Sorry for the late update. I always knew exactly how I was going to finish the story, but recently moved countries and with all the chaos, broke the writing habit. Also, I don't have any Merlin DVDs so if I've completely lost the characters by now, that's because the last time I heard them talk was December! Anyway, thank you for making it this far, especially those of you who have reviewed with your thoughts all the way through, it means a great deal for you taking the time. (I'm afraid there's one more chapter to go if you can stand it: a major delay was that I'm completely OCD and wanted the story to be even chapters, but unfortunately it will end up being eleven. I know it's insane, but for ages I tried to make it work with ten. The last one will be soon!)

White Lies Chapter Ten

The early morning is freezing cold. Merlin's tired to the core of his being, and knows Kay must be too, it has been a long night of quiet riding, ears alert to any sounds of being followed – which side they should fear more he doesn't know – the Mercians, or Mordred. They don't have a side of their own, except maybe Gwen, and she has no idea where they are.

Kay pulls his horse up and turns weary eyes to Merlin. In the grey dawn, his face is completely pale. "It's around here," he says. "It's time to leave the horses."

The entry to Le Val sans Retour is grim. The valley itself is quite shallow, bleak with a low-lying confusion of brambles and shrubs, and a few beaten trees against a colourless sky. A small, icy stream trickles along the bottom, filling out into a small lake. The slopes aren't steep, and beyond them is just a vista of dull moorland. It isn't at all how Merlin imagined. The only hint that they are in the right place is the faint vibration in the air he associates with places of the Old Religion. Kay walks slightly ahead, sword in attack position, looking one of the most miserable men alive.

Later, Merlin couldn't work out where the mist came from. He should have been able to see its approach, down the valley. He was looking so closely at his surroundings. But just as Kay says, 'it was around here', Merlin notices a wisp of mist and when he looks again, he can see nothing. He is completely disorientated, stumbling forwards, shouting Kay's name, but his voice just reverberates dully back at him, the mist completely swallowing any sound. He can't hear a thing, apart from his own thrashing around the undergrowth. Then a cold hand grabs him, pulls him, and suddenly he's free from the mist. He's in a shallow basin, the valley stretching behind him in the mist, before him is the small lake, with low trees all round. And Freya.

"What are you doing here? Where's Kay?" he's confused, as befuddled as though the mist had seeped into his brain, he can barely see straight anymore. He strains his ears, he thinks he can hear Kay blundering around in the mist behind them.

"Listen to me," she's speaking urgently, looking over her shoulder. "I want to help you. But you have to help us, you have to help our sister, Morgana. She's one of us, Merlin, but she is far from her path now she's with Mordred. You have to help her. You mustn't harm her."

He peers at her. "I don't care about harming Morgana," he says, slowly. "I just want to help Arthur."

Freya seems satisfied with this. "Then you'll need this." She points to the floor, where a beautiful sword lies, etched with gold. As Merlin bends to pick it, he realises he's seen it before, the day Uther killed the dead.

"It's Arthur's sword," he says, half to himself.

"Yes. It will only work for him." She's still looking over her shoulder, she's doing nothing to calm Merlin's nerves. "Sir Kay is safe," she adds, briefly, as though reading his mind. "He cannot pass through the mist. He's safe, but he can't come any further. He's not an oath-breaker, and only oath-breakers can pass through. "

"Neither am I," he says, looking up, but even as he says it, even as he meets Freya's eyes, he knows it's a lie. He swore an oath to protect Arthur, and he failed, dramatically, spectacularly, loitering around Avalon for years while Camelot burned.

"Trust me. Follow me," says Freya, in a tone of voice that broaches no argument, it's an order, a statement of fact and then she is gone, back under the still water, and he's completely alone, in the windswept valley, with a sword he cannot use, a bleak landscape in front of him and an impenetrable mist behind him. He can't even vaguely hear Kay anymore, he must have struggled off into the wrong direction. He has no idea what he expected to find, but standing awkwardly on a lakeshore at a loose end certainly wasn't something to occur to him.

