Uriah and his King
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God sent a prophet to tell the king this story: "There were two men in a certain town."
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Leaning against the ramparts of Tregor castle were two fair-haired boys nearing manhood. At first glance many mistook them for brothers, though aside from being fair-haired they had no features in common. Even their hair colour was not identical; the boy on the right's was lighter, a honey-gold, compared to the dirty blond locks framing the face of the boy to the left. Yet despite their physical dissimilarity something about the air between them was so easy and comfortable that it brought to mind brotherhood, though in truth the boys not only were not related but had only met several years before when they were both fostered to knights at the same court.
The boy on the right nudged his friend with his elbow and nodded towards a man atop a horse going through the gates. "That one's got a messenger seal on his bag. Think he's bringing word from your brother, Your Highness?"
The prince raised his hand to block out the glare from the sun, tousling his dirty blond bangs. "He's certainly travel-stained enough to have come from Camelot. Come on, Gorlois, let's go find out."
The prince pushed off the ramparts, heading down the stairs and through the halls of the castle without once glancing around to see if his friend was following a half-step behind him. There were times when Gorlois used this habit of the prince's to just assume others would dog in his footsteps to his advantage, deftly fixing rude signs to the other boy's back or smearing unmentionable products in his hair without his friend any the wiser for who to blame for these juvenile pranks. This day, however, he refrained from doing so both because he was eager to hear any news from home and because the contents of that news could very well leech the humour out of any pranks.
The audience chamber of Tregor castle was spartan in its design and furnishing, which meant that there were no convenient lacing peep-holes for two curious boys to spy through. The guards at the door refused them entrance, claiming their liege was listening to a messenger and was not to be disturbed under any circumstances. A few minutes later the doors opened and the travel-stained messenger exited, a jingling bag clenched in one hand. The prince strode forwards without bothering to ask for permission, leaving the guards to scramble to announce to the man inside,
"Prince Uther and Sir Gorlois wish to speak with you, Sire."
Already Uther was standing before the king's throne, making the king wave off the guards. He did not bother to verbally grant his permission for them to enter - something that would be now redundant. Gorlois strode through the door after Uther, resisting the urge to sigh in exasperation. He supposed it was part and parcel of being a prince to assume that if you wanted an audience then you'd get one, but it seemed to him that it would be more courteous to give King Tregor a chance to deny them entry. They'd had this argument numerous times, with Uther claiming it showed weakness to be constantly asking for permission like a little child and Gorlois claiming it showed politeness to not flaunt one's entitlement, until eventually they'd agreed to disagree. It didn't mean it didn't irk him whenever Uther did it.
King Tregor never seemed to take offence, so perhaps Gorlois was alone in his beliefs. At present the king actually looked happy at their interruption, "Uther, what perfect timing – I was just about to send for you."
"I take it there's news from my brother, then," Uther said. Gorlois always found it amazing the way that Uther could make something both sound like a question and at the same time not sound like one at all. It was an assumption that was seeking confirmation, but somehow managed not to be a question in doing so – as though the other party offering clarification was such a forgone conclusion there was no need to raise the pitch of his voice at the end of the sentence.
"Directly so, he's the one who commissioned the messenger. He's made contact with an insider in Vortigern's court who's agreed to pass on any information she thinks will be helpful to your cause." King Tregor began.
"She?" Uther interrupted, more surprised than anything. A frown creased his young face as he elaborated, "Forgive me, but is it really wise to leave such an important task to the discretion of a woman? How is she to know what information would be useful to help plan a siege?"
King Tregor looked amused. "Ah, youth." He sounded almost nostalgic as he said, "I remember back when I thought ladies sat in their chambers all day prettying themselves and writing poetry. Take my advice - don't let pretty silk dresses beguile you into thinking women are fragile flowers. They can be the most dangerous of foes if you constantly underestimate them. Never make an enemy out of a woman; I assure you she'll make you rue the day you were born."
Uther looked like he didn't quite agree, but he held his tongue. King Tregor continued, "As I was saying, Aurelius now has a spy within Vortigern's court. From the sound of it, he's almost ready to launch his assault."
"Has he sent for me?" Uther was clearly trying to keep his voice neutral, but Gorlois knew him too well to be fooled. Uther had sped through squirehood like a man possessed, his focus on a distant goal like a light at the end of a tunnel. Day after day he chafed at his exile, wandering to the top of the ramparts and gazing into the distance in the direction of the homeland he had been whisked away from at night only shortly after his birth.
When Uther recently made the rank of knight at their nigh unheard of young age - Gorlois knighted alongside him, because there was no way he would let himself be left in the dust – he'd positively glowed with satisfaction. Being a knight meant he was not the child prince who needed to be sequestered away from his enemies any more, turning him from the protected to the protector.
King Tregor badly suppressed a smile. Uther's impatience to be off overthrowing a usurper and freeing the people from tyranny was no secret. "Indeed he has."
Uther said nothing, looking dazed at everything he's been waiting for and working towards coming together at last. The path to his destiny had been blocked off to him for so long, but now the barricade had fallen. The opened up path was fraught with darkness and danger, but also with a destination so mesmerizing, shining like a mirage in the desert on the horizon, Uther would surely walk it.
King Tregor stood, coming forwards to put his hand on Uther's shoulders in a paternal fashion. "I've been training you for years now, watching you transition from boyhood to manhood, and every day I am more and more proud of the man you are becoming. It's been an honour to have you here and I have faith in your success."
Uther nodded, blinking rapidly, as he recognised the tone of farewell from his former knight-master. "The honour's mine. I'll always remember all you have taught me."
King Tregor patted Uther's shoulder and stepped away, his smile perhaps a tad too wide. He cleared his throat before speaking, "See that you do, I've invested far too much time and effort in you for it all to come to naught. If nothing else, remember this: even the strongest warrior can be killed with one well-placed blow."
"Of course," Uther bowed. "Forgive me but I must take my leave; I'd like to depart as soon as possible and there's much to prepare."
It was a busy evening of bustling about for the young prince, snapping at servants when he didn't think they were finished their preparations quickly enough. He retired to his chamber early so that he could get an early start to his journey.
The next morning at first light Uther looked up open mouthed in surprise at a figure already mounted on a war horse with enough packs that it had to contain gear, clothing, and supplies to last the journey to Camelot. Gorlois resisted the urge to laugh; he'd had the feeling that towards the end of the audience Uther had entirely forgotten he'd been in the throne room as well. Teasingly, he called out to his friend leading a pack-loaded stallion out of the castle stables.
"Did I forget to mention I'm coming with you?"
Uther swung himself into the saddle, nudging his horse forwards. Gorlois turned his mount, so they were both facing the road out of Tregor castle, and seeing Uther open his mouth he cut off what he knew he was planning to say. "And don't bother telling me it's dangerous or I don't have to, because I'm well aware of both. If you can go off into the ether on heroic missions to rescue peasants then I see no reason why I can't as well. Anything you say to try and persuade me to stay behind will make you a bloody hypocrite."
Uther bristled slightly at that last statement – he'd never taken criticism well. A shame that Gorlois had never understood why he should have to filter himself for a boy his age who in truth was prince of nothing, a title so empty it was used for formality only.
Uther kicked his horse lightly, and they started down the road. Only once they'd cleared the gates did he look over and say, "Thank you."
Gorlois thought that was perhaps the most shocking thing he'd heard all week, including the news from Aurelius. Uther almost never said please or thank you, and though Gorlois dearly wished he could tease him about never being taught his manners properly it seemed rather tasteless when Uther's mother had been assassinated before he could remember her. There hadn't been a female figure in his youth to impress things like proper manners on him, and in Gorlois' opinion it showed.
"I am a knight too, you know," Gorlois pointed out. "You're not the only one bound to the code of chivalry. Damsels in distress to rescue, peasants to free, evil kings to overthrow… did you really think I was going to let you have all the fun?"
Uther let out a mock long suffering huff, and Gorlois felt as always that he was making jokes at a brick wall. Though most of the time he used Uther's stiffness to maneuver him into the position of the butt of the joke, it was his secret goal to one day reduce his overly straight-laced friend to laughter so intense he doubled over clutching his stomach with tears running down his face. He'd tried numerous things, including copious amounts of alcohol, but at most Uther would let out an amused chuckle. One day, though, one day…
"By the way, where are we going?" At Uther's incredulous look, Gorlois protested, "What? Camelot is a huge land and neither you nor the king actually specified where Aurelius is in it back in the throne room."
Uther pulled his horse to a halt, a look of uncharacteristic sheepishness flooding his face. Gorlois smacked his face into his hand. "You don't know either, do you? Stupid me, assuming you had some knowledge I didn't and weren't just setting out in a random direction hoping to stumble into a secret rebel group that'll be well concealed…"
A slap to the back of his head shut him up, and together the two boys turned their horses back into the castle they just left, considerably more disgruntled and embarrassed when they crossed the gates this time.
Ah well, Gorlois thought to himself with a shrug. There'd probably been worse ways for young princes to start their destinies.
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"One was rich, and one was poor."
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In Gorlois' opinion, Aurelius had grown far too used to the cloak and dagger side of war. It made sense, as he was the one who had crept beneath King Vortigern's very nose to round up supporters for their cause, making alliances in seedy inns and creeping through enemy territory in a variety of disguises. Nonetheless, even a year after they'd successfully finally retaken the citadel and had a standing army with large volunteer peasant reserves at their disposal, the man seemed to almost miss the old days of sneaking around.
Time and again they'd go to a meeting only to discover the rightful king was missing again. Uther would be gnashing his teeth as he stepped forwards to fill the empty high seat at the council table. After the council was adjourned Uther would rant to Gorlois about how his brother was the most irresponsible, whimsical king in the whole of the Five Kingdoms and all the lesser lands. Aurelius would turn up with an insincere apology and some crucial piece of information that helped them plan their next battle, but that never placated Uther.
"You're going to get yourself killed!"
"Mm-hmm," Aurelius didn't even look up from the scrap of parchment he was sketching on. Pushing the yellowing sheet towards his brother, he asked, "Which design do you think would look better on the banners, this dragon or that dragon?"
"Are you even listening to a word I'm saying?!"
"I don't need to listen, you repeat yourself every time I come back from getting intelligence. Blah blah blah danger blah blah blah responsibility. I've heard your arguments a million times, why do you think I'll listen on your millionth-and-one rant? If I hadn't gone then how would I know that Vortigern's turned the Isle of the Blessed against him? Not only do we not have to worry about them allying against us, but now they've allied with us. You know why? Because I knew they wouldn't zap me to smithereens when I went to go ask them."
Uther glowered at him, snatching up the parchment and crumpling it into a ball in a fit of surprisingly petty revenge, not having a good argument to counter with. Aurelius gave a mock longsuffering huff – Gorlois was certain he was the one Uther learned it from as it sounded exactly the same as his – and pulled out a new sheet. "By the way, I'm thinking of changing the name of my House to Pendragon."
"You – what?!" Uther choked, eyes boggling. "Why?"
"Because it means dragon's head." Aurelius non-explained, then added as an afterthought. "Inside joke, you had to be there."
It was statements like these that made Gorlois think Uther had a point when he called Aurelius whimsical. Uther was nonplussed, "You're naming your line after a joke?"
"No," Aurelius absentmindedly chewed on the feathered end of his quill, a habit that Gorlois suspected insured no one had tried to borrow one off him even during the years when he'd been nothing more than a child in exile with no foreseeable hope of ever reclaiming his birthright. "Not exactly. I think it's a good omen. There was a comet and this boy, Myrddin Emrys, and… you really had to be there. Anyways, I guess I'm just hoping that maybe some of his favour with the gods will rub off on us."
It was an explanation that made little sense to Gorlois, and from the look of Uther's face he felt much the same way. He seemed to struggle with himself for a minute over whether he really wanted to hear more details about one of Aurelius' exploits when he disapproved of them all on principle, and must have decided he didn't after all because he continued with, "Well, would you put aside banners and names for the moment so we can go over the plans for the attack?"
"There's no point in planning it yet," Aurelius said, frowning as his teeth pulled out tuffs of feather from the shaft of the quill. Uther withdrew slightly in disgust, eyeing the wet vanes scattered on the parchment with a wrinkle in his brow. "Vortigern's built an enormous tower called Dinas Emrys to hole himself up in; without the building layout we'd never be able to locate him. It'll be like retaking the citadel all over again – he'll hear our attack long before we reach him and escape with his best and strongest. I'm not spending the rest of my life chasing him down from hiding place to hiding place; we're ending this war with one last battle."
Uther seemed to hear something Gorlois didn't in those words, because he said, "No. You are not sallying off to go find a copy of the building plan."
"I know Vivienne, and she's never let us down before. She'll have gotten hold of one already," Aurelius said, not exactly to persuade his younger brother – something he had no need to do, it wasn't like he needed permission – but to offer justification for a course he had already decided upon. "And I already know where Vortigern's keeping her; highest level of the tower, where it's hardest for her to escape."
"And hardest for you to sneak in to reach her," Uther bit back.
"I managed sneaking past all Vortigern's men well enough when she was being held in Camelot, back when he had a much larger army of guards at his disposal," Aurelius pointed out.
Gorlois watched the two brothers bicker, looking from one to another like he was watching a duel where neither opponent was able to draw blood so all that was happening was a pointless clash of metal upon metal that solved nothing. At long last Uther stormed out of his brother's tent in a towering rage and Gorlois followed after him. They kept going until they were a long way away from the rest of their encampment, then Uther suddenly halted. And there where there was no one except his friend to hear him he let loose a long string of expletives.
"Glad to get that off your chest?" Gorlois asked.
"Absence really must make the heart grow fonder, because during those years at King Tregor's court I forgot how much my brother makes me want to throttle him."
"He'll be fine," Gorlois offered. To anyone unfamiliar with Uther's inability to express his concern the normal way that might seem a disjointed reply, so it was fortunate they both knew what lay at the true heart of his objections to Aurelius' excursions. "He's right, it's not like this is the first time he's done this. He can handle it."
"I'm sure that's what Constans thought."
Well that certainly threw cold water on any reassurance he could offer.
Uther hadn't been old enough to remember his oldest brother Constans before his untimely death. Constans had been crowned king before completing even half of his squire training and assassinated half a year later. Ignoring many advisors, the boy king had insisted on naming a retainer by the name of Vortigern as his regent. Constans was found dead in his bed the very next day, and his two younger brothers were hastily spirited out of the kingdom by loyal retainers. For the next two decades Vortigern was the de facto king of Camelot.
