Merlin sighed as he came to a halt mid-step, after a long time of pacing around the cave. Knowing that he wouldn't be satisfied until he had checked on Arthur, he hurried over to the basin again. He reached his right hand out over the water in a now-familiar gesture, and began to chew anxiously on the finger-nails of his left as he muttered the incantation under his breath, and waited in a state of high anticipation for the scene to set itself. Finally, after a few impossibly long seconds of swirling and shaping, it did.
As Merlin stared into the bowl, his eyebrows pushed down into a bewildered line, and his eyes squinted at the image on the water as if unable to believe what he was seeing.
Arthur was being dragged, in a manner not at all in keeping with his rank, down one of the many, long corridors in the castle of Camelot. Merlin stared, as if struck-dumb, at the contents of the basin for a moment before urgently twitching his hand and waiting impatiently for the split-second that it took for the indignant tones of the Prince's voice to fill the cave.
"…off me, you idiots! Let go of me, you maniacs!" Arthur was shouting furiously at the two armoured guards dragging him apologetically but forcefully down a corridor that ended with a pair of double doors.
"I'm sorry, sire." Said one of the guards, looking (and sounding) grave. "You were warned about what would happen if you chose not to comply with the King's wishes." He said, making no move to release the furious man. "I am merely following my orders."
"I don't give a damn about your orders!" Arthur yelled at them, clearly slightly unbelieving at the manner in which he was being forced down the hall. "Unhand me!" As his protestations were both made known, and totally ignored, the guarded double doors were opened and Arthur was thrown forwards into Uther Pendragon's conference hall.
If Merlin had not been so confused and uncertain, he might have laughed at how much Arthur reminded him of himself in that moment. As he stood in the middle of the room and glared defiantly up at his king. As it was, Merlin only managed a bemused smile and a baffled stare.
As Merlin stared at him, Arthur shot the two guards who had acted as his escorts the filthiest, most furious look possible, and then turned his glower to his father, who sat calmly in his throne, looking coolly down at him. "I will not," Arthur began, positively shaking with a raging fury that he did not even try to suppress, "be dragged down the halls of my own castle by my own soldiers!" Uther sighed as he looked down his royal nose at his son and shook his head ever so slightly in exasperation.
"You could have chosen to come of your own free will!" He exclaimed, sounding slightly tired at his son's strange behaviour. "I gave you the choice! If you chose to go the hard way, I cannot help that."
Arthur glared heatedly at his father with a look which clearly bid him a slow and painful death. However Uther ignored Arthur's ferocity with a sense of cool detachment that only one as heartless as Uther could pull off. "I have a job for you, Arthur." He said in a cold voice, bordering on boredom. "If you know what is good for you, you'll help me."
"Well, I'd love to." Arthur replied, his voice oozing with vehement sarcasm. "But I'm afraid you decreed that I was not allowed to either speak to you or share a room with you until I was ready to apologise. I am not ready yet so…" He trailed off suggestively, as turned slowly on his heel to leave, savouring in his father's apparent annoyance.
Uther sighed, rather dramatically Merlin thought, before snapping his fingers lazily and calling to the two guards on the door. "Guards." The guards jumped forwards, looking determinately focussed. "You will listen Arthur, or we will all wait here until you do." He told his son, staring coldly at the man, who was still a defiant child in his eyes. "I will give you the choice. Please choose the first option and save us all the time."
"That's not a choice! Either way I have to listen!" Arthur cried, his face contorted into a disgusted sneer.
"Yes. Well, your choice is whether to listen now or to keep us all waiting until you decide to privilege us with your attention." Uther replied, utterly unfazed.
"That is no choice!" Arthur exclaimed heatedly, his eyes flashing with stubborn defiance, although clearly aware that it was futile to continue his argument.
"Fine." Uther said, in a low, dangerous voice. He leaned forward on his throne, and eyed Arthur with slightly less calm than before. " Then you may have the choice between choosing to listen and choosing to take another spell in the dungeons."
Arthur continued to glare at his father, the defiance seemingly etched onto his face. "Then handcuff me up and throw me in the dungeons!" He put his arms together and turned to face the closest pair of guards. There was a dark kind of humour in his eyes. It was clear that he knew they wouldn't do it.
"Arthur!" Uther sighed, after gesturing the guards away. "Do you have to be so difficult?"
That prompted a cold, mocking laugh from Arthur, and the strange dark humour flashed again in his clear blue eyes. "Well, I wonder where I get that from, sire." He sneered mockingly, and again, Merlin had the mental image of himself kneeling on the King's polished floor and facing Uther with the same mocking confidence as Arthur was now. For the first time, Uther seemed rankled. "You are acting like a child. And if you do not stop it at once, I will make you."
