot were utterly jubilant. He didn’t think he had ever smiled so much, if the deeply sore cheeks he had by that evening could be taken as proof.
The second ceremony was in the northerly reaches of the woods that had been, and to some extent still was, Merlin’s home. There was snow on the hills here and in patches upon the ground so they spent their travels and their time with the druids wrapped in blankets and furs. After the bonfires and the gathering of the mistletoe they were wed on the winter solstice and Arthur was finally adopted by the famed Gwendydd as her brother-in-law, her joy poorly hidden beneath her veneer of serenity. The cold air had been alive with the green, burnt, post-rain smell he’d come to associate with magic, magic that was reemerging to reign exuberant and free across the land.
They honeymooned in Merlin’s cottage to drink mead and consummate their long consummated but newly renewed union. Arthur kept Merlin warm through this, the harshest of seasons, as he had promised to for as long as he lived, and lived again, and again.
And they ruled together.
And they bickered.
And they fought side by side in the name of peace.
And they brought magic out of the shadows into the light.
And they loved each other.
Notes:
The title for the first story, the Noble Savage, is taken from the reductive latter day philosophy covered by Jean-Jacque Rousseau about the uncorrupted character of people who did not live the western lifestyle, i.e., indigenous people. It's a problematic standard that persists in various ways to this day. It's also very much a colonial mindset that defines the objectively terrible civilised vs savage dichotomy.
"The month of weeds" is the translation of how August was referred to in Brittonic, speaking to the sudden flourishing of everything and marking the building toward the harvest season proper.
Mowing is the act of cutting down produce in the fields by hand.
July is typically a very lean month in terms of availability of food. I'm suggesting here that on top of rebuilding, Camelot had to contend with this lean time just before the first story.
Artemisia absinthium is a medieval treatment for worms, as the story explains, if it sounds like absinthe you would be correct. There were other remedies or wormers that Gaius could have given Merlin but he went for a particularly strong one.
The chicken yard is borrowed from Slane Castle, Dublin, and my trip there in the spring. I sat there for quite a while on my own, very nice little space.
Latibulating is a disused Victorian word meaning to hide oneself in a corner. I love it and I'm determined to bring it back.
Alehouses were usually people's homes opened to the public so that excess ale could be sold and consumed, that there was ale and people could come in was usually indicated by a broom or something similar sticking out of the place. Sometimes alehouses were purpose built like the one in the story. An alewife was literally the woman of the house.
Taverns were a hold over from Roman Britain and sold wine (which included the likes of mead)
The title of the third story, Revel Revel, is taken from the Bowerbirds song of the same name, which I listened A LOT this year. "Didn't I want it bad enough" just hurts so good.
The harvest is happening a little late in Ealdor but the implication is that there aren't that many hands to complete the work.
The cutting of the last sheaf (usually corn or wheat) is a long held tradition in Britain and Ireland, as is Harvest Home or Ingathering. Like all folk tradition there is a lot of local variation and I've settled on a particular way that Ealdor celebrates this. Merlin and his neighbours might have alternatively thrown sickles or other cutting implements at the sheaf. In some places it was good or bad luck to cut it. The braiding could be done any number of ways, I made my own version here but it could also have been braided into a doll. The drowning of the doll or the sheaf was a symbolic sacrifice. Sometimes the sheaf was taken home rather than hung up in a public place. Stealing the sheaf was often stealing the luck of a household or community and in terms of magical thinking it had all sorts of uses.
It was common in Ireland to set a place at the table for the departed, it may have been common in Britain too but I'm not sure.
In some Irish traditions you could only serve alcohol clockwise, but more accurately moonwise, around the table, and never to yourself. Merlin is either inviting bad luck on himself by serving the departed Will across from him or Ealdor simply doesn't have this tradition. You can decide for yourself!