He'd like to say that Aurelius was nothing like Constans and that his decisions wouldn't lead him to his death, but it would be empty words. For all he knew, Constans might have had very good reasons to trust Vortigern over other alternatives or to be suspicious of the advice of his advisors. Gorlois hadn't even been born yet when the events took place, so he couldn't offer meaningful commentary on them.
Instead, he said, "The situations aren't the same. Constans was taken by surprise, whereas Aurelius knows to be careful. He's been doing this long before you joined the war."
Uther lashed out, "I know that!" He started to pace back and forth in the grass. "When I was younger I never even thought about whether or not he'd return – he's my older brother, and he always seemed so strong and invincible it seemed inconceivable he wouldn't. But I'm not that naïve anymore. Why does he have to be so reckless? He's the king, there's no reason why he can't assign one of his men to go make contact with his spy and get the map."
"You know why," Gorlois said quietly.
Aurelius did what should have been impossible: he'd broken through nearly two decades of tyranny and stirred a people beaten into submission up to arms with nothing but an empty title and the force of his charisma. They'd die for him on missions with suicidal odds because they knew he would do the same for them, disregarding the entitlement he'd been brought up with to take the most dangerous tasks on himself and miraculously emerging in one piece (more or less) each time. All the people from the lords to the peasants loved Aurelius, and it was rumoured that Vortigern hated him so much he would execute anyone who so much as breathed his name.
If Aurelius was the type to sit back and let others take on his risks for him, they would never have had the forces necessary to oust Vortigern from the citadel.
Uther didn't reply to that, because he did know why. And as proud as he was of his brother's accomplishments, he didn't want to lose him to heroism. Uther stalked off further into the woods, and Gorlois didn't follow him.
By the next morning Aurelius was gone, and days turned into weeks until a month had passed since the rightful king's departure. One morning Gorlois was wakened by the blowing of a horn – a signal for the men to gather. He hurriedly got dressed and assembled with the other men.
On the makeshift podium lay a stretcher with a sheet ill-disguising the outline of a body. Gaius crouched nearby, though he must have already completed his preliminary examination as he was making no move to peer under the sheet. To the side stood Uther, stiff as a board with a glacial expression on his face. For once, Gorlois had no idea what he was thinking.
The first knight of Camelot stood to his side, and announced, "The king is dead."
Absolute silence fell over the crowd, as every eye looked first to the veiled body to the youth standing stiffly to its side. There high on the podium he looked so terribly alone as in his new grief he stood under the scrutiny of all the men he had to retain the trust and loyalty of.
"Long live the king."
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"The rich man owned a great many sheep and cattle."
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Gorlois looked out from the hood of his disguise as one of Vortigern's followers to the massive hill fort before him and wondered how he was supposed to find his way to the top where the lady spy dwelt without setting off anyone's suspicions.
He'd already integrated himself with the guards on the lower levels and heard the discouraging news that, as the Lady Vivienne had recently fallen out of favour with their king, she was forbidden from leaving her chambers. The only ones allowed in to see her were Vortigern himself, a select number of guards who all knew each other, and the maidservant assigned to her. This was apparently a new arrangement, so fortunately he was able to pass off his ignorance when he was caught sneaking up the stairs as having taken ill the day the change in orders for upping the lady's security detail were given.
He wished he'd thought to bring a grappling hook; then he would be able to scale the tower walls and climb in through her window. Unfortunately, he hadn't had the foresight to as not only was he woefully untrained in reconnaissance, but his departure from the main encampment had been unauthorised.
The world moved on after Aurelius' death, and the war could not be put on halt just because their leader had been lost. With Uther now in command and thus Gorlois' security clearance raised, it became obvious to them both that Aurelius was right; there was no point planning their attack until they knew the layout of Vortigern's base well enough to capture him this time. They had a chance to get Vortigern in the hole he'd dug for himself and if they blew it they would likely spend the rest of their lives chasing him from burrow to burrow, always looking over their shoulders for him to pop up and wreak havoc when they least expected it.
Unfortunately Aurelius' body contained no clues that would help them in that regard; all Gaius' autopsy revealed was that he had been poisoned, which didn't speak well for the success of his last mission. Uther dispatched men several times to make contact with the lady informer, none of whom returned. With pressure on from the murmuring troops and missives from the Isle of the Blessed enquiring about when they'd be ready for their attack, the answer had seemed obvious to Gorlois: they say if you want something done properly you should do it yourself, after all.
Uther had not been pleased with his conclusion, going so far as threatening to have him restrained if he did not give up the idea. To be fair, the man had just lost his only remaining kin and the thought of losing his best friend could not have been easy to swallow. But too many lives rested on being able to bring this war to a satisfactory close for Gorlois to pay mind to Uther's emotional state when making his decision.
So he snuck away at night, and was now paying the consequences for his hastiness as it was beginning to dawn on him how unprepared he was for this task.
There was only one way he could think of for getting into Vivienne's rooms, and it was complete madness that might only possibly work on the grounds that no one would expect someone to do something so recklessly idiotic.
That night he foraged around the fort for the supplies he would need, and in the morning when the servants were waking to begin their daily chores he made his move. With one backhanded blow to the base of her skull, the hunched over old woman who brought the Lady Vivienne her meals was rendered unconscious and hidden in her own broom closet. Wrapping shawl upon shawl around his upper body to disguise its shape, he hunched over to what he thought was about the maid's height, clutching the shawl to his face and feeling both ridiculous and terrified.
To his great amazement he passed unmolested through the halls and many stairs with the breakfast tray he'd taken from the true maid, all the way to the final landing. The two bored looking guards standing there merely unlocked the door and waved him in, hardly even glancing at the cloth-covered stooped figure hunched over a tray before them. It was only after the door closed behind him that he heard what he had been dreading: a sharp, suspicious cry of,
"Who are you?"
Gorlois shrugged off the shawl, straightening up to his full height and bringing a finger to his lips. He was about to answer when he caught sight of the woman he'd risked his life to meet, and he felt like all air fled from his lungs.
Rivers of dark hair tumbled freely around her exquisitely sculpted face, falling past her hourglass figure to her hips. A cloud of green silk flowed out under a bodice of heavier material which pinched her curves, and he forced himself to look at her face so that his eyes didn't wander downwards. The painted red of her lips was sensational, but it was the startling jewel-bright shade of her green-blue eyes, highlighted exceptionally with just the right amount of make-up to show off her natural beauty rather than add any of its own, against her unblemished milky skin that left him without words. How could he form a sentence if he could scarcely think?
"Well, will you not answer?" the vision demanded frostily, chin jutting up in defensive rank-pulling. "Speak up, or I shall scream for the guards."
"Oh, um," Gorlois said, startled out of his reverie. He tried to bring his thoughts into a coherent strand by reminding himself of his true purpose here. "You don't know me, but I'm Sir Gorlois, Lord of Tintagel and the lands under its jurisdiction. At your service, my lady."
Her shoulders relaxed minutely at this news, and she said with a touch more warmth in her voice, "I heard the former Lord of Tintagel and his descendants forfeited their lands and titles fifteen years ago when he was accused of high treason, but then as you might imagine outside news is hard to come by here so I shall take your word for it. The new regime has been kind to you, my lord."
She held out her hand to him, and he stooped down to kiss it, his lips tingling where they met her creamy skin. "As you may have surmised, I am Vivienne, Lady of nothing but what our mutual enemy decreed me lady of so that he may keep me close by as a member of his court."
When he straightened up, she said with an intelligent glint in her stunning eyes, "And I sense that I am the one who is to be of service to you. Am I to assume you have come for the blueprints of this lovely tower we are in?"
Gorlois nodded, "You have it then? Is it in here? Because I don't have much time; I need to be down those stairs and out the fort before your maid revives herself."
Something shifted in her eyes then, hardening them. "That is your escape plan? To go back out the same way you came in?"
"Er… yes?"
"And there is nothing more to your plans?" she pressed.
"Ah, no. It was basically disguise myself, get in, get the plan, and get out as quick as I can."
The warmth fled from her voice. "I would say how heroic of you, but your heroism is about to be short-lived: you have fallen into a trap."
Coldness constricted his heart like a fist of ice, and he stumbled back half a step, "What?"
"I am sure by now someone will have reported you." Vivienne continued coolly, as though she was desensitised to giving out dreadful news such as this. "Even hunched over you are a full foot taller than the woman you are impersonating and no one in the least familiar with her frail frame could mistake someone as broad shouldered as you for her."
"If you manage to step outside that door –" she inclined her head to the only exit "– without being arrested I would be greatly surprised, if you made it all the way to the ground floor before the guards caught up with you I would be nothing less than astounded. I apologise, but I have only one copy of the layout and with such poor odds of it crossing the threshold of Dinas Emrys I cannot entrust it to you. Escape if you can, and come back when you have a plan you have thought through."
Gorlois was once again struck speechless, this time by her words. It hadn't even occurred to him that the lady would refuse to help. His pride prickled by her last words, he retorted, "Perhaps you overestimate how many people are familiar with your maid."
"Perhaps," she conceded with a slight incline of her head, "but I cannot take the risk. Your disguise is shabby and your plan is ill thought out. Why should I have faith in your success where all the others failed?"
"No one tried to stop me on the way up," he grit out, annoyed at her disregard for the risks he was taking every second he spent in this tower and her refusal to take any of her own.
"Of course not! Vortigern's aim is no longer to stop me from meeting with spies, but to seize the copy I made of the layout!" Her eyes flared with a spark of icy fire, and she bit out, "In the first place, this is all the fault of you ill-prepared men who fancy yourselves reconnaissance experts!"
Vivienne continued speaking as though letting out a tirade she'd kept bottled up for a long time. "Did it not occur to any of you when your predecessors did not return that they were captured and made to talk? And once so many men confessed, did you think he would not have had my chambers searched, manually and magically, and when that failed start a new policy of capturing the intruders on the way down? You would think that after a while some of you would wisen up and plan ahead for your escape as well as your entrance, but no. That would appear to be too much cognition to be expected from hot-blooded men of the sword. Until you have swept me off my feet with your well-thought out design for how you plan to get the layout out of this building, I will not so much as show you where it is hidden."
They stood in a silent standoff for a good long minute. Gorlois was the one to break the contest of wills, pulling a long coil of rope out of the roomy interior of the old maid's borrowed dress. "This was my back up plan, for if I had to make a hasty retreat through your window. This way I don't have pass any guards and they won't have time to come after me even if they instantly realise what I've done. Is this sufficiently well thought out for you, your ladyship?"
"And what of the guards outside this tower?" She asked, eying the length of rope with wheels turning behind her gossamer eyes. "How will you get past them?"
Gorlois lifted a corner of one of the body shawls wrapped around him, revealing a sword tied to the back of his stolen dress. Vivienne's expression tightened. "You mean to gamble the success of this mission on your skill with the blade?"
It was clear from her words that this was not sufficiently well-thought out for her. "Look," Gorlois said tersely, "this is a war, and you can't win any war without risks. Maybe it's not the greatest plan there ever was, but it's all I've got. The way I see it, you've got two options: you can stay up here indefinitely hoping the next poor sod who risks his life to traipse all the way up here has a better plan when you don't know if that man will ever even come, or you can tell me where you've hidden the layout and let me take my risks to get it to Uther."
Vivienne was silent for a moment as she considered his words, before her face hardened into resolve and she said rather abruptly, "I am wearing it."
"Pardon?" he asked, not sure he understood that correctly.
"The building plan is inked into the interior of my bodice."
"Oh," he said, slightly dumbfounded, heat rising into his cheeks as he tried to work out how to ask her to take it off without sounding lecherous. "That's, um… that's very clever of you. Ah, then if - if you could just… um… just…"
Sod it, he couldn't say it. "If you could just help with me with this rope," he said, holding it out and trying for a smooth approach to wash away his blundering. "Then we can be on our way."
He'd take having a defenseless person tag along whom he would have to fight twice as hard to shield from their pursuers over having to ask a woman to undress any day.
Her eyebrows climbed towards her hairline. "We?"
"I'm sure you have lots of other intelligence that would be useful in helping plan our final attack," he semi-made up, because it was likely true even if it hadn't been his reason for suggesting she come along.
From their admittedly brief interaction, he got the feeling that King Tregor had been right to warn Uther against underestimating her; her cold logic combined with level-headed thinking was nothing to scoff at. He was reminded of all the times Aurelius had returned successfully with important pieces of information, and that he had picked her out of several other individuals at Vortigern's court who had been equally willing to play her role. There was no denying that Vivienne was good at what she did, and within her pretty head must lie all kinds of secrets.
"My role here is rather redundant now that Vortigern knows I have been passing information," she mused, as though considering the idea. "It is hard to imagine he will now let slip anything crucial while within my presence, and I cannot leave these rooms to go seek information out myself. If I were to trace out a rough map of the building and leave it for him to find he would probably be too relieved to question why I left it behind… If I knock over a few things and leave a trail of blood I could stage my own kidnapping, to cover the possibility that the imbecile chooses now to begin making logical conclusions…"
He listened to her mutter to herself as she set about doing just as she was saying, thinking out possibilities for a multitude of things that could go wrong and setting up measures to head them off now at a pace that was difficult to follow. He finished securing the rope, waiting for her to finish tying up her loose ends. He flinched when she used a nail file to stab her own palm, though she only gave a slight grimace as she squeezed her hand into a fist and methodically left a trail of red dots leading to the window.
She took an old scarf out of her drawer and tore it into long strips. He took a step forwards to wrap the makeshift bandages around her injured hand, ignoring the rising warmth in his cheeks at their proximity and the unavoidable way their skin lightly brushed as he wound the cloth. There was a part of him that thought that bringing this cold intelligent beauty out of her tower sounded like a very good idea indeed. He was a knight, how could he resist a lady trapped at the top of the tower, a real-life damsel in distress, when he'd been trained for moments like this all his life?
"Am I to take it that you accept my invitation, my lady?"
Vivienne sounded amused, the corners of her lips tugging slightly as she replied, "Well, I am hardly going to refuse a chance for freedom. Lead on, my lord, and by all means, let us not delay a moment longer."
Five minutes later saw them both on the ground, pressed against a tower wall until a patrol went past. Gorlois tapped her on the shoulders, pointing in the direction of the nearby woods. She nodded and hitched up her skirts above her knees in preparation to run. He determinedly kept his gaze locked on her face when he gave the silent count down before they broke cover.
Luckily the skirmishes were minimal and by nightfall they had covered a decent enough distance that he allowed them to set up camp. After all, they needed to replenish their strength and neither they nor their pursuers could go any great distance accurately in the dark.
