Chapter 1: Tales of the King

I had never known my father.

My mother, Queen Guinevere of Camelot, tells me that his name was Arthur, and that he died before I was born. She named me Amhar, but sometimes, in private, she calls me Little Arthur with a fond look in her eyes.

Uncle Merlin has never called me that. He calls me Little Dragon as often as he calls me by my name, or rather he did until I grew old enough to protest the "little." He still calls me Dragon. Some days I think he does it on purpose because he knows it rather annoys me.

Neither Mother nor Uncle Merlin ever tire of telling me stories about Father. As far back as I can remember, Mother's bedtime stories were all of my brave, noble father, King Arthur of Camelot. Sometimes she tells me about her brother, Elyan, who was a great knight, or her father, Tom, the blacksmith, but mostly she tells me about Father.

Mother's stories of him and Uncle Merlin's are different. Mother usually calls him "your father;" Uncle Merlin almost always calls him "Arthur." Mother tells me about a king who was brave and fearless in the face of danger, who was unafraid to love a serving maid. Uncle Merlin's stories involve magic and often sound more like my imagination than reality, but he also tells me about a king whom he served with his life, who was a prat and slowly learned to listen, who would do anything for his people.

Between the two of them, and the tidbits Uncle Leon and Uncle Percival tell me at random times, I slowly piece together the picture of who my father was.

Uncle Merlin never told me stories about my father until I was several winters old. He would tell me random tidbits, but he never gave long stories like Mother did. Without meaning to, I nearly walked in on an argument between him and Mother on this topic one night.

"You have to tell him about Arthur!" Mother says fiercely. I can hear her voice from where I froze in the hall when I first caught the sound of raised voices. "You knew him better and longer than any of the rest of us, and Amhar deserves to know everything there is to know about him."

"I know that, Gwen," Merlin retorts. "I know. But I never told the truth of my stories to Arthur."

There is a hushed silence; then, "He deserved to know first," Merlin says, so very quietly I can barely understand.

Mother's voice, when she speaks next, is very gentle and sad. "I wish there had been time for him to know," she says, "but maybe in telling Amhar you can finally tell the truth?"

I couldn't understand, and I was bored, and clearly neither Mother nor Uncle Merlin had time for me right then, so I wandered off to find Uncle Leon.

The next night, though, Uncle Merlin came to my room with Mother when it was storytime. He sat by the fireplace and looked me in the eyes they say I inherited from my father.

"Do you want to hear a story about your father?" he asks.

His voice is quiet, and his eyes are shining strangely, but my father is my hero and I always love hearing about him. "'Course!" I lisp eagerly.

Uncle Merlin draws a long, long breath.

"Arthur," he begins, "is the Once and Future King."

A/N: Here is my new story! It will be entirely from Amhar's perspective, I think, and some of the chapters may be pretty short, as they will mostly be what he remembers about a specific topic. If you want to read a prequel to this from Gwen's perspective, my story "You Can Never Go Home" covers that.

As always, if I owned Merlin, the series would have had a happy ending. Reviews will be loved!