It was as if the roles were temporarily switched. Arthur was suddenly the one looking calm and sure of himself, to the point of being slightly arrogant, while Uther glared at him hostilely. "Oh?" Arthur asked, that cold sneer still fixed to his face. "And how do you plan on making me?"
Suddenly, the roles were switched back again, as fast as if someone had flipped a light-switch. Uther leant even further forward on his throne, his cold grey eyes glinting maliciously in the sunlight filtering in through the windows, and his head cocked curiously to one side as he watched Arthur carefully, to see the full impact of his malevolent words. "Well how about I hire you a new manservant for one thing."
Merlin frowned at that. Arthur hadn't hired a new manservant? It was odd but, as many times as Merlin checked on Arthur each day, he honestly hadn't noticed. He felt strangely touched by the thought, and his self-esteem shot up hugely. A feeling which only intensified, at the look of anger, bordering on horror, that Uther's words had inflicted upon Arthur's face. Merlin grinned.
Arthur however, looked like he might never grin again. His face had set itself into a closed-off expression in an attempt to keep Uther from seeing how much he had got to him. "I won't use him." Arthur said stiffly, in a response to the King's threat. Merlin chuckled quietly to himself as he saw Arthur's chin jut out obstinately, and his grin widened at the Prince's next words. "I'll order him to sit around all day and let me do the chores." It meant a lot to him that Arthur seemed to care so much.
"And I will order him otherwise." Merlin glared at the image of Uther in his basin as the King said these words. He was ruining his moment! "And who would dare follow the orders of a misled young boy when the King has ordered them otherwise?"
Arthur threw his head back and let a peal of mocking laughter ring through the crowded hall. He stopped laughing as he rolled forward onto his heels and leaned forward to face his father derisively. "That didn't stop Merlin." Merlin laughed out loud again, once more touched that his Prince, no his friend had not completely, or even slightly, forgotten about him. His laugh broke off however as, with a sign from Uther, one of the guards stepped gravely forwards and dealt Arthur a hard, and painful slap to the cheek, leaving a stinging red hand-mark in it's wake.
Merlin heard himself gasping along with the rest of the crowd in the basin, as Arthur turned his smarting face to glare at his father hostilely, and with even more defiance than before.
"Now," Said Uther, completely disregarding both Arthur's aggravated glower, and the response from the crowd. "Will you listen?"
For a second it looked as though Arthur might kill his father, but at a warning glance from Gwenivere, he forced a look of false calm onto his face and shot him a smile that was more of a grimace. "Certainly sire." He said, scowling at the strained pleasantness of his voice. "What is it that you require from me?"
"The boy, Merlin…" Uther sounded slightly uneasy. A feeling that he was clearly not used to judging by the vulnerability and uncertainty in his expression.
"Yes?" Arthur cut him off, giving him no time to finish. "What is it? What have you found?"
Uther hesitated at the urgency and susceptibility in his son's voice. ""We think we're onto him. We've found a trail."
At Uther's words, Merlin felt a sharp, cold fear lance through his chest. His eyes bulged wide and he had to take deep breaths to force himself to stay calm. Apparently, this was a reaction shared by everyone else (other than Uther, of course) in the conference hall of Camelot. On every face of the gathered public, was the same terrible dread, and overpowering concern for the poor serving boy that they had all grown to love. As Merlin saw the fear in the people's eyes, and the anxiety in their wide eyes, he felt an odd warmth begin to seep through into heart. However, it was not the look of pure panic on Arthur's face that warmed him so. Neither was it the alarm that was suddenly occupying Gwenivere's expression. Nor was it the trepidation locked onto Morgana's tired countenance like a vice. It wasn't even the dread that seemed to be consuming Gaius. No, it was none of these things.
It was the fright on the faces of the people Merlin had never met that touched him most. People he'd spoken only one word to, if that, in his whole life. People he'd sometimes passed in the corridors, or in the streets, but had never looked at twice. People whose names he did not know, let alone anything else about them. That these nameless (or rather, unknown) people could care so much about a man they'd had so little to do with, was incredible (and overwhelmingly flattering) for Merlin, and suddenly, he found himself blinking back tears. He chuckled to himself, thinking of what Arthur would have said if he could see the unnatural wateriness of his manservant's eyes in that moment, and shook the feeling off. As Arthur had once told him, "No man is worth your tears." If only he had looked a little closer, Merlin might have seen that Gaius's dread was not entirely sincere. The emotion looked fake. Looked like it was just a screen, covering another emotion, so that no one would see the slight edge of triumph that glistened in his aged eyes, or the nearly unnoticeable way that his lips were turned up ever so slightly at the corners.