Right away Vivienne fell to the grass with a half-exhausted, half-exhilarated laugh. Her pale cheeks were flushed from all the running they'd done and her long hair spread out through the grass around her like an inky puddle. "I should have done this years ago," she murmured to herself, closing her eyes as though savouring the moment in tired bliss.
Gorlois cleared his throat pointedly, and she opened her eyes to look at him. He sat down beside her, straightening his spine to look more impressive and knightly. "Of course, you couldn't have done it without some help."
She propped herself up on her elbows, smiling wickedly at him, "Yes, it was all thanks to my knight in shining armour… who I am sure will look much more dashing when he is donning said armour, rather than an old woman's dress."
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"The poor man owned nothing but one little lamb he had bought." |:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|
Gorlois sensed their longstanding friendship was all that prevented Uther from dealing out the usual punishment a knight would be given for pulling the vanishing act he had. He and Vivienne stood in the king's tent, their armed escort practically breathing down their necks as they had since Gorlois announced himself at the camp perimeter, while the young king paced back and forth in front of them.
"You are dismissed," he told the guards curtly. Once they left, he ignored Gorlois completely, giving him the cold shoulder. Instead Uther asked the woman beside Gorlois in his way of making a question a statement, "They tell you are the lady who we have to thank for obtaining much of our intelligence."
"That is correct, sire, I am the Lady Vivienne." She sank into a deep curtsy, "Your Majesty, it is an honour to meet your acquaintance."
"Likewise," Uther held out his hand and Vivienne gave him hers. He brought it to his lips, never taking his gaze off of her beautiful face as though he'd been enchanted. Gorlois felt something unpleasant stir inside him at the picture of two of them made, and struggled to push it down.
He didn't release her hand when it would have been socially appropriate to, and after a drawn out moment she gracefully slid it away herself, returning it to her side. "I expect you are eager to hear the intelligence you have been seeking. Would Your Majesty wish to see the layout of Dinas Emrys?"
Uther looked like he hadn't been thinking of that at all, blinking hard at the words and shaking himself a little when he replied, "Oh, yes, of course."
Vivienne's slender fingers delicately began pulling at the lacing of her bodice, and Gorlois quickly averted his eyes. Uther's eyes bulged, his face flushing a florid pink as he seemed unable to look away. "Wh- what are you doing?"
Through his peripheral vision Gorlois saw Vivienne pull the tough fabric off of herself, holding it out in front and asking, "May I borrow a knife, if you please?"
It was unclear whom she was addressing with that statement, but Gorlois was quick to offer her his. Vivienne took it, and carefully ran it along the thread of the seaming, slicing apart what was apparently a double layer of fabric. Pulling the outer and interior pieces apart, she held out to Uther the interior face of the interior piece, which had what was unmistakably a map of a tall building etched into it.
Uther took the piece of fabric from her, looking a little stunned. "Thank you. Er, I'll need to examine this and consult with my advisors, so you're dismissed."
Vivienne curtsied again in farewell, and Gorlois wondered if he was included in this dismissal. He bowed and left with Vivienne, figuring if Uther planned on punishing him directly instead of with the silent treatment then he would be called back. When he wasn't, he took it to mean that he was momentarily off the hook, at least until Uther had worked out how to use the new piece of intelligence. He knew him too well to think he wouldn't be called in later, when Uther didn't have more pressing concerns, to be yelled at and given some kind of punishment.
He showed Vivienne to the quartermaster, whom they spoke to about getting a tent set up for her. They were waved aside in favour of more prioritised concerns, assured impatiently that it would be done by nightfall when the lady would need it. In the meantime he took her to his old tent, which had been left in place in his absence though the rummaged state of it indicated it had not gone unsearched.
Colouring slightly, he bent to tidy up and mumbled apologises to her, "Sorry it's such a mess."
"I have little room to complain," she reassured him, rolling back the sleeves of her dress and joining him in straightening up. "You are the only man I am acquainted with here, and I would much rather spend my day in the company of a friend than with perfect strangers."
Vivienne, he found early on in their journey, was a much more pleasant person to be around when she was not seizing up his usefulness and finding it lacking. Her cleverness was more witty than distancing when not faced with high stakes choices, and weeks as travelling companions been most effective in tearing down the barriers from their less than ideal first meeting.
"I sense that I'm less than welcome back as well," Gorlois admitted. He'd already explained to her the rather unauthorised nature of his mission during their travels. "At the moment I'm definitely none too popular with the king, at least, which I'm sure will bleed over into my overall popularity."
"I see," Vivienne said noncommittally. "You may be right. King Uther seems to be very different from his brother." Though she said this in the most neutral of tones, Gorlois got the impression that she did not count this as a good thing.
Gorlois' hands stilled in his tidying, looking up to scrutinise Vivienne. Had she been testing Uther back in the king's tent? Regardless of whether it was deliberately done or not, she seemed to have evaluated Uther and given him a score that – while not precisely a fail – was lower than what she had been expecting, or hoping.
"No two people are the same, no matter how close in blood," Gorlois defended sharply, "Uther is his own man, he cannot be his brother, nor should anyone expect him to be."
"True," Vivienne conceded, letting the conversation tapper off.
They tidied up in silence after that, until the tent was clean and they were left with each other for company with no distractions. Gorlois wracked his brains to explain Vivienne's near instant distaste for the king, and came to a realisation so simple it should have been apparent from the beginning.
"You admired Aurelius greatly." Aurelius had repeatedly risked his life to meet with her, while Uther had done no such thing. Of course Aurelius' informer would have her first loyalty to him. It must have been a great disappointment to her when it was a stranger, who behaved quite differently, who ended up being king instead of the man she'd placed all her hopes on.
"He was very foolish," she said, a fond sad smile tugging at the corners of her lips. "He took many unnecessary risks, and ultimately when one gambles enough times one must eventually roll a snakes eyes, no matter how skillful the gambler."
"But you liked him anyways," he pressed, noticing the way she had avoided confirming or denying his conclusion. "Otherwise you would not be comparing him and Uther."
Vivienne was silent for a moment, as she seemed to be gathering her thoughts. Then she admitted as though baring her soul in doing so and being uncertain what he would make of it. "Sometimes, I think I might have gone mad if he had never contacted me."
She sat up straighter in the chair he'd pulled up for her, and he leaned forwards in his seat to show his interest. She continued, elaborating, "I was Vortigern's seer, taken from my family so long ago I cannot now remember who they were. For years I lived at the heart of Vortigern's court, forced to aid him in his tyranny in return for a life of luxury I had not asked for. You cannot imagine what it is like, to live among men who each day with an iron fist rule a kingdom built on the blood of innocents. Do you know what it feels like to speak out and feel like you are screaming at rocks, for all the good it does? To be locked up like a bird in a cage, forced to sing for its feed lest its gaoler decide it not worth the cost?"
"Then Aurelius made contact with me, and told me of a way I could be of use to end Vortigern's reign of terror. I needed no persuasion, and from there I suppose you can guess the rest."
Unsure of what else to say in response, Gorlois offered, "I'm sorry for your loss." At Vivienne's surprised countenance, he went on, "I can't imagine the pain of losing the foundation of a dream."
Though the soldiers and the people accepted Uther readily enough, there would always be people like Vivienne who had invested in Aurelius personally, not just as an abstract idea of a conquering deliverer who could easily be replaced with a younger brother. If Uther had been the elder brother and Aurelius the one who unexpectedly took his place, Gorlois was sure there was some part of him that would never be satisfied that his dream never completely came true the way he wanted it to. It was so much harder when you built your dreams on people, rather than ideas, because people were not immortal the way ideas were.
"The foundation, perhaps, but not the dream in its entirety. Vortigern's reign can still be brought to an end, and even from such a brief meeting I can be sure that King Uther will be a better king." Abruptly changing the topic, she asked, "What about you? How did you come to pledge yourself to the cause?"
"It wasn't that hard a decision to make," Gorlois replied easily. "First off, my parents never supported Vortigern, as you heard. After my father was executed for high treason my mother sent me to King Tregor's court. Not only was I instructed in a knight's responsibilities there, but I also met Uther. We got on well and were fast friends, so by the time I heard about Aurelius' bid to retake the kingdom it seemed only natural to join up."
"So then you have known the king for a long time." Vivienne said, her interest caught. She leaned forwards, her posture asking for more information.
"He's a lot like you, actually," Gorlois said with a smile. "He's a very practical person, and he also had to balance a good deal of exasperation with his love for Aurelius. He has a good heart, though he doesn't always show it. He was devastated by his brother's death, and he doesn't need other people questioning his suitability to take his place when he has enough on his plate already. Give him a chance; I'm sure he'll prove himself a good king in time."
"With Vortigern as his predecessor, it is hard to see how he could be worse. And Aurelius was rather irresponsible in the risks he took upon himself." She seemed to reluctantly agree. With no great enthusiasm, she added. "I suppose a king like Uther is wiser, in that he knows the meaning of the word delegation, and thus does not place the security of the kingdom in jeopardy at every turn."
"Weighing risks is something you are well-versed in yourself, Lady 'Convince-me-you-can-escape-first'," Gorlois pointed out wryly. "If you had met Uther without Aurelius as a comparison, you probably would have thought him a great king."
"Probably," she agreed, this time without reservation. "In any case, first Vortigern must be dealt with. Only afterwards will King Uther's true reign begin."
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"He raised that little lamb, and it grew up with his children." |:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|:|
"Long live the king!"
Gorlois' voice rang out among the throng, indistinguishable from the rest of the large crowd gathered inside the citadel. He brought his leather gloved hands together in applause alongside the other newly instated Knights of Camelot, chainmail gleaming in the early morning light. High up on the raised dais stood Uther, at long last returned victorious from their final battle, with the crown resting on his head and looking every inch the majestic king he was born to be.
Vortigern was vanquished at long last, the remainder of his troops scattered, and all of Camelot was under their control. All their dreams, all their hard work, finally paid off.
When at last the applause died down, Uther spoke, his voice carrying effortlessly through the throne room. "This is not just a day of celebration for me, but for all of Camelot. The days of chaos and oppression are over, and in its place an era of peace, of justice, and of order. It is thanks to the men who fought for me and the people who supported us that we have driven evil from this land. The years of war were long and during them we all suffered. Many were sacrificed so that we could reach this point, and we have all suffered loss. Today, as we celebrate the dawn of a new age, we remember those who gave their lives to make it possible. For without them, and all of you standing before me today, none of this would be possible. Together, we shall pave the way for a brighter future and put the darkness of the past behind us. For the love of Camelot, we stand united."
Another round of applause rang out.
Beside him the Lady Vivienne put her hands together politely, her smile somewhat forced.
When the official coronation ceremony ended, Gorlois excused himself early from the reception, leaving Uther to greet his long line of guests and well-wishers by himself. He wished him lots of patience and strong facial muscles to keep up his kingly smile, but Gorlois saw no reason why he should have to subject himself to such tedium when none of those people would even nod in his direction.
Instead, he tracked down Vivienne to where she stood looking out over the parapets into the celebrations in the lower town. He joined her, waiting for her to share what was on her mind in her own time. Although they'd become close in the months of preparation for the final battle, there were times when Vivienne seemed to disappear into her mind without leaving a window to look through to see what she was thinking. He'd learned early on from hard experience that the more he prodded, the more she withdrew.
So instead of making the mistake of asking what was on her mind, he said, "It's a lovely view."
She made a hum of agreement, still with that distant look in her eyes. "I used to come here, when it all became too much. It feels so strange seeing the streets full; I never knew so many people live in the lower town."
Gorlois' memories of Camelot under Vortigern's reign were dimmed by faulty childhood recollection, as they were all situated from before his father had been executed for high treason. He did remember the streets as being empty, though. Certainly parents wouldn't have let their children run around unsupervised as they were today, when there was a good chance they'd disappear never to be seen again, unless one was looking for chopped up ingredients for some dark ritual.
He wondered what it would have been like to see the city through the eyes of an adult, especially when one was recognisable to the populace as a member of the widely reviled court. "I think some of them are here for the day from nearby villages, actually."
"Even still, there are more people than I thought."
He didn't have a good reply for that, so he changed the topic. "I'm planning to stay here for a while to support Uther, but after things settle down I'm heading back to Tintagel. It's right by the border and right now there's no lord overseeing the lands, so I'd expect things are a quickly becoming a right mess if they're not one yet already."
Vivienne's fingers tightened against the stone of the ramparts. "I see," she said softly, lowering her eyes. "That is a shame, I shall miss you."
Gorlois hid a smile. Getting a statement like that from Vivienne – who was far from the greatest at expressing her emotions verbally – meant a lot. "What are your plans?"
Vivienne looked back out over the city, a complicated expression crossing her face. "I do not know. I dreamed of this day for so long, but nothing is as I thought it would be."
Gorlois was reminded once again of how they'd all expected Aurelius, not Uther, to be the one wearing that crown.
"I'm sure Uther will be happy to welcome you to court," Gorlois tried to reassure her.
She just continued looking out over the sprawl of the city, until finally she said as though in admittance of a great secret. "I cannot stay here. I spent most of my life growing up within these walls and those years were not happy ones. Now wherever I look, I see memories that I would rather forget."
A bitter smile twisted on her lips, "Besides, now that we are at peace there is nothing here for me to do. Somehow, Uther does not strike me as the sort of man to welcome a woman's counsel, seer or not."
His mouth felt dry as he made an offer that he couldn't bear if she shot down, "You could always come with me."
When she faced him in surprise, he added in semi-jokingly, semi-seriously, "Uther's not the only one who needs support, you know."
Vivienne's face softened; she looked grateful that he was offering her an escape. "Well then, lead on, my knight in shining armour."
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"The little lamb ate from the poor man's own plate and drank from his cup."
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It was scarcely five months into his and Vivienne's marriage when the dreams began in earnest.
The first few nights she refused to tell him what she saw, but after a joyful visit to their manor physician left her more pinch-faced than smiling, she sat him down at the table in their chambers and abruptly told him the underlying theme in her visions in one baffling sentence.
"Our child will be a daughter, and Uther will be her enemy."
And from there she told him of her vivid visions of witches burning at Uther's command, and a young witch who looked just like her living in fear every day. She described the young woman's terror and awful scenes where she was harmed by Uther: thrown into the dungeons, grabbed by her neck, interrogated by a witchfinder, and threatened with death for the crime of saving the life of an innocent child.