Two common ways to propose to your loved one were to give them a family sigil (Arthur ticked that box already) or by presenting a coin snapped in half. This was just so Arthur and Merlin. I wanted the coin Merlin gives Arthur to an exact half, giving him the heads while he has the tails, which tells you about the standard he still holds Arthur to, despite his wishing for them to be equals. I don't think the bended knee thing would have happened but I had them do it anyway.
The wedding scene in Camelot is taken from the scene in which Arthur marries Guinevere in Excalibur. QfC also ends in a wedding.
Outside sources about the druids in Britain talked about their bonfires and the harvesting of mistletoe, which was sacred.
Honeymoons originated from the practice of newlyweds going away to drink copious amounts of mead and consume honey together.
A huge thank you to Liviapéleia, who was brilliant and pointed out my typos, my favourite of which was "birdbird" instead of blackbird in this chapter. I left this note to immortalise that wonderful typo.
Small meme:
Gwaine: You've become Arthur's sugarbaby, haven't you?
Merlin: (*´ω｀*) Maybe
Chapter 29: True Ending - Now and Forever
Summary:
Arthur dies.
Merlin waits, though he doesn't do so alone.
Arthur comes back.
Notes:
Thank you all so much for reading this, thank you to my friends who listened to my ravings and thank you to those who left kudos, bookmarked and commented. This fic was my 2023, basically, and it was a wonderful time from start to finish. I learned so much and discovered some new passions and avenues for my own non-fic writing. Love of anything can really snowball and take you in the directions you never expected.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Chapter Text
“Stop your blubbering, Merlin… You know this isn’t the end.”
Arthur was as Merlin had seen him in his visions too many times over -in his armour, bloodied and beyond his powers of healing, magical or otherwise. They were close but still too far from the wide lake before them. A miserable and cold drizzle was wetting them. He had seen him do great things, no one had ever known an Albion like this, where magic flourished and peace reigned. But it seemed there could never be good without evil and the Once and Future King was soon to fall by his sister’s hand. While her legacy would die with her, Arthur’s, Merlin knew, would live on and on.
“And I know I’ll have to wait,” Merlin gasped.
“I’m sorry.”
Merlin continued to cry hard, shaking them both.
“Merlin, please… Just hold me.”
“I am holding you, clotpole,” he sniffed, pressing kisses into his hair where Arthur lay on him.
“Hold me tighter.”
He did as he asked, pulling him up, although he knew it must have hurt him, so he could kiss his cheek, the corner of his lips, lay his face against his and rock him gently. Merlin couldn't stand how cold he already was, he tried to will warmth and life back into his king, his husband, his soulmate. Nature bent for him, the future gave him its secrets willingly, he was immortal -why could he not save him?!
“I love you,” Arthur said, and gods it sounded so final, too much like goodbye.
“I love you too, Arthur, forever.”
***
Merlin, as he often did on his travels, heard the clatter of armour behind him. He rolled his eyes, so his pursuer had finally caught up.
“Knight errant,” he called after the sound, not turning around. “Must you trail after me?”
“That’s quest knight, and it is by your king’s orders, sir, you know that,” Lady Kay said chidingly as she stepped into his field of view. She took off her helmet, her short grey hair was plastered to her forehead with the sweat of the unseasonably warm day and her pursuit of him over the red-soiled land of the south-west and on through the moorland, where impressive collections of stones topped the hills. Whether they were put there by man, nature or giants Merlin was not sure.
“What if I’d rather be left alone?” he asked, striking his staff on the stone as he started walking again.
“And leave you to your ruminating? I think not,” and oh, Merlin could hear the voices of the people who trained her, Leon’s, Gwen’s, Lancelot’s, Arthur’s, in hers. “And besides, I’m on the lookout for a worthy squire, I’m sure that you will lead me to them. I grow old and tired and someone must be ready to replace me as the thorn in your side, when the time comes.”