However, Merlin did not notice anything even slightly suspicious about the old man, choosing instead to return his attention back on the contents of the basin, where Merlin heard Arthur spluttering his hasty, urgent reply. "Where?"
Uther sighed before answering, looking uncomfortable and positively apologetic for a moment. Merlin frowned. That was wrong. Uther was never sorry for anything. Right? But he was pulled from his pondering from the sound of the King's voice.
"We found the remnants of a camp just outside the border of Camelot, leading into the forest. We think he's gone to join up with the druids."
At this, Merlin frowned. A camp? The forest? The druids? But he was nowhere near that part of the forest! In fact he hadn't been anywhere near that part of the forest for a long time. Way before he left Camelot. This made no sense! Merlin began to smell a rat.
Arthur was motionless for a long while after this pronouncement was made. Totally speechless, it was all he could do to shoot his father an inquisitive (and slightly hysterical) look that clearly said, "And what do you need from me?" Once again, Uther sighed before answering his son's non-verbal question.
"All of my men are already out on the search. I have some men searching the villages around Ealdor. A few men are still there, questioning the villagers. And the rest of my men are either searching the mountains, or delving into the ruins of the magical settlements from before my ban on magic. I hardly have enough men left to guard the castle, let alone to send out another search party for the demon boy."
"Demon boy?" Merlin muttered to himself, offended, and wishing he was there to grow Uther a pair of devil horns on his head. That would show him! As well as revealing to the people of Camelot who the real demon was! However, Merlin could do nothing more than fume in silence at the King's spiteful words from his cave hideout. So he was extremely thankful when he heard Arthur's contemptuous voice filling the black cave.
"Demon boy?" He said, sounding both overpoweringly angry, and disgusted. "Demon boy? Merlin is not a demon boy! He's saved both of our lives more times than I care to tell you! You should be granting him a knighthood for his deeds, not driving him away from his friends and family, and into hiding!" Arthur spat on the ground before Uther, earning himself another slap from the guard, this time on the back of the head. He was sent sprawling across the floor; however his sneer did not depart from his features. "It's happening all over again! You're doing just what you did before, to Merlin's father! You're forcing him to leave the place he lives, and the life he has, and turning him into a common outlaw! Well he's not!" Merlin smiled as he listened to the Prince's fervent words, and kept his eyes on the basin, where Uther was not rising to his son's fury. He seemed quite unaffected.
He merely looked at him for a second before making his request, or rather stating his orders. "I need more men. You will give them to me Arthur or I will have you flogged. You will-"
But he was broken off by the sound of Arthur's manic laughter, which echoed around the conference hall, bouncing off the walls, and ricocheting off the ceiling to spring back to the floor. It echoed around the congregated crowd of peasants and knights alike, quite sincere in it's humour.
Forcing himself to splutter out his words through his incessant bursts of laughter, Arthur spoke. "You…" He broke off, overwhelmed by the force of another bout of laughter. "You want me…You want me to…to…help you find…help you find the person…the person who I set free in the first place!" Nearly choking on his laughter, Arthur doubled up, clutching at his sides, and crying out. "Ah! I've got a stitch! Oh! I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard! Honestly father, you're a real joker!"
Uther scowled furiously at Arthur, as the surrounding people began to chuckle in bemusement at the Prince's antics. Merlin, in the cave, also found himself laughing.
Realising that he was making a fool out of himself again, Uther got up from his royal throne and stepped down from the raised platform, making his way over to the double doors that marked the entrance to the room. Just before he left however, he turned his face back to his son, his boy still facing the door, to call a few words back to Arthur. "You will obey me, Arthur. If I do not have your obedience by the end of the week, I will be forced to take a more acting form of persuasion." And with that, Uther swept from the conference hall, leaving Arthur now positively rolling around on the floor in his humour of his father's stupidity, and the rest of the population chuckling along with the Prince that they much preferred to his father.
Hey, so I'm really sorry that it took so long to update, but it was a difficult chapter to write, and I'm running out of ideas. Also, sorry that I've repeated a lot of stuff from earlier chapters but I didn't know how else to write it. Please review! It makes me a better writer knowing what everyone's thinking! Please let me know of any typos and leave some ideas for this fic. Keep reading! I promise I'll update sooner next time :)