His attempts to reason with her, pointing out that they didn't know for sure whether their unborn child would be a girl, much less a light-eyed dark-haired witch, went unheeded. Vivienne had seen it, so she was convinced it would happened. As the months went on and the due date drew closer and closer she became more and more paranoid, hardly able to sleep more than three hours a night before she woke up screaming. Worried for her health, Gorlois only managed to persuade her to journey to the capital where she could be treated by Gaius in the days preceding the birth by giving the argument that what might happen in the future would be pointless if she lost the baby all together.
Vivienne refused to allow Uther in to see her, though Uther's wife paid her many visits, excitedly asking if she could put her hand on Vivienne's bulging stomach. Gorlois had only met Queen Ygraine briefly during his visit for her and Uther's wedding, and the subsequent signing of the agreement reuniting the du Bois' lands with Camelot. To be honest at the time he had been more concerned with whether or not Uther seemed happy with the political match, and once he realised the newlyweds had fallen in love he hadn't given her deeper thought.
His first impression of Lady Ygraine du Bois, as she had been called then, was that she was exactly the type of woman one could picture delicately embroidering and writing poetry all day while her ladies-in-waiting beautified her. It was rumoured that her overprotective older brother Tristan had sheltered her beyond what was normal even for a noblewoman and refused the offers of all suitors until the king himself asked for her hand.
She seemed sweet, but he didn't know much else about her. Every time she came over he would promptly be shooed out so that she could have a "girl to girl" talk with his wife. Vivienne, having spent more time in her company, had an assessment of her beyond superficial appearances.
"She balances Uther out well," she told him one time after he was allowed back in the guest quarters following one of Ygraine's visits. "He thinks too much with his head, and she too much with her heart."
When he asked what she meant by that, Vivienne explained, "Ygraine strikes me as very kind-hearted and idealistic, to the point of foolish naiveté. The past twenty minutes she spent telling me all of her plans to aid the poor orphans and widows in the Lower Town, but when I asked her how she expected to obtain the funds for these projects without raising taxes she did not have a real answer, merely saying that she was sure she could convince Uther to finance it. Her heart is in the right place, and hopefully once she is more experienced with the real world her head will join it."
While Vivienne's friendship with the queen as they bonded over babies and whatever other things he was not female enough to be privy to flowered, his friendship with Uther stagnated and seemed to be crumbling at the edges. Perhaps it was because of Vivienne's dire words about how Uther was a threat to his unborn child, or perhaps it was whatever weighty matter was rendering his old friend silent and snappish, but they couldn't talk the same way they used to despite this being the first time they'd seen each other in months.
Slowly the time passed, and under Gaius' strict supervision Vivienne gave birth to a beautiful baby girl, whose blue eyes and patch of dark fuzz on her head sent a chill of dread down her parents' spines. That night, with the newborn sleeping between them, they talked for a long time in low voices as they were forced to confront Vivienne's vision and how best to prevent it from coming about.
They rose at dawn, taking their daughter with them when they went to go visit Gaius to tell him their decision. Once they'd explained what they wanted him to do for them, Gaius looked like he thought they might be enchanted out of their minds.
"I don't understand," he said, giving them a long look through his bleary sleep-deprived eyes. "Why do you want me to take your daughter to the Isle of the Blessed now? Surely it can wait until she is old enough to begin learning magic, if she even possesses it in truth. And what possible reason could you have for me to pronounce her dead?"
"I had a vision... The child will be in terrible danger if she remains in Camelot. Please, Gaius," Vivienne begged, looking uncharacteristically frail from the toll her stressful pregnancy and giving birth had placed on her body. "You know I would not ask without a good reason."
"But I can't see why everyone, even the king, must be made to think she's dead," Gaius objected.
"Blocking the path of the future is a difficult endeavour. It is too dangerous, not only for her but for everyone, if she be given a doorway to return," Vivienne said. She swallowed, holding close her baby even as she tried to persuade the physician to help them give her away. "We must sever all ties."
It took them nearly an hour of convincing later, but eventually Gaius took the baby from Vivienne's arms. Tearfully, Gorlois kissed her blotchy forehead, losing her only a day after gaining her.
"Goodbye, Morgause."
The next few days were spent in silence between the couple, as condolences poured in from everyone from close friends to acquaintances they didn't know they were acquainted with. The most painful visit, by far, was Uther's. When he announced himself Vivienne promptly excused herself from the room, going to supposedly take a walk to clear her head.
Alone with his best friend and the reason he no longer had a daughter, Gorlois had nothing to say. Uther began awkwardly, as he always was when emotions were involved, "Words cannot express how sorry I am for your loss."
He clamped a hand on Gorlois' shoulder, looking utterly sorrowful, and a shard of guilt twisted in Gorlois' heart. He was lying to his best friend about the death of his child, because he didn't trust him not to follow a poorly defined path laid out for him in a nightmare. Whatever happened to those easy days, before they grew up and grew apart by the distance of leagues and social standing, when he told his best friend everything without a second thought?
Gorlois ordered his servant to pour them both a glass of wine. There was no way he could get through the visit without copious amounts of alcohol involved. After talking about inconsequential matters that neither of them cared anything about and downing several more glasses, Uther must have consumed more alcohol than Gorlois had realised because his tongue was loosened enough to apologise, something he did even more rarely than offering thanks.
"Sorry I wasn't a good friend lately," he said with a definite slur on his words, reeling as he spoke as though managing such long sentences was a struggle. He was waving his index finger as though trying to physically keep track of his thoughts by reading them out like a child with words on a page. Gorlois wondered if he'd written out what to say beforehand. "I promise to be there for you, from now on."
"You don't have to apologise," Gorlois reassured him quickly, guilt digging a deep hole in his chest. "I can tell you had a lot on your mind."
Uther grimaced at the mention of whatever his problems were and took another swig of his drink, draining the glass to the bottom. The servant stepped forward, but Gorlois discretely shook his head. "S'no s'cuse," Uther continued, "It was stupid, really. I was jealous."
That he hadn't been expecting. "Jealous?"
"Mm-hmm," Uther's head bobbed up and down exaggeratedly, and Gorlois worried about how much he'd drunk if he was reduced to grunting out answers. "Ygraine and I've been trying f'r an heir. 'Thought it unfair – you getting a baby, 'nd I wasn't."
"You haven't been married long and you're both young," Gorlois began reassuringly, but Uther cut him off.
"No. Gaius says we can't. E'er."
"Oh," Gorlois said, unsure what else to say in reply to that. Which was better, to have a baby and lose her or to be unable to have a baby at all? "I'm sorry."
Uther stared despondently into his wine glass, then held it up for a refill. The servant came forwards, glancing apologetically at his master as he did so. Gorlois held out his own glass, secretly contemplating getting so plastered that he could let himself forget this conversation ever took place.
After downing several more drinks and commiserating together on everything from too tight sheets to the headaches of leadership – anything that would allow them to rail at the world at large without naming the real causes of their heartbreaks – Gorlois slurred out, clasping Uther slightly off-center on his shoulder. "Ya know, the future's fulla s'prises. Ya ne'er know, maybe a door'll open up f'r you 'nd Ygraine."
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"He cuddled it in his arms like a baby daughter."
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Nearly four years after losing Morgause, Gorlois and Vivienne made another trip to Camelot. This time it was to attend the appointment ceremony of the new Court Sorceress, the High Priestess Nimueh.
The occasion was momentous not only in gaining a powerful sorceress for their kingdom, but in that in appointing a representative from the Isle of the Blessed to a high position in court Uther was effectively entering into an unofficial alliance with them. As someone whose daughter was a witch being raised on the Isle of the Blessed, Gorlois was glad Uther was pursuing a longstanding peaceful relationship with them rather than pursuing the route of Vivienne's dreams.
Nimueh looked beautiful and powerful at the ceremony, very much as one would expect from a high priestess. She looked younger than he expected, but then for a sorceress of her power it could hardly be difficult to conceal her true age. A few days afterwards, to their surprise Nimueh invited Gorlois and Vivienne over for a private dinner.
When they arrived at her chambers the table had been set out in a spread of elegant simplicity that spoke of both of how Nimueh was accustomed to simple fare and how in her new position she merited expensive finery. Once they had been seated and the starter soup served, pleasant small talk had worn thin.
"You must be wondering why I invited you over," Nimueh said, pushing aside her emptied bowl. "I confess that I was curious to meet the parents of our youngest initiate."
Gorlois and Vivienne exchanged panicked looks, but the priestess was quick to reassure them, "I haven't mentioned her to anyone in Camelot, though I am curious about what you foresaw that was so dire to prompt you to do what you did."
"Let us merely say that it was extremely dire, and leave it at that," Vivienne replied vaguely. Gorlois was glad of it; he didn't think Nimueh would take well to the suggestion that someday Uther might possibly decide to burn witches. With this new alliance that future seemed to be fading so there was no cause to stir up unnecessary alarm.
"Hmm," Nimueh said, refraining from further prying verbally. She took a sip from her glass, her gaze staring unwaveringly over the rim at the young couple as though she was evaluating them. "If you'd like, I can make a talisman of healing for you, to ease your dreams so they are not troubled."
"That is most kind of you. Thank you, I would greatly appreciate it."
"How is Morgause?" Gorlois asked, hardly going to let this rare opportunity pass by.
"Very well," Nimueh replied, placing down her glass. "You don't have to worry about her welfare, most of our priestesses were sent to us as children. I myself came to live on the Isle when I was six; I can assure you that the initiates are treated very well. Though I am not around the initiates often, from the little I've seen of her she seems a very healthy, happy little girl. She hasn't shown any signs of magic yet, of course, but even if she never does we'd be happy to keep her as one of the acolytes. They are the ones who are in charge of the youngest initiates, and they positively adore your daughter. We don't normally receive children so young, and they were most excited upon her arrival. We had to devise a system of drawing lots to determine who will take care of her on any given day, to prevent fights from breaking out over it."
Relief ran warm through him; so then Morgause was being treated well, even if she could not be raised by her parents.
"In the near future it looks as though I'll be busy, but once I've settled in properly I'd be happy to arrange a visit for you to the Isle of the Blessed, if you'd like to see her," Nimueh offered.
"Really?" Gorlois could hardly believe it; the priestesses were notoriously selective about who they allowed onto their sacred island. "That would be wonderful."
"You are very generous," Vivienne added warmly. "You have our sincere thanks."
The main course of the meal arrived, and they fell to discussing other topics as Nimueh knew nothing more specific about Morgause.
"Of course I was very happy when Uther made overtures to me," the sorceress was saying. "Though our relationship with Vortigern was always strained, we could at the very least be assured that a sorcerer king wouldn't persecute people with magic the way some other lands are these days. When Aurelius approached us he impressed us with his open-mindedness – a trait that seems to be becoming rarer and rarer. After his death we weren't sure where we stood with his brother. So we were all reassured when he asked me to become a member of his court."
Something stuck out to Gorlois in what she said, something that he had always wondered about, "What did Vortigern do to you turn against him?"
Nimueh's lips pressed together, as though the very thought of whatever it was off-putting. The sourness of her voice could have curdled milk when she said, "He violated the ancient prohibition against distorting time: he summoned a child who had not yet been born with the intent of killing him. In the end he was forced to return Emrys to the future, but we could not continue tolerating a man who treated the balance of the world with such blatant distain."
Something about the name Emrys sounded vaguely familiar, but for the life of him Gorlois couldn't think where he'd heard it before.
Vivienne pushed aside her plate, even though she hadn't eaten half of what was on it yet. "I remember that incident well." Sharply, almost accusatively she added, "I also remember that the Isle of the Blessed sent no aid to help right the balance."
"Vortigern was hardly a rational man, we couldn't be sure he wouldn't harm any emissary we sent, so we didn't send one." Nimueh replied evenly, though with something dangerous in her eyes that warned against further criticisms. "And if your memory is so clear, surely you'll remember that we sent a message making the consequences if he followed through with his plans rather perceptible."
"The sight of a ragaid is difficult to forget," Vivienne responded, her voice still hard as knives. Gorlois was quickly losing track of the conversation; he wasn't sure he knew what they were taking about anymore, only that they were coming dangerously close to arguing with a powerful sorceress over something that occurred years ago. "To give credit where it is due, I must admit it proved useful in stalling Vortigern and providing incentive to make him rethink his decision."
"And of course we are all grateful for the aid of the Isle of the Blessed in the final battle of the war." Gorlois interjected, steering the conversation out of the dangerous waters of borderline fighting with a High Priestess. "It's no exaggeration to say that your help was crucial for our victory."
Nimueh inclined her head in acknowledgement of the praise, and then turned slightly to address him with, "You yourself contributed a fair amount to Uther's military successes, or so I hear. Rumour has it you still lead the army into battle even now."
"I didn't do that much," Gorlois protested, his cheeks warming.
"So then the rumours are wrong? I heard you were departing soon for the Northern Plains."
"Er, no, that's right, I am."
"And what of the lovely Lady of Tintagel?" Nimueh asked, turning her head to face her. "With your husband away, the land will be vulnerable to attack from opportunists. If you'd like, the king has expressed that you are more than welcome to stay here, where the walls of the citadel and my magic would keep you safest."
Vivienne's eyebrows furrowed minutely, her face tightening. "I am not so weak as to require constant male protection," she replied, offense freezing her words. "The people will need a leader in the absence of my lord to assure them that they not being cast aside – something that will be rather difficult to convince them of if I ride off alone to save myself and leave them to endure what may come on their own. In any case, this will hardly be my first experience living in dangerous territory; the king would do well to remember that he owes a great deal of the victory over Vortigern to me."
For a strange moment, something contorted in Nimueh's countenance and Gorlois thought she would insist. The moment passed, though, and she replied breezily, "Is that so. I apologize if I offended you, but the king is worried about his friend's wife while he takes her husband away from her. I'll tell him his concerns are unnecessary."
"I'd appreciate it if you could thank him for the offer when you do," Gorlois added in, not wanting his old friend to take the refusal the wrong way.
Nimueh nodded her agreement, "I'll be sure to. The king is also very worried for you as well, of course." She paused, as though thinking about what she wanted to say next, then offered carefully in a tone of generosity, "I could perform a good luck ritual for you before you depart, to bring you fortune in your endeavours."
Gorlois thanked her and agreed, and the air around the table finally returned to the easiness it had had towards the start of their meal.
With a word in the Old Tongue, three glasses of wine appeared on the table, setting down in front of each person. Nimueh picked up hers, hold it out with a genial smile, "A toast: to Lord Gorlois' success on the Northern Plain and his safe return."
Gorlois and Vivienne raised their glasses, and all three drank.
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"One day a guest arrived at the home of the rich man."
