Hi everyone! You may not remember me, as I worked with Lily for a short while on LOTR stories only. However, she's been extremely busy with her job, kids, and just life in general, so we decided that I should go ahead and get started on this rewrite of her Merlin series. The original fics are called The Gifts of a Dragon, A Figure in the Shadows, and The Dragonlord's Daughter-she didn't complete the last one, but I intend to finish it eventually. I'm drawing nearly the entire plot from her original stories, which are still up in case anyone wants to read them. These rewrites will be longer and go into more detail. We hope you like them! Lily's co-writing a bit and she's beta reading, so you shouldn't find the style that different.

At first, all she knew was cool darkness.

She hardly woke to herself long enough to count the passing of the days, and they left no mark upon her. Why should they? She had lived, and her time upon the earth was over. The girl was keenly aware that she was bodiless, but that did not trouble her, for she had the uneasy sense that her body had been bound to some terrible misfortune. As long as she had no physical form to haunt her, the Lady of the lake could spend the rest of eternity at peace in the silent water.

The water.

Deep beneath the surface as she knew she must be, there were no currents and no creatures where she lay, but she was surrounded by thousands upon thousands of voices, shifting in and out of hearing as if departing and returning to her side. She listened to them when they sought an audience, but more often than not, they let her be, for she was as alien to them as they were to her, beings of minor magic bound to the land until another could be born to receive their power. She was not quite their keeper, for she well knew she had never had any powers of her own, but the pulsing enchantment of the lake bound her to it, waiting for something. She hardly remembered the years before her arrival, and never entertained the slightest wish to leave.

At least, not until the day when she arrived.

The young woman—for that was what the drifting guardian knew she must have been—seemed to wake up for the first time in ten long months to regard the apparition that stood before her. The thrumming energy that filled it was something new; she was far more than the imprint of a departed soul. No, this new being was as vivid as she had been in life, and the lady of the lake was curious.

"Who are you?"

The shimmering entity spoke slowly, as if she had been deliberating her speech for some time.

"You can no longer remain here. You are needed in the mortal world."

The Lady considered.

"I am the guardian of these waters. I am bound to its magic; were I to leave, those waiting within it would be cast into the ether, into turmoil. Whether I am needed or not, the choice to depart this lake is beyond me."

"It is," said the spirit. "But not beyond me."

The Lady paused, for there was an urgency in the spirit's voice. "You have not told me all."

"Nay, I have not," the other agreed. "And neither will I, but if you do not heed my words, then he shall pay with his life."

He? The lady withdrew slightly, confusion filling her thoughts. The spirit had spoken as if she ought to know who this one was, and suddenly she remembered as if from out of a waking dream—who she was, what she had been, the one who had delivered her from her curse, the one that had granted her freedom again, the one who had loved her...

"Merlin."

"Indeed," said the spirit, sounding strangely satisfied. "He and I are kin of a kind, but you are to bind us more closely than we should have been bound, had I lived to know him."

"How?" asked Freya, feeling her younger self return, banishing the dreams and the blessed silence that her months of rest had laid upon her mind. "How? You must tell me."

"What was he to you?" asked the spirit curiously, seeming almost as if it sat cross-legged on the floor of the lake.

"We were friends, of a kind," said Freya. "But in our hearts, we were more. If not for my death, we would have fled together, where my curse could harm no one, and where we could be together in peace."

"You wished to marry him," noted the spirit, her voice softening somewhat.

"Yes, we wished to marry," answered Freya, wistfulness filling her voice. "I would have given anything if I had only been a simple maiden of Camelot, so we could have married, built a life together...had children." She knew that had she had a body, this last would have made her smile.

"And if I told you that I could grant you all these things at once?" inquired the ghost.

"I would beg you to do so," said Freya, joy filling her as she thought of seeing Merlin again. Then her heart sank, and she regarded the spirit with some suspicion. "But well I know that all such favors come at a price. What is yours?"

"It is a heavy one, in a way," said the spirit gently, and Freya felt a warm embrace about her. "For it will require much of your time, and though 'tis almost impossible that it shall harm you, with your body sustained by the lake, it may claim your life as well. But once it is done, if you have come through it, you shall be happy for the rest of your days with Merlin."

"Then it is done," said Freya. "Name your price, spirit."

"The water has sustained your body and healed it, ready for the day when you would need it again, but mine was destroyed many years ago, when I was murdered. I wish you to take me with you, and to give me a body of my own, for I am needed above just as well as you. "

"How?" Freya wondered what the spirit might mean.

"I promised that all of your hopes should be fulfilled at once, my Lady...including your wish for a child."

Freya understood. "So if I accept your terms, good Ghost, I am to be your mother in your next life?"

"Yes, but I shall not recall this agreement of ours for many years, not until I have grown to womanhood," said the spirit. "And you shall never remember it. Does this alter your choice, my Lady?"

"No," said Freya. "It does not."

When she awoke, she was lying beneath a cover of warm furs, and she could hear a fire crackling to her left. Her body felt strangely heavy, and every bit of it was exhausted. She struggled to sit up, and her movement startled a woman who was sitting at a table by the hearth, peeling a bowl of potatoes. The stranger turned, and her face split into a smile of relief.