"Freya?" he asks, in a small voice. But she is gone. He ambles to the lake and peers in. He can't see any glow of Avalon. It's shallow, and there are only pebbles down there. "Kay?" he calls. But his voice echoes sadly. He begins to feel silly. This isn't helping. This is wasting more time. He wanders back along the lakeshore, further into the valley. It's utterly deserted. There are no animals, or birds, or any noise at all apart from the wind screaming across the moors above the valley.

And then he sees it, amongst the pebbles in the shallow water. He walks into the water, because he can't believe his eyes. He thinks he's imagining it. But no, it's true. It's the same crystal, tiny parts, but the same crystal that made up the Crystal of Neahtid. It pierces his brain, an exquisite agony directly behind his left eye. He begins to follow it, along the rocky shore, an uneven trail of small, stinging crystal pieces, by now he's drenched. As he wades deeper, he sees Freya waiting for him, looking impatient. She is pointing to the far shore, to a small rocky inlet. He pushes on, each step requiring immense strength. Freya has reached the shore – apparently effortlessly – and has disappeared into a cave. He pulls himself up the shore and into the cave with considerably more effort. The cave wall sparkles with crystal, setting off a low hum in his brain, as though there are fingers feeling into his mind, searching for weaknesses, he squeezes his eyes against the nausea. He pulls the sword with him, it's heavy, as are his wet clothes, and his head, and, unable to fight the overwhelming weight on his body anymore he lowers himself to the floor, closing his eyes, and resting, he tells himself just briefly, while bright images he can't identify dance in front of his eyelids, before Freya drags him to his feet. "I can't stay here," she hisses in his ear, looking urgently around her. "I shouldn't be here, I can't be here, you're the only person I would trust with this." He leans against the wall, his head lolling on his chest as she grips his shoulders. He can't really focus on her, she's surrounded by crowding, uncontrolled figures, their constant movement is making him sick. "He's through there," she says, with another violent shake. "Remember the sword." She picks it up and hands it back to him. She has to give it to him a few times before he remembers he has to move his fingers to grip it. "And your promise," she adds. "Don't hurt her. You'll bring her to me afterwards, I can help her." And she's gone, even as he tries to tell her that she can't go, partly because he doesn't understand what she's on about but, mostly, because he's about to be sick. But he doesn't get a chance to say any of that: he's so stupefied the time between thought and action is too long, and she is already gone. Merlin leans against the wall, fighting the sickness, trying to edit out the screaming white noise and images, even as the cave reels away from him and he bends over and vomits.

He stumbles through the low tunnel, gradually unscrunching his eyes. The world still takes unexpected lurches, and there's still more background noise than normal, but he's beginning to cope better. He drags the sword behind him, determinedly. He can see a blueish glow ahead of him, and he's staring at it as though if he blinks it may go. All his energy, all his purpose, is now on that end point, his whole world has become about reaching it. He has no idea what it is, or what is there, but he no longer cares. He keeps his jaw firmly closed against the nausea, and breathes heavily through his nose, keeping his eyes ahead, ignoring the shards of crystal attacking in the corner of his eyes. It's all about the blue glow.

The cavern is vast, it reaches up into the darkness. Most of its wide diameter is in total blackness, except at the centre, where a blindingly beautiful table made entirely of crystal explodes into colour, a ball of blue flame bright in the total black. Its brightness sends Merlin floundering back into the tunnel for a moment, as though hit in the face by a thousand shards of glass to the face, the images hammer into his eyes – Camelot flaming, Kay's throat slashed by Royns on a windswept moor, and Arthur bending to the king of the Mercians – while Gwen's screams echo in his head, and he lies, eyes shut, thinking, I cannot go in there. Even as he feels tears in his eyes, as the initial sting of the sight of the table subsides, still with his eyes shut, he feels it – the sword...he opens one eye, quickly glancing to his side, where the sword lies, burning a bright blue. For a mad moment he thinks of Roderch's sword, but this is brighter. Roderch's must have been forged in dragon's breath too, he thinks vaguely, although not for Arthur. But this one was forged for Arthur.