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After months of living in tents and scrubbing caked on dirt and blood off his hands, Gorlois was more appreciative of the comforts of home than he'd been when he left. Vivienne was a sight for weary eyes, wearing an exquisite gown and her hair done up beautifully. It was his first night back and they were having a private supper in their chambers, putting off the more public homecoming feast until the next evening.
Gorlois had just finished telling her about Caerleon's queen, whom he had met at the peace negotiations, and was sure to add in at the end, "Of course, Queen Annis in all her furs and riches couldn't hold a candle to you."
Vivienne smirked, "I should hope not, otherwise I would worry that you did not miss me."
"How could I do anything but, surrounded by vulgar smelly men who don't wash?" Gorlois joked. More seriously, he added, "I thought of you every day in the months since we last met."
Vivienne, who'd been raising her goblet, frowned and stalled her drink. "Months? But it has only been five weeks since you came to visit me."
Gorlois was thrown off by this strange assertion. Not sure what else to say, he said blankly, "What do you mean? I didn't come to visit."
She replaced her goblet on the table without having taken a sip. "No, I distinctly remember it. It was before news had reached us of your victory, and I was very lonely living here all by myself. And then one night, at dark, you came home. You only stayed the one night, leaving in the morning before I woke."
"I think you were dreaming," Gorlois said, not sure how to break this to her except bluntly. "Until now, I haven't been within a hundred leagues of Tintagel since I set off on the campaign."
Vivienne whitened at those words, as though he'd said something horrifying, and after that she refused to speak. Gorlois couldn't fathom what he'd done to upset her, except not having come home to visit her after all. His assurances that he couldn't get away from the fronts seemed to fall on deaf ears. Days went by and Vivienne ghosted through the daily motions like a puppet being jerked on its strings to imitate life, but possessing no senses or emotions to feel anything about its actions.
As days turned into weeks until a month had gone by, it became clear to him that she couldn't just be upset that he hadn't come to visit her. He hadn't seen her this distraught since just after they'd given Morgause away, but this time he had no idea what was troubling her so deeply. She slept in her private chambers every night since he returned, but her maids had confided to him that she woke up screaming at night, distressed enough to render the healing bracelet Nimueh had gifted to her useless.
Her deterioration seemed to peak all of a sudden, exacerbating until her picked over meals and the dark circles under her eyes terrified him. It was during the worst of this, when he was fearing for her life if this continued on, that she broke her silence.
It was late in the evening but he was still at his desk swamped under massive piles of parchment. Between trying to cheer up his wife and catching up on the management of the fief, he felt like he barely had a moment to breath these days. He was rubbing at his eyes and reaching for the next piece of parchment at the top of the precarious stack when he heard the door click open.
In walked his wife, her face still too pale and lined with too many lines to be healthy. Right away she spoke, as if she'd rehearsed what she wanted to say before coming and wanted to say her lines as quickly as possible before she changed her mind.
"You look tired." Though this was probably true, she'd stolen the words right out of his mouth. It seemed to him that someone with her pallor should not be worrying after anyone else's wellbeing. "You should come up to bed."
In truth Gorlois wanted to finish reading through the stack of documents before turning in, but he was hardly going to rebuff the first overture at companionship his wife had offered him since the beginning of their homecoming supper. She took his hand and led him through the corridors up to the master bedroom. It was her first time visiting it since he'd come back from war.
At the door she paused with her hand on the doorknob, then without turning the knob she turned to him, blocking the doorway with her body. Staring at him with a strange intensity, she asked, "Do you remember the dream I had when I was pregnant with Morgause?"
Not sure where she was going with this, Gorlois said, "Yes, of course."
"Tell it to me." He could only look at her incredulously, wondering what on earth was wrong with her and if he should have her examined by Gaius or Nimueh in case she'd been bewitched into this bizarre behavior. She swallowed, and her voice was strained as she pleaded with him, "Please, just do it."
So he repeated her own dream back to her, and once he'd done so her frame loosened as though he'd cleared away some great source of concern for her. She turned the knob, and walked into the master bedroom with him following behind her.
Finally, he could take it no longer and demanded, "What is going on with you these days?"
Vivienne set about lighting the candles in their room, her back to him the whole time as she said in a measured voice, "I have been thinking about my dream, and how Morgause is doing. Now that the campaign is over Nimueh should have more free time, perhaps she could arrange a visit. A change of scenery and a visit with our daughter might be just what I need."
Gorlois had thought that Vivienne's state was reminiscent of how she was after losing Morgause; it would make sense that her strange mood as of late was caused by the same heartache, but he couldn't see what had suddenly torn open old wounds.
For the next week it felt like he was in some strange play that was trying to imitate what his life had been like before he'd set out on a campaign, but the actress who played his wife was poorly skilled. The lackluster performance felt cheap and shallow, a mockery of what once was. Vivienne didn't seem to get better, but her health had halted in its deterioration. Or at least he thought it had, until he woke to her vomiting all across the floor one morning.
After a frantic visit – on his part, she seemed like a lifeless doll through the whole thing – to the manor physician, they were given the happy news that there was a baby on the way. When he smiled at her and she smiled back, he couldn't felt but feel that her smile was hollow. On the outside it looked right, but it lacked any real substance underneath.
Surprisingly, given how strongly opposed to the idea she'd been when Nimueh suggested it, Vivienne agreed right away that she should stay in the citadel for the duration of her pregnancy. Gorlois had suggested it because it would place her in close proximity to Gaius, who could hopefully nurse her back to her former health, but he remembered her words about needing a change of scenery and wondered if that would truly be all it took to restore her to her former self.
He came to visit her as often as he could, and it seemed to him that she was improving in slow increments with each visit. As her due date drew near he remained in the city, and the old Vivienne seemed to be back, more subdued than before but no less loving or real.
During this prolonged visit to the citadel, however, he noticed something else that was strange: Uther was avoiding him.
He hadn't seen his old friend at all in most of his shorter visits, but he hadn't thought much of it. Uther was the king, now, and he was kept busy every day running a kingdom. Gorlois had assumed Uther happened to have an engagement on the days he'd dropped by before, but now that he was staying in Camelot for weeks it was strange how every time he asked to see the king he was told the king was too busy to be disturbed. He couldn't help but feel slighted, and wondered if he'd somehow done something to offend Uther without realizing it.
The first time he'd been left alone with the king was when Vivienne's water broke.
Gorlois rushed her to Gaius, and soon afterwarsa Nimueh shoved her way into the room and kicked him out. It was the first he'd seen of the witch since she'd performed a good luck ritual on him. The experience had been a strange one; she'd cut off a lock of his hair and filled a small cup with his blood, then held it up over him crying out incomprehensible words in a harsh, commanding voice. It wasn't something he'd repeat if given a choice, but as he'd returned from the battle safely he had no reason to believe the ritual hadn't worked. So with difficulty he stepped out so that she could be there, as her powers would be of more use than him if there were any complications.
Uther joined him outside, and neither of them said anything. Gorlois wondered if he should accuse his king of avoiding him, but all the things he could say sounded to his own ears like a petulant child's accusation. So he said nothing, and Uther in turn said nothing. A part of him was grateful for even silent companionship, and the reassurance behind it that Uther did still care about him, even if they'd grown apart over the years.
Seven hours of silence later, they heard crying from inside. Nimueh opened the door, and though she was facing Gorlois when she spoke he felt as though she was truly addressing the king hovering behind him. "It's a girl."
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"But instead of killing an animal from his own flock or herd,"
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It was shortly after Morgana's first birthday that the Queen announced she was expecting a child. There was a celebratory feast being held in the capital to commemorate the occasion, which Gorlois and his family travelled to attend.
The royal couple were glowing with bliss, but when the king caught his old friend's eye something stiffened in expression. His gaze seemed drawn to where Vivienne stood holding the baby, but as though stung he quickly redirected it back to Gorlois. Gorlois couldn't help but feel the conversation felt fake, more like they were just king and vassal rather than two old friends. Though Ygraine pulled Vivienne aside, rubbing her belly and gushing over little Morgana as they went off for "girl talk", Uther didn't commented on his friend's daughter at all.
Never before had Gorlois felt so ill at ease in the presence of his friend, not even during the time when Uther's jealousy had driven a wedge between them or when he'd been inexplicably avoiding Gorlois. Floundering about for a topic, Gorlois began one that he thought Uther would want to talk about. "It's wonderful news, about this baby. Did Nimueh have anything to do with it?"
Uther stiffened even more, asking sharply, "Why would you think that?"
"Well, you said that Gaius said that… you know."
"You know physicians," Uther forced a laugh. "Always saying things. Gaius is only human; sometimes there are things that go beyond even his great store of knowledge."
Gorlois thought of something Gaius had said to him just after Morgana's birth. He'd been acting curiously unreadable at the time, staring at Vivienne holding the baby like he was searching her soul, when he said that extraordinarily, though over a month premature, Morgana was an average sized, perfectly healthy newborn.
"I guess so." When Uther didn't seem inclined to respond, Gorlois continued on with, "Do you know he called Morgana a miracle? Said in all his years as a physician he'd never seen a premature birth go so well."
Uther's smile looked painful. "Is that so?"
Gorlois continued on, telling him about how many teeth Morgana had and how she had started pulling herself upright against the furniture. Uther's smile remained fixed on his face as though nailed there and unable to pull away, no matter how much it might want to. Soon after he excused himself, and Gorlois didn't see him for the rest of his visit.
On their trip home, Vivienne had confided in him a worry that confused him. "I hope Nimueh knows what she is doing."
"What?" he said, unsure where this out of nowhere topic came from.
"Ygraine told me that Nimueh had her drink from a special cup to make her more fertile. But as a high priestess she must be aware that life cannot come without a death."
Gorlois remembered Uther's denial of Nimueh's involvement. No, not quite denial; he hadn't said explicitly that she wasn't involved. Nonetheless, he'd certainly been implying it. "Are you sure this cup was magical in nature?"
"She enchanted it in front of Ygraine," Vivienne replied, upsetting Gorlois' world on its head. Avoiding him was one thing; after all, they'd inevitably grown apart due to the years and leagues between, both of their attentions demanded by their families and ruling their lands. But why would Uther mislead him so, lying to him in all but words?
Vivienne continued to talk, worrying about who would have to die and if Nimueh had found some kind of loophole, but Gorlois was barely listening to her anymore. He thought and thought, turning the situation around and examining it for answers, but he couldn't find one anywhere in it.
Months passed, and the time grew close for Ygraine to give birth. Gorlois rode out to the city, leaving Vivienne behind in Tintagel to rule in his stead. Uther may have been avoiding him in the days preceding Morgana's birth, but he'd waited with him through the nerve-racking event itself. He felt he owed his friend the same courtesy, regardless of the growing gulf between them.
Ygraine's labour lasted for forty-three hours. During that time Uther paced outside the queen's chambers and Gorlois sat in a chair a servant had brought for him. He offered as much reassurance as he could, but considering Uther thought Gorlois had lost a baby shortly after she was born he wasn't sure how convincing his words were.
At last Gaius and Nimueh opened the door. At the sight of their faces Gorlois worried that the baby hadn't made it, but on a closer look Gaius was holding a tightly wrapped bundle. He handed the baby over to Uther, still solemn faced. "Ygraine named him Arthur."
Uther took the baby, looking as though he feared to hold it wrong. As the youngest child in his own family and his distancing position as king, Gorlois didn't think Uther had many experiences with young children.
Uther looked up from the little face, smiling wider than Gorlois had seen him do since they were very young. "May I see Ygraine?"
Gaius and Nimueh exchanged looks, and Gaius said, "I regret, my lord, that the queen did not fare well in the birthing process. Nimueh and I did all that we could, but unfortunately Queen Ygraine has passed on."
Uther looked like he'd been struck across hard across the head. He stumbled forward a step, then raced into the queen's chambers, knocking hard into Nimueh as he ran. Gorlois reached out a hand to steady her, pulling her back upright. She gave him a thin smile that was there and gone in an instant, then looked anxiously to the closed door of Ygraine's chambers.
It felt like eternity they waited outside, waiting for the door to open and Uther to come forth. Gorlois upturned his mind for the proper condolences to offer, but they all seemed so worthless.
When at last they heard the sound of a latch lifting and the door opened, Uther strode out with tear-streaked cheeks. He had eyes for no one but Nimueh.
"It wasn't supposed to be her." Uther whispered, voice dulled as if his emotions had died with his wife. "Why was it her? She wasn't supposed to die."
Nimueh looked like she wanted nothing more than to disappear into thin air. Nonetheless, despite such magic being within her power, she stood her ground. "I did warn you that the balance of nature must be repaid, a life for a life."
"You never said it would be her! You promised me -" Uther cut off suddenly, and it could have been a trick of the light but for a split second Gorlois thought he saw Uther's eyes flicker over to his.
"The matters of the heart are difficult to predict," she shifted slightly in her posture. For a second she shrank back, but then as if aware of what she'd instinctively done she straightened up, lifting her head and squaring her shoulders. Her voice, though, held the trace of a nervous tremor when she said, "A life for a life cannot be exchanged like a common pebble for a gold nugget. The two lives must have equivalent value, I did tell you."
Something sharpened in Uther's eyes then, his grey orbs reflecting the danger of razor-sharp iron. "You knew," he breathed out, barely more than a whisper but loaded with menace. As he spoke his voice grew stronger, until he was yelling by the end. "You knew it wouldn't work. All this time, you've been filling my ears with words of honey-coated poison, leading me on to think one thing while scheming another!"
"I did no such thing!" Offence and defence warred within her voice. "It's not my fault! If you'd done exactly as I said, then it wouldn't have been her!"
Uther's face was an angry puce colour by now. He took a step forward and thundered into Nimueh's face, "You'd dare blame me! You treacherous little witch, it's your spell that's killed her!"
Nimueh withdrew her head from its proximity to Uther's, but remained rooted where she was. Gorlois was reminded of battle, where to take a step back was a sign that your opponent was overpowering you. "Which I did at your behest!"
"You deceived me!" Uther took a step backwards, calling to the men behind him guarding the door to the queen's room. "Guards! Arrest this enchantress for high treason."
"Treason!" Nimueh scoffed, looking from one guard to the other. She gave in and took a step backwards, then another as the men came towards her. "Is it treason now to fulfil a royal request?"
"Don't play coy; your tricks no longer work on me. I see you now for what you are, witch. Your religion demands a life for a life, well so do I! I, Uther Pendragon, king of Camelot, sentence you to burn at the stake for the crime of regicide."