“You’re not that old,” Merlin said, but even as he said those words he knew that she must be. Lancelot had held the position before her, followed by Mordred (though Mordred lived, and had rejoined his people as envoy of Camelot). Gwaine had intermittently accompanied him too and even now he chuckled fondly thinking of it, those particular days had been wonderfully disastrous and had reminded him so much of days passed.
“Not all of us have stayed young,” she said simply. “Now, tell me of our quest.”
“Our quest?”
The look on her face told him there would be no argument. She was undaunted both by the strange white silhouette that flew ahead of them in the sky and by the phantom music on the Samhain wind, sometimes lively and sometimes mournful.
“Fine. We seek a powerful and sacred object-”
Merlin had imagined his waiting would be a solitary affair, that he would be swallowed by the self-pity and terror and desolation of it all, but in his visions he often had someone by his side, something familiar in all of them as they passed skill, loyalty and not a little bit of their fondness for teasing him, just to torment him, from one to the next. And he loved them, as he had loved the people who came before them. The world was full of Arthur’s legacy after all, of good people fighting for good and he tried to take heart in it, tried to see it as a sign that his love had succeeded in his destiny, as the ages passed.
***
It was the day before the winter solstice, the year was 2012, and Merlin, who at that moment was a blackbird sitting atop a hazel, had a vision. The figures of three women, their hands clasped together, were far out upon a boat on the Lake of Avalon, the image wavering like a mirage. Before them, a man was laid out as though in repose. Even from a distance Merlin could see the pale gold of his hair rivalled the true gold of his crown, he was in full armour, a pauldron flashing in the winter sun and the sweep of his cloak, that unmistakable Camelot red, arrayed upon the plinth below him. He held a sword of great power at his chest, one that had existed as firmly in legend as it had within these waters and in his worthy hands. The whole scene should have been funerary, especially with the man’s eyes shut and his skin so strangely marble pale, but it was not. King Arthur was returning.
In his esplumoir, his home of five trees, he transformed, shedding all of the things he had become, and became himself once more. Merlin did not know what calamity was calling his love back- he tried to call it into his crystals but it had eluded him. He tried to divine it in the stars that night, the stars he had seen for so long that he had witnessed for himself the higher cycles of the Earth his not-sister Gwendydd had spoken of, but they too did not have answers for him. For the first time in a very long time he was toeing the line between the known and unknown, his old life and his new, and this time he felt nothing but excitement.
He packed two bags, still his king’s servant before all else, and began walking.
He arrived on the shore and took some steadying breaths. The morning was grey and tauntingly average. He waited, standing all the while, until it became a grey afternoon. There was no sign of Arthur, just the wind on the water. He had waited so long, so long- he wasn’t willing to wait any longer. If he wasn’t returned to him today Merlin resolved to split the isle and its tower in two and rain lightning and terror down upon those who kept him. His face however, aged as it was, was placid and showed none of this. Merlin had been allowing himself to age over and over, playing the life of one mortal after the next when he wasn’t in the shape of an animal. He could shed this aged visage at any moment, but his reasons for keeping it were two-fold, first, to soften the shock for Arthur that time had passed and secondly, and more crucially, to annoy him.
There was a ripple, a silvery fish breaking the surface maybe? He waited, it did not come again.
Occupied with his silent declarations of all-out war against the isle, he almost missed the first splash. Before he knew what was happening he was running toward the blonde headed man bobbing and gasping in the water, abandoning the bags on the rocks as he went. Giving up on his silly plans he grew younger the closer he got, until he looked just the same as the day he had died. He stumbled and caught himself a few times before he too was splashing through the water, choosing to forget he could part it now with just a thought. Arthur had said once that he found his clumsiness reassuring and Merlin would be clumsy for all eternity if he needed to be. He reached, he reached and then his hands were on him, on the cold wet metal of his armour, feeling the strength of the heart beating beneath it all. He was real, he had returned. They dragged each other out of the water gracelessly, not sure if they were laughing or crying.