Exhausted by this simple thought process he shuts his eyes again. He tries to think, and then, slowly and without completely knowing why, he scrambles to his feet, turns back to the cavern, and walks in, shielding his eyes as best he can from the impact and there, lying in the centre of the blue light, is Arthur. The sword is humming now and is almost uncomfortable to carry with the vibrations. But Merlin barely notices, staring as he is thoughtfully at the man on the table. He is having to keep thoughts very simple, to avoid flooding his brain with the chaos that is trying to gatecrash his mind.

Arthur is on the table. His eyes are shut, he is motionless and he is light blue in the crystal's glow, but he is clearly alive. It isn't, of course, impossible that Arthur didn't notice Merlin and Kay's absence and ride out after them, getting trapped here somehow afterwards. That isn't impossible, Merlin mentally agrees with himself, but equally it's highly improbable. Firstly, Arthur doesn't notice much anymore. But even assuming Royns or the boy or Morgana noticed, it was a damn quick turnaround, and how would he end up here? Even as he's rationalising it to himself, Merlin is dismissing this theory. He knows, he simply knows, that Arthur's been here an awfully long time. He's been here since the mist separated him from Kay, he's been here for a year, he's been here the whole time. The weird shadow of the king at Camelot was magic. The king wasn't like himself because the king wasn't himself. Merlin is surprisingly relieved by this revelation. Still shielding his eyes, he reaches for the table. As he steps into its glow, a force hits his body with such overwhelming strength that he is thrown against the table, headbutting it with such violence that his mouth immediately fills with the salty taste of blood. Inside the crystal's glow, his skull now feels constricted, scalp crawling, vision completely swamped with disconnected images, he grips the table, but the world whirs around him, then cutting through his total disorientation, he hears a voice say "did my sisters teach you nothing?"

It's Morgause, he can't see her because he's still got his eyes shut, holding his breath and trying to reconnect with the ground. Even behind his eyelids, there are endless flashes and movement. He lets his breath out and takes another to hold. He can't breathe naturally, it's too painful, every movement screams, his body feels as though it's on fire. "No," he gasps, "No, why would they teach me about this? It might have helped." It's uncharitable, he thinks, Avalon was helpful. He just can't quite remember how now. None of the things he learned there seem to apply here. He becomes aware that the sword is vibrating so much it's barely controllable.

Morgause seems to approve of this comment. "We have a similar view of the helpfulness of my sisters," she agrees. She seems to be waiting. "Not many people are affected by this crystal," she observes, as though she's impressed by his writhing. "You have to be terribly gifted to be able to use it. For example, being in here gives me a faint headache and I'm probably the most sensitive of all the Ladies. The only other person in the world who would be as affected as you are is the boy. You are a rare beast indeed, Merlin."

Merlin puts a hand across his face, trying to wipe away the sweat, trying to get a sense of where all the bits of his body were in relation to all the other bits. "Thanks," he bites out, swallowing hard to battle the seemingly incessant nausea. He vaguely remembers a time when he didn't feel as though his stomach was heaving, but it is a distant memory.

"You're here to rescue him, I suppose?" prompts Morgause, with a slight impatience.

He rolls around, so he is leaning with his back to the table, and hauls himself to his feet. He opens his eyes as much as he can while retaining his thought processes, and sees Morgause not far from him, staring at him doubtfully. "Yes," he confirms weakly, losing a grip on the table and stumbling until he finds it again. "Let him go," he adds.

"Merlin," says Morgause, with a sigh. She begins walking towards him. "We aren't going to do that."

"Have you got Morgana here too somewhere?"