The guards were holding Nimueh now, much more loosely than they should and looking as though they feared she'd turn them into toads for daring to touch her. Aside from a cursory glance she was paying them no mind, though. Her eyes were boring into Uther, burning with cold hate as he glared right back at her.
Like a solemn vow, Nimueh pronounced six words in Common right before she shouted something unintelligible which resulted in her vanished in front of them in a high column of strong winds. "I will make you regret this."
And for the first time in his life, Gorlois felt fear settle into his very bones at the sight of his old friend Uther. Uther stared at the spot where the priestess had vanished from, and made his own vow of retribution.
"No, it will be you who regrets this."
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"the rich man took the poor man's lamb and killed it and prepared it for his guest."
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It felt like the world was dyed in red. It had been nearly a year now, and all over the country fires burned and the ground was soaked in blood; some magical, some not, and mostly of the innocent. Gorlois looked onto the charred remnant of a village, a dull pain tearing at his chest through the numbing of seeing many similar sights in the course of a single week. The only difference was which design emblazoned on the flag hung from the tallest building: the emblem of Camelot, or the mark of Nimueh.
Today, it was two rustic red lines that jutted and bent to create a diamond shape in the middle, with one red dot like the pupil of an eye peering out from the center. Gorlois pulled out a map with many red dots scattered across it, and added another to it. Then he rolled it up, and continued along the road, following the path of Nimueh's destruction.
Meanwhile, leagues away to the southwest, the siege against the Isle of the Blessed raged on in its drawn out bloodshed. Most of Camelot's troops and most of the priestesses were locked against each other there while more common folks ravaged the countryside around them in pockets of local purges carried out by vigilantes on both sides. With each new attack, the enmity between those with magic and those without only grew stronger.
It was civil war at its ugliest, with no great ideals to aspire for, only a hatred between two groups blown up over one act which hadn't been as terrible as all that followed in its wake. The outcome rested on who would emerge from the siege victorious. If the knights of Camelot, then the non-magical people would receive an army to back up their vigilante acts. If the priestesses of the Isle of the Blessed, then the magical folk would be the ones to receive reinforcements. In either case, it was hard to see how the conflict could end without complete annihilation of one group, now that it had reached such wanton destruction.
Gorlois had one frail hope for how to end this with as little death as possible, and to that end he tracked Nimueh's acts of desolation across the countryside, predicting where she would move next and trying to head her off. After all, Uther had started this war against magic out of deep hatred of her. Perhaps if she could be sacrificed, he could be made to see reason.
What was the life of one woman, compared to the hell on earth Camelot had become?
In a new loop in his belt rested a vial of extracted liquid which rested alongside his sword. The king didn't know of it, and Gorlois had no intention of telling him about his discovery. The king would only put it to use like rat poison to wipe out those Uther considered magical vermin. Gorlois tried to justify his horrifying invention to himself, to prove to himself that he wasn't like Uther. He would only use it this once, and with the massacre of the Eancanah in the earliest months of the Purge it seemed impossible for the formula to ever be recreated.
No matter what he told himself, the weight of the vial was heavy.
Days passed, Gorlois encountered more destroyed villages bearing the mark of Nimueh, and the red dots on his map spoke of a terrifying story: she was en route to Tintagel. Abandoning tracking every detour she made, Gorlois raced on ahead.
Arriving at his home, the first thing he noticed was his guards lying on the ground, with no marks to show for why they'd fallen. He raced through the halls of his manor, ignoring the men lying sprawled on the floor, not bothering to check whether they were unconscious or dead. He threw open the doors of the nursery, and stopped short by what he saw in there.
Vivienne lay sprawled face down on the floor by the crib, her arm reaching out to it. The crib itself was empty. Beside it stood two figures, one short and one tall. Gorlois only dimly registered the blond little girl of about six summers before he focused all his attention on the other woman standing there, holding a limp dark-headed two-year-old in her grasp.
A choked noise tore through his throat against his will, and Gorlois started forwards. Nimueh turned to look at him, a smile like a venomous serpent's snaking its way across her lips. "Shush. You'll wake the baby."
With his daughter at the mercy of a sorceress, Gorlois raised his hands to show they were empty. He continued forward in slow, non-threatening steps, and tried to reason with the woman while still unsure of her motives. "Put Morgana down. She's done nothing to you."
"My, how quick you are to think the worst of me these days." Nimueh smiled at him in cold amusement, taking some kind of pleasure in Gorlois' panic. "I mean no harm to the child. I'm merely doing my youngest initiate a favour."
Gorlois' confusion and distrust must have been apparent, because Nimueh gestured to the little blond girl at her side. The golden haired child blinked up at Gorlois with a complicated expression: intense longing was overlaid with fear and anger and bitterness. Her big brown eyes drew a sharp breath from him. He knew those eyes. Those were his father's eyes, crinkling with mirth or stress depending on the situation, and those were the eyes he saw staring back at him whenever he looked in the mirror.
"I just want my little sister," the little girl implored. Tears glistened in her eyes, her face scrunching up in the single-minded anguish that was so torturous when seen on the face of a young child, particularly one's own. "I've always wanted a family. It's not fair that I can't have one just because you don't want me."
Gorlois felt like he'd been slapped. He opened his mouth to protest, but no words came forth. He and Vivienne had given Morgause up for her safety, but here she was, no safer as a sorceress-in-training than she would have been in Vivienne's vision. She didn't even fit the physical description Vivienne had given, and with dawning horror Gorlois looked from the dark-haired Morgana to the light-headed Morgause.
How could they have been so blind? They'd given up their daughter, and it had been for nothing. She wasn't even the girl in the visions. Morgana was.
"She was ever so insistent," Nimueh purred, enjoying this far too much. Had she always been like this? Or had she been twisted too, the way Uther had, as they fought a bloody war of retribution against each other by murdering people who had nothing to do with their falling out. "And given that magic often runs in families, it seemed to me that a rescue mission for poor little Morgana was in order."
"Let her go," Gorlois repeated, feeling powerless.
He didn't know if this was the right thing to do. According to Vivienne's visions, Morgana would suffer if she stayed. Yet there was no guarantee that she wouldn't suffer if she went; growing up being raised by the spite-driven high priestess as an enemy of Camelot, it seemed likely that Uther would be even more likely to make her life hell if she became Nimueh's apprentice.
They'd been wrong about Vivienne's visions with Morgause. He could not lose another daughter to something that he had never seen, something that he didn't understand, something that had robbed him of six years of one of his daughter's lives and turned her into someone he hadn't recognised when he set eyes on her.
His hand inched towards his belt, and Nimueh just continued smiling, her eyes tracking the motion like she would a mildly irritating fly. "I hear you're on a special mission for the king to kill me. Do you really think that'll solve anything? That it'll end this war? My people will cry out for my vengeance, and Uther will still have no wife. It was his own fault that she died, but he'd rather blame those who weren't even present than face his own guilt. Killing me will solve nothing. Why not join me instead? Your wife is a seer, your daughter a sorceress. It seems to me that we should not be enemies."
The charred remains of towns seared against the back of his eyes, with a flag hung from the tallest building that came in two different insignias. Uther or Nimueh, was there any true difference between them? The Camelot Uther had built had crumbled, and now it was nothing like what they'd dreamed.
But Gorlois had given his solemn oath, as a knight of Camelot. He was bound by his word, no matter that it felt now like a slave master's fetters. His hands closed around the vial in his belt, and in one quick motion he unstoppered it and flung it at Nimueh. The distilled liquid splashed across her face in a spray of viscous yellow-brown. Nimueh screamed and clutched at her face like she'd been burned, and Gorlois felt bile rise in his throat. It hadn't been meant to hurt her – only to drain her magic.
The now powerless priestess lifted her drenched head out of the bed of her hands, looking at him for the first time in true fear. Gorlois steeled himself. He'd stolen her magic, there could be no turning back now. He'd left himself with no choice but to follow through.
Morgause was staring horrified at her injured caretaker. She turned to him, looking at him as though he was a monster. He pulled his sword from its sheath, but took no steps towards Nimueh. He didn't want to see Morgause's face if he made any more overt threats unless he absolutely needed to, and Nimueh had no power left. What harm could she do?
"Lady Nimueh, please, put a stop this madness. I cannot disobey my king. If you'd but turn yourself in, Uther would…"
Nimueh laughed, hysterical in pitch and volume. She didn't even bother addressing the last statement, something that she had already said she didn't believe and that even Gorlois could not swear upon. "Oh this is so touching. Gorlois the faithful, so trusting, forever true to his oaths of fealty." Her voice had burning venom in it, and he knew he'd earned her eternal enmity by sapping her of her strength. She spoke now with no other motive than to cut him, and cut him deep. "Let me tell you something; Uther isn't worth one shred of loyalty, least of all from you. You of all people shouldn't put your trust in that man."
Something cold prickled at his back, while Nimueh smiled daggers at him like she knew a highly unpleasant joke at his expense. She was just feigning, trying to unsettling him and make him doubt, to turn him against the king to get back at Uther for what he had put her and her kind through. She had to be.
"Why?" Still, Gorlois's mouth formed one single word in response, ignoring the logic inside his mind.
Nimueh's smile stretched unpleasantly, and she cooed sickeningly, "It's. a. seeee. cret. You see, I promised the king I wouldn't tell, and I keep my word. Let me just tell you something, though. Uther begged me to give him an heir, but to create life out of nothing is not in my power. The balance of the world must be maintained, that is the very foundation of magic itself, the first Command of the Old Religion. For there to be life, there must be death. I told him this."
"And Ygraine died."
Nimueh practically purred, "Oh, but it wasn't supposed to be her, was it? Uther would never intend to sacrifice his beloved wife. Yet Uther knew for his line to continue, someone close to him must die. A life for a life, you understand, cannot be exchanged lightly: the life taken must be of equivalent value or more to the life given to the person requesting the trade."
Something was pressing at the back of his mind, insistently bringing forth memories of Uther's odd behaviour in the months before Arthur's birth, and even going so far back as the year before, when Morgana had been born. He tried to shove them back, but sometimes once a lid has been opened what has been spilled forth cannot be put back.
Uther, never truly meeting his eyes. How he never asked about little Morgana, didn't seem to want to hear anything about his best friend's pride and joy. His obvious avoidance of his purported best friend, the strained silence between them where there used to be easy comradery, Uther's attempt to mislead him into thinking Nimueh had nothing to do with Ygraine's pregnancy…
Something in his expression must have betrayed his treacherous thoughts, for Nimueh said, "Already getting an idea of where this is going? It would be far too convenient if a random stranger could be used as a substitute. Did you never wonder why every High Priest or Priestess doesn't use this spell to keep their loved ones alive? The spell was specifically designed so that the requester be made aware of the price of their actions, so that the life taken could not merely be an unknown face, easily brushed off and put out of mind. Parents willing to sacrifice a stranger to save their son would think twice if the sacrifice was their daughter. And so the safety condition to guard the power of life from being abused is that the two lives must evoke equally strong emotions in the requester. A random stranger for a random stranger, a distant relative for a vague acquaintance…"
"And a best friend for a son." Gorlois murmured.
Nimueh laughed, "That is certainly a possibility."
"But is it true? Was Uther planning to sacrifice me?!"
"Oh, but I promised I wouldn't tell. 'You must swear to never tell Gorlois,' Uther told me, and I did. You wouldn't want me to break my word to the king, now would you? Still, I assure you…" She suddenly flung Morgana at him. Panicking, Gorlois dropped his sword and caught the child. "… the answer is right in front of your eyes."
A scrambling sound came from beside him. Nimueh had taken the sword while he was distracted. Morgause followed after her as they ran out the door, shutting it behind them. Gorlois put Morgana down and tried to open it, but it had been blocked off. It took him fifteen minutes to break down the door, and when he did he found that Nimueh had used his sword as a bolt. He grabbed it and chased through the halls, eyes peeled for the sight of them.
He came upon his stables, wide open and with his best horse missing. If he listened carefully, through the unnatural quiet of the manor he could hear the sound of hooves like thunder on the horizon – Nimueh and Morguase were gone. He saddled another horse and pursued, but came back empty-handed.
Later, Gorlois would receive news that the Isle of the Blessed had fallen that day, as if the wards protecting it had suddenly been leached of their strength. Uther's forces broke through into the Isle itself, and though the priestess fought ferociously it was clear that they hadn't been prepared for an open attack. There were heavy casualties to Camelot's armies, but in the end it was the priestesses who lay slaughtered in their own home, with not one left alive.
Gorlois would never be able to lay aside the burden of all the deaths on that sacred Isle, for it could be no coincidence that the wards failed the same day he'd robbed the High Priestess of her magic.
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The king was furious.
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The years passed, and Gorlois watched Vivienne slowly die a little more each day. She had never reached a full recovery from the sharp decline in her health following his campaign on the Northern Plains, though she'd done better for a while. Then her visions had begun to come true with the advent of the Great Purge, and Gorlois for the first time felt first hand the hopelessness of the seers, always seeing the future yet never being able to prevent it.
Vivienne could no longer sleep for more than an hour or two at a time. She'd been torn from the one shield she had against her visions at the very start of the Purge, when Uther demanded she swear an oath to renounce all magic and give up the healing bracelet Nimueh had gifted to her. Some of her dreams were visions of awful happenings in the futures of Morgana and others of her kind. Her other dreams she would not describe to him.
It was in the winter of Morgana's fifth year, when the seasonal sickness hit hard, that Gorlois feared he would truly lose his wife this time. She was one of the first to contract the illness, and it continued strengthening its foothold in her long after others had recovered. She no longer had the strength to resist even the common cold.
Gorlois had always imagined that when Vivienne was dying she'd be like a flower withering with the passage of time, retaining her beauty though it began to fade at the edges. Instead she was like a fruit tree that had was being eaten away by some great worm, with less and less green growing back with each season and with no fruits coming forth at all. A show of majesty and strength that was only skeletal in appearance, for beneath that steady frame lay a rot that had no easy cure. She was hollow now, and the lightest of ill-winds would be enough to blow her over.
He brought her to Camelot, where Gaius was, hoping for a recovery like she'd had five years before. This time, though, the change in scene did nothing to ease the strain on her body. After much pleading on Gorlois' part, Uther returned the bracelet, but it would appear it was too little, too late. Insomnia and sickness had ravaged Vivienne's body, and no amount of magic-induced rest would be able to heal her now.
Gaius told him she had weeks left to live, if that.
One day, she'd woken from her magical sleep and asked him to take her out to the forest, insisting that she must make the journey. She would not be dissuaded, so Gorlois carried her there. The woman who'd once journeyed tirelessly for weeks on end day from a tower to an army encampment now could not sit up unassisted long enough to ride half a league on horseback.