They fell to their knees painfully on the stone, heavy with lake water. His strange odyssey come to an end, Arthur had returned to the shores of Ithaca, of Albion, into loving, waiting arms. Although in all of their tearful, desperate clutching and kissing Merlin wasn’t sure who was holding who.
When the world did not crash down around their ears immediately as they had expected, Merlin decided they should wait it out in the only worthy place he knew, and returned with Arthur to the woods. Over the many years, Merlin had kept his grove from the influence of man, a pocket of peace in a changing world. Arthur had almost fallen to his knees all over again at the sight of the cottage, the trees so ancient now that the walls of the place had thickened and the canopy had grown impressively wide.
In the dark later, tired, tangled with each other, foreheads together, they talked to the familiar accompaniment of singing insects.
“So Camelot is lost to time,” Arthur whispered, “and Albion is transformed beyond all recognition.”
“Not gone, remembered,” Merlin corrected just as quietly. “The very meaning of legend. Even your line of knights went on into the last century. Thorns in my side, every one of them.” But it sounded like I loved them, each and every one.
“Good,” Arthur said, chuckling, his hand in his hair as he kissed his brow, then one of his closed eyes lovingly. He never wished to let him stand alone. He paused, and Merlin knew he was thinking with reverence about the glittering thing they had left so far behind them, because he was too. “It was glorious though, while we had it.”
“That fair time may come again,” Merlin said wistfully, he couldn’t take credit for the words, but Arthur didn’t have to know that.
“It will,” Arthur said decisively.
If on my lonely journey
I were to search the mountains of the dark Earth
I would rather have a room for a single hut.
Bhuile Shuibhne Section 25, Translator Unknown
Notes:
It was thought to be dangerous to go out on Samhain, the time between the night of the 31st of October and the 1st of November, this was when the veil to the other world was very thin and trouble could befall you at the hands of supernatural beings. That it's the day when Kay and Merlin are travelling suggests it's the first of November. If you hear hauntingly beautiful music on the wind or coming from the hills, don't investigate! Kay is clearly aware of the danger, not being led away by it. I figured a knight who understands magic, but who passes down teaching from Arthur and Merlin's friends would be the perfect companion. I do have a small, partially written story already about Merlin's knights though the ages - not sure if or when I'll publish this but it's been fun to occasionally add to it, I would have actually started it around two months before I finished the fic.
The line about the "self-pity and terror and desolation of it all" is lifted from the 1998 Merlin TV mini-series. That series was janky as all hell, it was likely the second Arthurian themed media I ever consumed and I loved it.
The scene of the three women touching hands over a prone Arthur comes from Excalibur, a beautiful scene. This references the three queens who were also present at the death of Arthur in Le Morte D'Arthur, where his body was "led away in a ship, wherein were three queens; the one was King Arthur's sister, Queen Morgane le Fay; the other was Viviane, the Lady of the Lake; and the third was the queen of North Galis." This also seems like a lovely visual representation of the Triple-Goddess in the Merlin, the neo-pagan maiden, mother and crone.
"Just the wind on the water" is the lie Percival delivers to the dying Arthur in both Le Morte d'Arthur and Excalibur. Arthur asked him to throw Excalibur in so that it may be taken by the lady in the lake, but Percival was reluctant to do it. Arthur knew he was lying and asks him to do it again, when he does, a hand comes out to catch the sword and sword and hand disappear slowly back into the water. So so iconic.
Arthur coming out of what water was so like the Odyssey, I couldn't resist crossing these two over briefly.
Merlin's line, "that fair time may come again" is taken from Excalibur, the words are Arthur's in an exchange he has with Guinevere: "Forgive me, my wife, if you can. I was not born to live a man's life, but to be the stuff of future memory. The fellowship was a brief beginning, a fair time that cannot be forgotten; and because it will not be forgotten, that fair time may come again." Merlin has obviously watched and thoroughly enjoyed the movie, though I'm laughing imagining what he would have thought about it all.
And here we are at the end. Again, thank you all SO much for reading ❤️
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