Morgause snorts. "Of course not. Morgana is more herself now than she has ever been." She stands before him now, looking at him with that same cold concern that had turned his blood cold when she had been raising Arthur's mother's ghost, she had been looking at Arthur in the same way. The expression that said 'you have no idea the depths to which I will go, and that makes me sad'. He felt his knees buckling again, the fog is clouding his mind again, and, throwing the now trembling, glowing sword on the table, he sinks back down to a sitting position. A degree of helplessness was setting in. What could he do? He could barely coordinate breathing, much less anything else.

"I should tell you," continued Morgause as though reading his mind, now bending down to his level, "that your powers won't work in here. None of them. You can't harness them, you see, when you're in confusion like this."

Merlin, unable to hold his head up and barely able to speak because his tongue felt swollen, thinks that he wouldn't know how anyway. He doesn't even have the energy to panic.

"You can't keep him here forever," he says.

Morgause smiles sympathetically. "Yes, we can, Merlin. We won't want to, but we could if we did. We need our Arthur out there for the time being, which is reliant on the original still being here, but presently our copy won't be needed anymore and then we can dispose of this one too. And then we have destroyed the Pendragons and much of Albion and then Mordred will rule the shattered remains and, frankly, our victory will be complete. And now you are here, Merlin, there's really not a lot you can do about it." She is still speaking as though sorrowful that Merlin couldn't be brought round to her viewpoint.

Merlin shuts his eyes against the noise and mayhem of unbidden snippets of various futures he probably will never see and says, "so that's your plan?"

"Yes," agrees Morgause, still as softly-spoken as a caring mother to a fractious child, "yes, that's our plan and as you can see, you don't feature in it. You'll never be one of us. As long as he's alive, you'll always find him, you see?"

"Yes." Some things aren't worth dying for. It wasn't worth dying at Uther's hand for his stupid laws. But it's worth dying rather than walking away from this.

"Yes." She continues examining him scientifically for a moment. Finally she walks away and says a few words. She comes back with a delicate chain of the crystals. "I think the druid boy will want to deal with you himself," she says. "I'm going to give him the good news and find out where he will want you. I expect it will a public execution by the order of King Arthur in Camelot. But I cannot be sure. So you stay here and wait for me, please."

She carefully tied the chain to a leg of the table, and then around Merlin's wrist. It takes every ounce of Merlin's strength to wait until she has gone to scream with pain, as the crystals dig into and scald his flesh.

"Arthur!" he screams.

Arthur opens his eyes.

There aren't many things which can break enchantments. Love is one of them. And pretty much anything forged in dragon's breath for the sole use of the enchanted person is another.

Arthur opens his eyes. This surprises him as he doesn't remember shutting his eyes. He doesn't remember lying down. He certainly doesn't remember a cave. He tries to remember what he does remember. He remembers the mist, and shouting for Kay. He remembers finding Morgana lying on the shore. And then he doesn't remember anything else. Or does he? He feels like there is something there...some memory...but every time he almost gets a grip on it, it slips away. He can remember around it, but there's a memory-shaped hole there and...

"OW!" He sits bolt upright, pushing the sword from his skin. The sword, thrown by his side by Merlin, is now white hot to the touch, burning a bright blue, resting on his arm. It has left a pure white mark on his skin. "Ow, ow, ow, ow." He says again, just for something to say, and also because a burn that hot should still be hurting, although the mark is entirely painless. "Ow." He adds again, still trying to find a memory to explain his current position. He frowns at the sword. It isn't even his sword. "Morgana?" he tries. Nothing. A blue crystal table in a dark cave. It doesn't seem promising. "Kay?" he tries again, with even less anticipation of success than before.

Nothing. If he could remember why he was in this cave, he might have more of a chance of getting out of it. He had dreamt he would find Morgana by the lake in Le Val sans Retour, he remembers. And he had found her there. But then, but then...

"Morgause was there," he says, out loud still. Morgause was there, and Morgana wasn't afraid of her, quite the contrary. And then...nope, still nothing. But there's no point lying around here, he decides.

He swings his legs over the side of the table, jumps down and falls straight over the motionless body of Merlin.