The Dragon's Call
Chapter Four
Gaius was nagging at him again. "What did your mother say to you about your gifts?"
"Nothing," Sherlock sighed. "Just that I was special. I don't think she really understood it herself."
"You are special." Gaius said. "The likes of which I have never seen before."
—Subtext. You're not normal, Sherlock. You're a freak.
"You think I don't know that?" Sherlock asked.
"Sherlock, listen." Gaius's voice was half pacifying, half scolding. "That is not what I mean and you'd know it if you used your head. I am not interested in whatever is in your past. Magic…requires incantations, spells. It takes years to study. What I saw you do was elemental, instinctive."
Sherlock's curiosity was aroused. The people in his village didn't know what to make of him, neither the ones who knew his secret nor the ones who didn't. The only person who really understood him was John… He tried not to think of John. There was a hole in his chest where John used to be, and thinking about him wouldn't help.
But Gaius was a physician, old enough to remember the time before the purge, and he said Sherlock's magic wasn't ordinary.
Perhaps the voice could explain… if he could get it to come back.
"Well, what is the point of magic? If it can't be used?"
"That I do not know. You are a question that has never been posed before, Sherlock."
"Thanks," he answered sardonically. Then he thought. It was the first time they'd had a proper conversation without one of them (usually Sherlock) losing his temper. Now was the time to ask questions, if ever. "Did you ever study magic?"
"Uther banned all such work twenty years ago."
Sherlock half nodded. Gaius hadn't given a straight answer. Interesting. "Why?" He knew of the purge, of course, it was hard not too, even in Cenred's kingdom, but he'd never heard any but the barest sketch of the king's reasons.
"People used magic for the wrong end at that time. It threw the natural order into chaos. Uther made it his mission to destroy everything from back then, even the dragons."
—typical. Give me the children's story you tell everyone. What was so secret about the reasons for the purge?—
But the dragons… now that was interesting, and he seemed to be less reticent on that subject. "All of them?"
"There was one dragon he chose not to kill," Gaius answered. "Kept it as an example. He imprisoned it in a cave deep beneath the castle where no one can free it." Suddenly he became abrupt. "Eat your breakfast. When you're finished, I need you to take a preparation to Lady Helen. She needs it for her voice."
Imprisoned it? Sherlock thought about the cruelty of such an act. It would have been kinder to kill it. What sort of a man, having defeated and killed all but one of the dragons, took the last and imprisoned it beneath his own castle? He suddenly felt more afraid of Uther than he had before. He hadn't seemed that dangerous, despite ordering the execution of a most probably innocent man. But if this was an example of his work it would be well not to underestimate him.
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