When he reached the cover of the trees he saw why she'd been insistent on coming. A young girl, no longer so tiny but not yet near full-grown, stood there. Her long tresses gleamed gold in the afternoon sun, and her brown eyes sparkled with emotions too entwined for names.
"Mother," she said. Her voice was squeezed with pain, and yet such yearning. She looked as though she wanted to spirit Vivienne away when she reached her arms out to her like a small child wanting to be comforted.
She made no move forwards though, glancing warily at Gorlois, the man who'd sired her and crippled her mentor. He for that matter, no matter how much he might long to, could not welcome her unconditionally. "Where's Nimueh?"
"Sequestered in a sacred place, meditating to restore her magic." Bitterness twisted Morgause's features. Gorlois could not pretend that his daughter was looking at him with anything other than stark hatred. "Do not worry; it will be many years before she can regain what you so cruelly stripped from her."
She could easily be lying, Gorlois chose to believe her. He had to believe that his daughter was not beyond hope, raised by an embittered revenge-driven sorceress though she may be; he had to believe she had goodness within her. She had to; they'd driven her to this. However Morgause turned out, it would be his and Vivienne's doing, so he had to believe that there was hope for her.
He lowered Vivienne onto the ground, leaning her against a tree, and backed away. Morgause hesitantly came forwards, like she thought she might be turned away. Vivienne held out her arms, and Morgause's pace quickened with surety. They embraced, and Gorlois wandered so that he was within calling distance, but not visible.
Morgause had made it clear in very few words that he was not welcome to intrude upon this reconciliation between mother and child.
The topmost leaves of the trees glistened with the light of the descending sun when he heard Vivienne's weak voice calling him back. Morgause was gone, and he noticed she was not the only thing missing.
Vivienne followed his gaze to her wrist, now bare of the bracelet which had been prolonging her life for precious few more weeks. "I gave it to Morgause as a keepsake. So she won't doubt again that her mother loves her."
Vivienne died two days after that. The night before she did, she called for Gorlois one last time. She asked Gaius to take Morgana and leave them to speak in private. Once he'd done so, she looked deep into Gorlois' eyes and said, "There is something I must tell you."
He held her hands, waiting for her to gather her breath to speak. "First, you must give me your word that no matter what you hear, you will care for Morgana."
"She's my daughter too," he said, trying to smile. He wasn't sure he succeeded.
Vivienne squeezed his hands. "Please, promise me."
"You have my solemn oath."
Vivienne's hands relaxed. "I asked you once about your visit home during your campaign on the Northern Plains. Do you remember?"
It took him a moment to recall what she was talking about. "You mean that dream you had?"
She shook her head. "No. It was real. I saw you, I touched you."
If she wasn't so frail now then Gorlois would have again shot down her fancies. His unbelief must have been written upon his face, for she continued more forcefully. "When you told me you had not come, I asked the guards. They all saw you pass by that night. You came late at night, when the moon was already high in the sky, and you told them you were too tired to be questioned and asked to be led up to my rooms."
Her eyes grew distant like she was many years away from him. Whatever she was seeing, it did not look pleasant. Like a ghost, it stalked her, haunting her for five years afterwards when the rest of the world had moved on, so much so that on her deathbed it was her foremost thought.
"I was lonely, so lonely. When I saw my husband returned to me, I was so overjoyed at his unexpected homecoming that like a fool I asked no questions, though reason should have warned me that you were in many hundreds of leagues away. I led the man who had come home to me to bed, and greeted him as a wife should. When I awoke the next day, he was gone like the wisps of a wonderful dream, chased away by the rising of the sun."
She swallowed, her chest rising and falling in laboured breathing. "Then, weeks later, when you returned in truth you opened my eyes to what I had been blind to at the time. I was too ashamed to speak up. I wanted to leave it behind like, to forget it like the cloud of a thunderstorm dispersed after the torrent has fallen. Then, a few weeks into my self-deception, I felt movement in my womb. I was so afraid."
Of what, burned in his throat. He could not speak the words, but oh how they longed to get out. He wanted to hear the answer, and he didn't, because she could only have been afraid of him. Any punishment for infidelity, any scorn she and the babe would have incurred would have had to have come from him, directly or no; if he didn't speak up no one would assume the child wasn't his.
What had she feared? That he would have her executed for adultery? That he'd drown the child in the well? That he'd forever despise her for one night of carelessness?
Whatever it was she thought he'd do, it had prompted her to enact a more active deception than pure silence. He could still remember her leading him upstairs to the master bedroom. She'd blocked the door and demanded he first tell her something only the two of them knew before she'd let him continue onwards to bed, where she'd used an act of love as to mask the secret eating away at her.
So much fell in place with her confession. Gorlois felt numb. He'd been living with Vivienne for five years without suspecting there was a great gulf grown between them. His wife had been an actress playing herself, and praying it would all return to as it was so that the play became reality. For five years she hadn't trusted him, and now it was only the urgency of her impending death that dragged the truth from her lips.
"Please, I cannot bear if I die and you…" she closed her eyes, tears leaking out the corners and tracing a trail down to her hair, sprawled out on the pillow beneath her. "Can you forgive me?"
She looked so pitiful. She lay there on the threshold of death, using the last whispers of life left in her to confess an awful secret. Her hand was tense in his, and her whole body was braced as if for a fatal blow.
Gorlois swallowed down the questions and betrayal clogging his throat. She'd told him now; that had to count for something. It had to. "It wasn't your fault. I forgive you."
She didn't open her eyes after that, but some of the tension left her posture. Her breathing evened out, and he wiped the tears from her face. She leaned into his touch, and his heart ached for what they'd once had. Selfishly, he wished she hadn't told him. He wished she'd taken the secret to her grave, and that he could mourn her as the perfect wife he'd thought she was.
Another part of him was glad that she'd told him, that they hadn't grown so far apart without his realising that she'd let them part forever without laying herself bare before him. She hadn't trusted him, but she'd loved him. He would have to remember that.
She relaxed, her hand going limp in his touch. He stayed with her the night, sitting in silent vigil. In the morning, she didn't wake.
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"As surely as the Lord lives," he vowed, "any man who would do such a thing deserves to die!"
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The older she grew, the more Morgana resembled her mother in miniature. After the pain of the revelation had dulled, Gorlois could wholehearted claim to love her as his own. Whoever her father was, he gave little in the shape of her face, her curling dark hair, or her eyes which swung between pale blue and green depending on the lighting. It was easy to love the daughter of his beloved wife, even if she shared no blood with him.
Gorlois didn't tell Morgana about Vivienne's revelation. It would crush her to know that they were not truly father and daughter, and no child should have to question the integrity of their dead mother. It twinged at his conscious now and again with a whispered accusation of the word hypocrite, but he managed to brush it aside each time. He would not tarnish Vivienne's memory by bringing to light an affair better left forgotten.
Yet no matter how he might want to, he could not shelter her from all the cruelties of the world. A fortnight after Vivienne's passing, Morgana began to have nightmares. Gorlois ordered strong sleeping draughts from Gaius, terrified the little girl would go the same way as her mother, and for a while these eased her sleep.
But they didn't always stop her night terrors. On late nights when he stroked his sobbing daughter's hair and murmuring soothing nothings, the dreams she confided to him in between sniffles raised the hair on the back of his neck. Morgana, it would appear, had inherited more from her mother than looks.
He knew he had to tell her sometime that her dreams were more than dreams, but he couldn't bring himself to do it when she was so young and frightened. When she woke up at night afraid that her nightmares were reality, how could he tell her that she was right?
The seasons passed in their dance, and as Morgana grew her prescriptions had to come in dosages stronger and more frequent. Gorlois helped her nursemaid put her to bed every night, trying to bring the little girl as little stress as possible in the hopes that it would ease her dreams. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn't.
He couldn't bear to lose Morgana too, to the stake or to lack of sleep. She was the last remnant of his shattered family, and he clung to her like a drowning man to a rock. He indulged her too much, perhaps, teaching her things that he loved like swordcraft and strategy. The elements of her education he found dull, which were virtually all of the more ladylike things she should be schooled in, he neglected. Her nursemaid Hedra did her best with that side of things, but she'd once been Gorlois' nurse. She was getting on in years, and she had no experience with female charges.
Still, in spite of her lopsided and spotty education, in Gorlois' opinion there was no finer little lady in the realm. Every year on her birthday he held a massive feast, inviting all the tenants of the land to come celebrate.
On her seventh birthday, the king himself came, to everybody's great surprise. Once, Gorlois would have been delighted to see his old friend. Now, Uther burned witches, and Gorlois had a multitude of reasons to think that his daughter would one day be made to suffer because of him. It was his turn, it would seem, to be the host with the strained smile who was trying his best to pretend there was nothing between him and his best friend.
The day passed slowly, torturously so, and Gorlois hovered behind Morgana the whole time anxiously watching Uther. He thought the man would get bored half-way through and nudge young Prince Arthur off to go play with her, leaving him and Gorlois to catch up. The first part he did, but after Arthur and Morgana had been introduced he stood to the side watching silently with a strange smile on his face.
Even when Morgana bested Arthur in a mock duel with wooden swords, Uther's reaction wasn't disapproval of a girl learning the ways of the sword. Nor was it disappointment in his son being bested by a girl, albeit an older girl who stood a head taller than him, or any of the other negative response Gorlois was half-expecting. Instead, Uther laughed – clear and joyous and unshadowed, like he had when they were young, or at his and Ygraine's wedding.
"She's just like her father," he said to himself with a snort of amusement, soft enough that he hadn't intended Gorlois to overhear.
Uther's proud tone made Gorlois look at him anew, a sneaking suspicion creeping unbidden through his mind. Once those words would have seemed innocent to him. Now, he was hyperaware that a statement like that could well be a double entendre.
He turned towards the children, with fresh eyes watching them squabble like two siblings, and tried to shove the ugly doubts into the recesses of his mind. He was careful to distract himself all day, watching Uther and Morgana and making sure nothing incriminating happened to reveal her nightmares to him.
At night, though, when everyone had retired to bed and he was left alone in his too big room with his dark thoughts, he could repress his suspicions no longer.
Vivienne had slept with a man bearing his face. It was possible he had a doppelgänger or secret twin wandering the wilderness out there, but it was far more likely to have been someone enchanted to appear as him. All his sources of information on magic were burned, and he hadn't wanted to ask Gaius about something this personal so he had no idea how such spells worked.
But now that his suspicions had been stirred, he couldn't help but remember that Nimueh had taken some blood and hair from him only a few months before. She'd performed an act of magic on him; had that truly been a good luck ritual? Old memories came pouring forth, and he recalled Nimueh trying to convince Vivienne to stay in the capital for the duration of his campaign. Her mocking words about how he, of all people, owed no loyalty towards Uther.
She hadn't answered his question about whether he was whom the king had intended to sacrifice in return for an heir, despite doing her best to cut him down with words. Was it really a promise to a man she despised staying her tongue, or had it been because he'd guessed wrongly?
She hadn't confirmed it. Instead, she'd thrown Morgana at him.
The answer is right in front of your eyes.
He'd been so blind. She'd been speaking literally; the one in front of him was the one Uther had intended to sacrifice. Hidden within Nimueh's words was the key to all the mysteries Uther wanted locked away.
A daughter for a son, Nimueh had said. That had been her first example, the first thing that had come to her mind. Because that was what she had attempted, a daughter for a son.
That's why Nimueh had told Uther if he'd done exactly as she said, then it wouldn't have been Ygraine who died. Emotional closeness, that's what Nimueh had said the spell depended on, and she must have urged Uther to spend more time with his intended victim. It wasn't enough to sacrifice a daughter for a son, one must first love the daughter equal to the son. Uther had made no attempt to bond with Morgana, or even to see her until today. He hadn't valued his illegitimate daughter as highly as the heir conceived through the woman he loved, and the powers of the old religion therefore hadn't been satisfied by the trade. Ygraine had paid the price for Uther and Nimueh's cold-blooded planning. They had thought things out so well, but they hadn't been able to force Uther's heart to love.
When Uther accused Nimueh of breaking her word, he'd glanced at Gorlois and cut off what he was going to say. He hadn't wanted to give away anything about his plans in front of his old friend whom he'd wronged with them. That's why Uther had been avoiding him before Morgana was born; he'd plagued by the guilt of his betrayal. That's why he'd been there at the event itself; he wanted to be sure his sacrificial lamb lived long enough to be placed on the metaphorical altar.
A quick round of mentally arranging dates and doing some math placed Morgana as being exactly one year and nine months older than Arthur. That made her precisely a year old when he was conceived – old enough that cot death would have been surprising. They waited until they could be reasonably sure their sacrifice would survive until the time they needed her before enchanting Ygraine – that's why so much time had passed between Nimueh's appointment and Ygraine's pregnancy. Once Morgana had lived through her first winter, they'd taken their chances she would live for nine more months.
Betrayal and horror and doubt fought within him. He wanted to discard it all as madness, brought on by too much stress and too much paranoia, but it all fell so neatly in place. It explained so much that Gorlois had never found any other explanation for.
Gorlois spent hours of debating with himself, weighing facts and impressions and trying to find some other answer to all the mysteries surrounding Morgana and Ygraine's death that didn't tie the two together. In the wee hours of the morning, he gave up. He could think of no other explanation for the information at his hand.
He closed his eyes, giving in to the horrifying puzzle he'd pieced together, and questioned why.
Why him? Why Vivienne? If Uther wanted to create a sacrificial child, why do it with his best friend's wife?
Because she was beautiful? Because he'd been attracted to her once? Because as a noblewoman she was less likely to lose the child due to poor conditions? Because he thought it would be easier to impersonate his old friend than a virtual stranger? Because the illegitimate child being his friend's stepdaughter made her automatically closer to Uther?
Why had Uther come to Morgana's birthday party, if he had no love for her?
Why had Uther done it at all? Had Uther truly changed so much from the boy who'd been friends with Gorlois, who dreamed of a future of honour and justice, that he'd devise such a despicable plan?
Gorlois had never been comfortable with the idea that Uther had intended to sacrifice someone for his heir, especially when he'd been torn with doubt over whether he was meant to be that sacrifice, but he'd always had the fallback that maybe Uther hadn't understood the consequences properly. He hadn't expected Ygraine to die, that Gorlois was certain of, so perhaps he hadn't realised the sacrifice had to be a human being. Perhaps he'd thought it could be a goat or cow or pig, just something so that Gorlois could look at him without his image being soiled by his intended murder of an innocent for his own gain.