"Oh, bless you, lassie! You're awake! You slept for nigh on a day, and we were beginning to worry."

Freya shook her head and threw back the blankets. "Where...where am I? Who are you?"

"You've about two miles from the Great Lake, my dear," said the woman idly, picking up another potato. "My name is Ania Kyrhh, and my husband was out gathering herbs when he found you lying by the water. He brought you here, and we have been tending you since yesterday. Don't fret, child. My Gerich is a good physician, and he is sure that the babe is unharmed by whatever happened to you."

Freya's tired mind hardly registered what Ania was saying, until her last words. "Babe?"

Ania's brow creased. "Why, your babe, of course."

Freya frowned, about to protest that she had no child, when a very definite jolt in her middle banished the idea at once. She looked down in astonishment. She had always been slender; while she might have had plenty of meat on her bones before she had been cursed, four years of living off the land had rendered her nearly as thin as a sapling. But whatever had just happened to her, it had changed that; her arms were plumper, her cheeks felt fuller, and the skin of her hands no longer highlighted the small bones beneath. The largest alteration, however—quite literally—was the fact that her belly had a definite curve to it. She prodded it skeptically, only for another sudden movement to brush her hand from within it.

"You seem surprised," Ania observed.

"You don't understand," said Freya, her throat choked. "When I was last—the last I remember, I was not with child—I could not have been."

Ania came to her side in concern. "Have you lost your memories? Gerich determined that you have no more than three months left to give birth, at the most."

"No, I don't think I have."

"What about your husband? Where does he live? Have you any kin to which we can take you, who might help?"

Freya sat down. "I have no husband, Ania. There—there is no father. I have no one but a sweetheart in Camelot."

"Not a lover?" asked Ania, giving her a knowing smile.

Freya blushed. "No. I have never..."

"And yet you are with child?" asked Ania. She looked closely into Freya's face, seeing nothing but bewilderment and no small amount of fear. "Well, stranger things have happened, I suppose. Do you wish to rejoin your sweetheart in Camelot?"

Freya nodded eagerly. "Oh, I do! When do you think I can make the trip there?"

"Not for another week at least," said Ania sternly. "Not until we can be sure you can tolerate the journey. Now, you lie back and rest, and I'll wake you when supper is ready."

Freya lay back down under the warm furs, tears prickling at her eyes. It had been so long—since before Merlin, even—that she could breathe at ease without fear of being hunted, or of killing. She was drifting off to sleep when she realized that the moonlight was drifting in through the curtains, and that she was still human. She was free. The curse was no more and she, Freya, was free.

And then she truly did begin to cry, and Ania abandoned her vegetables at the table as she hastened to her side to comfort her.

Three days later, Freya had settled into the cottage and into the lives of Ania and Gerich. Gerich had examined her and concluded that both she and the baby were in perfect health, and that she should be safe enough to travel by the end of the week. Although finding herself with child had quite easily been the shock of Freya's life, the dream that she had had after her first day with the Kyrrhs had explained much to her. She learned that she had, in fact, died, and that Merlin had sent her body out onto the lake in a boat. She had then resided in the lake for a time, waiting for her body to be healed. In that time, she had been granted the chance to live again, but only if she allowed that gift to another trapped soul as well-which had led to the conception of the child she now carried. Freya often stopped in her chores about the house (Ania had almost thrown a fit when Freya decided she wanted to help Ania with her work, until Gerich gently reminded her that simple, easy exercise would greatly benefit her) to feel the fluttering of the baby.

"That babe of yours is a kind one," laughed Ania, as the two women were shelling peas one evening. "When I had my Gertrude, she hadn't an ounce of mercy for my ribs. By the end of it, I would rather have gone through childbirth again than carry her another week."

Freya laid a hand on her belly, smiling as the child within seemed to gently lay a palm against her own. "I suppose I'm just lucky that way."

It was at that moment that the bowl of pea pods flung itself from the table and into the fireplace. Ania sprang up with an oath and doused the flames, then retrieved the charred bowl with the poker. She set it down again and looked sternly at Freya.

"That wasn't you, was it?"

Freya opened her mouth to reply in the affirmative, and then closed it again. She had never had any magic of her own, but she had felt the strangest tingle just before the bowl had jumped into the fire of its own accord.

Ania sighed.

"Gerich and I practiced magic, my dear. We shall not give you away. I know sorcery when I see it, and that was not me."

"It wasn't me, I'm sure," said Freya doubtfully. "I've never learned magic, nor have I ever had any magical power."

"I know it was not," said Ania. "But I fear we cannot take you to Camelot, not at least until the child is born."

"What?" asked Freya, her heart sinking. "Why?"

"That was the babe's doing, sure enough," said Ania firmly, nodding towards Freya's middle. "Most likely because it is through magic itself that the babe exists. If you are sure your lad will not betray you, I will see about bringing him here. The child cannot control its power, and if it displays its abilities in Camelot, it will mean death for you both."

Freya smiled, for she knew now why her baby seemed to be taking care not to hurt her or to cause her discomfort in any way, how the child often seemed to press a hand tenderly against her side if she were aching there, and how it remained obligingly still whenever she slept.

Her baby had inherited its father's kindness, as well as his magic.