But even then, even the intention to let a stranger die was infinitely preferable to this betrayal of everything Gorlois held dear – the Knight's Code of honour, the bonds between a king and vassal, between husband and wife, between two friends who'd helped each other through death and war together. How could anyone be so selfish as to trample over all that? How could Uther, who Gorlois had always counted as his closest friend, even after they'd drifted apart over the years?
He lay there all night, asking questions of the world and gaining no more insight in reply.
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"He must repay four lambs to the poor man for the one he stole and for having no pity!"
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Two years and some months after Gorlois had stopped considering the king his friend, Uther paid him another visit. Gorlois was due to ride out to war the next day, and he was none too happy that Uther was there to sour his farewells with his mere presence.
He schooled his face and invited the king to dine with him, no doubt upsetting the servants as they scrambled to find food fit for a king on such short notice at a time when they were only half-way through preparing dinner. Uther sat across from him sipping at the wine they'd been brought and idly plucking grapes from the fruit bowl. No other food had come yet. Gorlois waited for Uther to explain why he was here, uninterested in small chat with the man, sipping at his own glass.
The last time he'd drunk with Uther it had been a moment of bonding. This time, it was because he couldn't stand to be in the king's presence without the relaxation alcohol offered. He'd told the servants to bring up the strongest brew in his cellars.
"I've been thinking," Uther began at length, looking uncomfortable to be the one breaking the tense silence. "While you're away, it would be nice for Morgana to stay at court."
The metal engravings on the goblet dug into Gorlois' fingers as his grip tightened, but otherwise he kept himself from reacting in anger. "No."
Uther looked thrown off, like he hadn't expected to be refused, or if he had not so monosyllabically. "Wouldn't she be lonely here, on her own?" Uther pressed with the air of one who'd straightened out his arguments in advance. "In the citadel she'd be surrounded by young noblewomen her own age. As my personal guest, she'd lack for nothing. She'll be nearly ten soon, beginning to leave childhood behind to become a lady. And what better place for her to learn to be a lady than at the royal court itself? I swear I'll treat her like a princess, look after her as though she were my own daughter…"
Gorlois, suddenly unable to stay silent, laughed at that. It was a horrid guttural noise, more like a choke than a laugh, and it coloured his next words with spat out bitterness. "Oh well I suppose that mustering up paternal affection for her shouldn't be too difficult for you, though no one would know it from how you've ignored her existence for these past ten years!"
Uther stared at him in shock, opening his mouth to perhaps ask a question or maybe to rebuke Gorlois' insubordination. Whatever he meant to say Gorlois cut him off with, "No, damn it, I was content to let sleeping dragons lie but if you want to drag them out from underneath the rug then by all means, allow me to assist you my liege!"
Gorlois slammed his goblet onto the table, the slight buzz of intoxication under his skin serving as both warning and fuel to the overflowing locked away words straining to escape him. "What better place to start than the beginning, so let's start there, shall we? So first off, you had an affair with my wife – " Uther made a noise as though he had swallowed a fishbone, but Gorlois didn't stop there, the words pouring out over him as though they were red hot ember he could no longer hold, "utterly betraying both myself and Ygraine, who have both shown you nothing but steadfast loyalty!"
Gorlois held up two shaking fingers. "Secondly, when the fruit of this illicit tryst came to be you utterly ignored her existence, either too ashamed or cowardly to check on your own child. Tell me, do you know what colour her eyes were when she was born, what order her baby teeth came in, what her first word was? Make no mistake, I am Morgana's father, not you, no matter if it was you who sired her!"
A third finger joined the other two. "Thirdly," he said in a dangerous voice, shaking with long locked away rage. "You are the one who took her mother from her so young. Because of you, the only thing Morgana remembers of her mother is wordless lullabies and soft hands stroking her hair!"
Uther said nothing, his mouth slightly open in either shock at Gorlois' knowledge or horror at the end of their friendship or perhaps some other emotion.
There was more he could say, so much more he could accuse Uther of. He could ask how he could have intended to sacrifice his own flesh and blood. He could point out that Ygraine's death had been his own fault. He could expose just how much of a hypocrite Uther truly was by using magic and then blaming Nimueh when she'd delivered exactly what she said she would: someone he loved living and someone he loved dying.
But Gorlois was going away soon, and Uther's paternal instincts manifested in a rather selective manner. As much as he wanted, no, needed to accuse him of all he'd done wrong, he'd be leaving Morgana behind with an irate king who'd be questioning how aware she was of his insufficiencies. The last person who'd accused Uther of being responsible for Ygraine's death had lost everything she had at his hands. He would not let his anger rob him of his loved ones by making the same mistake as Nimueh.
So instead, Gorlois poured all the hatred from his unspoken accusations into his next words. "And you have the gall to ask me to give up MY daughter to you after all this!"
Gorlois' chair scrapped against the floor, and he stalked out of the room, trembling with rage. He went to his chambers and paced, going to sleep late. The next morning when he saw Uther again, they didn't speak except to go over the battle plans one last time.
After Gorlois turned to go, however, he stopped at the door. "Uther? If something should happen to me, look after Morgana, will you?"
There was a pause, as if Uther couldn't quite believe the change in Gorlois' attitude. Gorlois didn't look at him. The idea of Uther with Morgana made his skin crawl, not in the least because of Vivienne's dire visions. But an orphaned noble girl was dependant on a benefactor until she reached the age of majority, in which case she'd likely be auctioned off by her guardian to the highest bidder, while the men split her land between them.
Uther, as Morgana's sire, at least owed her a debt of love and protection. He hadn't done his duty to fulfll it until too late, but he'd made the offer. Gorlois was going to war for the first time in many years, and he was no longer as young as he once was. He needed to consider the possibility that he didn't come back.
"You have my word."
Gorlois nodded, and left. He'd never completely trust Uther again but, for all his faults, Uther had not yet broken an explicit promise. If he said he'd look after Morgana, he would.
Months later, when Gorlois watched the road south for reinforcements that never came, he'd go to his grave wondering if the war would have gone the same way, had he not dangled temptation in front of the king.
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Then the prophet said to the king, "You are that man!"
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Gaius, you don't understand. There's something you should know. Something I've told no one. Morgana is my daughter. It was while Gorlois was away… He was fighting on the Northern Plains. Her mother, Vivienne, grew lonely.
I understand, Sire.
I've said enough. The people must never know who Morgana really is, for Arthur's sake.
I assure you, Sire, your secret is safe with me.
His hands clasping hers burned even though leather gloves protected her from touching his bare skin, and when he brought them to his lips in a display of paternal affection her skin crawled. The faint moisture on her knuckles was repulsive to her, and it took all her willpower not to push him away from her with a touch of gold in her eyes when he repositioned her back on her lush cushions to rest as he turned to leave.
As soon as the door closed behind him she called for a basin and washcloth, dismissing Gwen again right away as she set about scrubbing the touch of Uther off her skin. She turned her hands over and over in the water until they were pink, and she wondered if she was trying to wash herself until she bled and then try to clean the filth out of her blood itself.
Her blood. Uther's blood. Uther's blood ran through her body, and the very thought made her feel violated.
Uther had locked her up like a songbird in a gilded cage, doomed to watch her people's execution from her ornate windows while her pleas and accusations fell on deaf ears. With that, he'd taken her freedom from her.
Uther had told her every day, whether in words or through his actions, that she was a monster. He made her feel disgusted and ashamed of herself and threw a barrier between her and everyone she knew. She'd frozen screaming in her bed while her curtains went up in flames, and again when she'd shattered her possessions, not just because she was afraid for her safety but because she was afraid of the force sleeping within her. She'd been afraid of herself. He'd taken her self-worth from her, and only after being saved by his enemies had she been able to reclaim it.
But this… Uther had taken her past from her. He'd already ruined her present and her future – unless she took a stand against him and molded the future herself, which she wholeheartedly intended to – and now she did not even have her childhood to think back on for comfort.
Not only that, but he'd taken her very self from her. With a few careless words spoken when he was sure she could not hear he'd taken all of who she was and torn the fabric of Morgana le Fay into unrecognizable scraps. There was no Morgana le Fay, because Gorlois le Fay was not her father.
Uther was her father.
She thought she might be sick.
In the faint treasured memories of a woman taken from her before she was old enough to understand why, soft hands stroked her hair and sang her a lullaby in a sweet voice. Her mother, whom she'd never known herself but knew from stories her father had told her. How could she believe now that her mother was loving and good and brave when she'd slept with Uther?
Uther had tainted her mother beyond redemption. Morgana would never again be able to think of her without thinking of how she'd betrayed the man who raised her for ten years.
She'd never be able to call Gorlois her father again. All the times he'd smoothed her hair and rubbed her back until she fell asleep again, all the times he'd praised the lopsided and wilted flower chains she made for him as though they were finely crafted gold, all the times he held out a hand to pick her up after she'd fallen in the swords training practice no other nobleman would have agreed to give his daughter … all of her happy childhood memories were lies. He'd been deceived; the little girl he doted on was nothing but a cuckoo.
She despised Uther for leaving Gorlois to love and raise a daughter who wasn't his. She hadn't deserved his love when who she was was a lie. But her own true father refused to take responsibility for his sins of adultery and left her to be a burden on a man who had no obligation to raise her.
For Arthur's sake. Her sire's words rang tauntingly in her ears. She was to be passed off and disowned not to save Uther's best friend's name, or her own, or even her mother's, but for Arthur's sake. An illegitimate daughter did not usually score above a legitimate son in a succession debate, even if she was older, but there were always exceptions. So for Arthur's sake she could not be acknowledged.
Morgana only then realized that, despite what she'd believed, she had never truly hated Arthur. Not even when Morgause revealed to her the hypocritical nature of Arthur's birth, nor his disregard for the sins his father had committed in it. Uther brainwashed Arthur for years, after all, and it hurt her to think if only Arthur had been raised by a different man they could have still been friends. Arthur had a good heart, and if he hadn't been bound to Uther by blood and duty, believing every word pouring forth from the devil's mouth, then he might have been her ally in the fight for justice and freedom. And though her plans included his death she'd mourned him when she'd chosen her path because he'd been like a brother to her.
He was her brother.
And for that, now she truly hated him.
All the lies of her life were for Arthur's sake, to make sure that he never had anything but sunshine and roses in his. When had Arthur been kept awake at night because he feared dreaming, or because he was worrying about being handed over by his friends to be executed by a man who professed to love him? When had Arthur ever clutched his throat, gasping for air, and then looked up into the face of the one person he'd thought was his true friend and realized he'd been betrayed? When had Arthur mourned the death of anyone he counted as family, or felt alone and kinless when all that time that too was a lie?
She'd been living under the same roof as her father and brother all this time, but she'd been kept from knowing this and left to believe that she was an orphan with no family left to her in the world, while across the table from her sat her own flesh and blood who had no problem acknowledging their relationship to the world.
Arthur was dead to her now in the way that Uther was dead to her, no matter that logically she knew Arthur had no more say in Uther's decision than she had. It was illogical, she knew, but this was the final straw for her. She had been sacrificed so that Arthur could lead as privileged a life as possible, so no one could blame her if she blamed him for it.
Morgana took her hands out of the water, pink and chafed and they still itched with the sensation of Uther's gloved touch and his blood running under her skin. She'd thought Uther could do no more to her to make her despise him than she already did for the brutality he committed against her people. She'd been wrong. This might not be his most bloody deed, nor his most callous act, but this was personal.
Uther must pay for this.
Her revenge would be cruel, it would be twisted, it would be underhanded, and the Triple Goddess strike her down if she didn't make his eyes fill with despair and heartbreak as he looked into her face and saw only hatred while she brought his doom upon him. She didn't care that longing to inflict suffering was considered evil. What else could be expected from her?
"I am his daughter, after all."
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* Uther's backstory is pretty much transplanted from the legends, only turning Vortigern into a sorcerer so that the general populace had a good reason to hate magic.
* Aurelius meeting Merlin is a reference to chapter 12 of my other Merlin fanfiction, Destiny Veiled. For those of you who aren't reading it, they met when the evil King Vortigern caused a mini apocalypse by dragging a nine-year-old Merlin several decades into the past in a badly thought through plan to use him as a blood sacrifice to build Dinas Emrys. Destiny Veiled is AU, but Dinas Emrys is a real place and legend has it Vortigern did try to sacrifice child Merlin to build it. So in my headcanon something similar happened to canon!Merlin.
* The story of Morgana's birth is meant to mirror the story of Arthur's birth in the legends. Uther wants to sleep with Gorlois' wife, a user of magic disguises him as Gorlois, and under this disguise he rapes her. Except Gorlois' wife is Vivienne instead of Igraine, the sorcerer is Nimueh instead of Merlin, Gorlois doesn't die for several more years, and the child conceived through adultery is Morgana instead of Arthur. Hey, if the Lancelot-Guinevere affair was due to necromancy and a bracelet, then I can revise the crap out of Uther's affair with Gorlois' wife, especially since the snippets of canon backstory don't fit the legends unless you take extreme liberties with them.
* The idea behind this story came to me in a while ago fit of towering anti-Uther rage.
* You can say that Uther's horrible slaughter of sorcerers was due to his unfortunate life experiences and his indifference towards the lot of individuals among the lower class a consequence of his upbringing, but Morgana's existence is inexcusable. People seem to want to brush the affair under the rug with "I'm sure it was after Ygraine died" but to me that only clears up half his guilt.
* Imagine if Arthur and Freya both lived, and Merlin married her. Now imagine that Arthur had an affair with Freya behind Merlin's back. Does it really matter whether or not Gwen was alive when it happened?
* I wasn't so enraged when I first found out in The Crystal Cave, but rewatching earlier episodes I noticed Uther's glowing praises of "Morgana's father" and the amused smirk he has as he preens his own feathers. Who cheats with his best friend's wife and then amuses himself by pretending to praise said (now dead) friend whilst actually stroking his own ego? He's not the least bit repentant about any of it!
* For anyone who doesn't get the title, Uriah is a man in the Bible who is most notable in that he was the husband of Bathsheba. For those of you who still don't get the reference:
* Long ago in Israel, King David had a loyal soldier named Uriah. While Uriah was off fighting for David, David impregnated Uriah's wife Bathsheba. To cover up the scandal, he summoned Uriah back from war. But Uriah refused to sleep with Bathsheba while his fellow soldiers were dying. So David sent Uriah to the front line and then purposefully sacrificed it. Then he added Bathsheba to his massive harem. God was incredibly pissed off by all this, so He sent a prophet to tell David an allegorical story, then dish out a proclamation of divine judgement.
**/