25. A sister's love and hatred
For the umpteenth time Pendragon started from his sleep, his body and sheets soaked with sweat. For a second he stared wide eyed into the darkness of the small hours. When he realized that he had been dreaming again he swore softy. But not softly enough.
"Arthur, what is it?" Merlin asked quietly, rising from the armchair he had been sitting in.
"What the hell are you still up for?" the Prince said angrily. "Can the once again mighty warlock do without sleep nowadays?"
"As much as His once again snappy Highness" Merlin chuckled in reply. "You seem to manage well enough."
"That doesn't mean that I am in need of a nursemaid."
"Do I look like a maid to you?"
"You can be such a girl sometimes, Merlin!"
"Right now I think it's you who is being somewhat emotional."
"Oh, do be quiet, you pitiful excuse for a magician!"
Merlin sighed while he watched his friend jump out of the bed and beginning to pace around nervously. "Doesn't need my magic to see that you are overwrought and restless ever since His Grace has set the date and the method of Uther's execution."
"Imagine having one's own brother hanged, drawn and quartered" Arthur murmured. "Whatever Uther has done…." He shook his head while his voice trailed off.
"It was Lord O'Brian, Brianna's father, who decided on the punishment" Merlin said cautiously. "Maybe if you were to tell the Duke how deeply you feel about this, how much it troubles you, he'd postpone the execution…"
"The devil he would" the Prince blurted out. "To be honest, I did speak with him. About my fears that Uther's death might endanger Guinivere's life. He didn't give a damn."
"Strange though that Uther himself should have guaranteed Gwen's safety to you, on the condition that you are to watch his execution" Merlin crept up on his actual subject.
"It surely robbed me of my only argument" Arthur said without thinking. "When I insisted nevertheless, my father went nuts. Since then the door of this room has been locked from the outside."
Damn you, start thinking Arthur Pendragon Merlin wanted to shout. Why is this so important to you? Why are you unable to hate Uther enough to see him die a traitor's death? Why? But he kept quiet. The promise he had given to the King when he had last seen him as well as his increasing fear for Arthur's sanity let his courage falter and sealed his lips.
The warlock remembered his last encounter with Arthur's real father vividly. I do not want him to come back to me for anything but for his own inner wish and persuasion the King had said. Not to protect this girl he loves, not to do you a favour nor for a clever ruse of yours. Uther had looked pleadingly at the anxious young wizard. I know it's a dangerous game, Merlin, but if Yvain has taken hold of my son's soul firmly enough for Arthur being able to sit through my execution quietly then so be it. There had been no need to say more. Nonetheless Merlin had understood the unspoken rest of the King's deliberations. If Yvain has taken my child for good what is there to live for anyway? The misery in the man's eyes had persuaded the warlock to even keep silent on his fears of what a shock like this might do to the young Prince.
"You haven't told the Duke that my powers came back to me after our return here?" Merlin now said, still thinking it strange to speak of 'returning' to a place he'd never seen before.
"Most definitely not" the Prince replied. "If my father knew about this, he'd not have simply given order to keep us both under lock and key together. He knows too well that the lock that can keep you is yet to be created."
With an uncomfortable feeling Merlin suddenly remembered the magic seals in the walls of Tintagel. So far he had not spotted anything like them in Cearcean, but, who was to know what surprises Yvain still had up his sleeve?
"I take it the Duke didn't agree with your plans to let Uther live?"
Arthur shook his head and laughed mirthlessly. "At the mere mentioning of the possibility that Uther's life might be spared my father threatened me with a spell in the dungeons and you with solitary arrest way up north for the rest of your life. I surely won't risk reminding him of that, especially not of the latter idea. I don't know why but he doesn't trust you anymore. He said you've spent too much time with Uther for his taste."
Merlin couldn't care less for Yvain's opinion of him as long as the bastard found no convincing way to separate him and Arthur. "What are you going to do now, Sire? Sit here as His Grace's prisoner until it is all over and Uther is dead?"
The Prince rubbed his face with both hands and sighed. "Frankly I have no idea. I do not even know why I should care. But somehow I do. Damn, I do care whether the bastard lives or dies."
Merlin took a closer look at his friend and was alarmed. "Are you ill? You look poorly."
"Damned headaches" Arthur murmured. "After Maelfwyn's last treatment I was so sure I had lost them and good riddance. But ever since I woke up in this cave as Uther's prisoner they are back. And they are getting stronger."
It was that uncharacteristically, that very unusual for Arthur to complain about physical discomfort so blatantly that all of Merlin's inner alarm bells began to shrill at once. To hell with his consideration for what Uther might suffer, for what Yvain might do. He had always known that putting pressure on Arthur's instable mind would be dangerous.
"Are you telling me you've been in constant pain for more than eight days now?"
The Prince shrugged. "More or less. I thought it was due to the knock over my head, but now… You know, ever since the day Brianna was killed, I don't know what to think any more. As if white is no longer white and black no longer black. It's hard to describe but things seem to…dissolute inside my head. I hear voices I know to be unfamiliar but they seem to be familiar all the same." Towards the end Arthur's voice had become more and more harassed. Merlin couldn't remember that his royal friend had ever been really scared; not scared to death, like he was now.
The warlock saw his friend starting to sway and jumped towards him, reaching him only just in time to catch him before Arthur would have hit the floor.
"I feel so sick, Merlin. My head, ..it hurts so much."
In the next moment Arthur's knees gave in and he threw up violently. He didn't stop retching until his stomach had emptied itself completely. The wizard felt the other man's sweat run cold and his body tremble before it became limp in his arms.
"Arthur? D'you hear me?" feeling panic rising in his guts Merlin tried to lift his friend to his feet but when Arthur screamed with pain he abandoned the attempt at once. Cautiously he allowed his friend's body to gently slip to the floor and ran to the door.
Frantically he banged his fists against the wood and called for the guards to fetch a healer.
While the soldier finally ran off, Merlin returned to his friend's side anxiously. "Calm down, please, there's no need to worry. We'll just go away; it will be for the best, to the Western Hills, until it is all over. Nobody in his right mind can want you to witness this, don't worry."
The wizard flinched when Arthur actually managed a derisive snort. To understand his friend's low voice, Merlin had to bend down to him. "I told my father I would like to go away for a while" Arthur whispered "but he refused. He insisted on me witnessing the execution and attending the service for Brianna and the subsequent celebrations. There is no backing out of this."
In this very moment the Prince's body jerked upwards and he retched up again painfully, although nothing came out. Desperately Merlin held his head during the ordeal. He barely heard the door being opened for Brecan, Cearcean's healer and his new assistant, a young woman who had arrived in the stronghold only two weeks ago. The warlock found himself gently shoved aside by the physician and rose, shaking, only to be pushed against the wall by Yvain's reckless hand. "What is the matter with him? Is he injured?"
"Apparently His Highness has fallen ill, Your Grace" Brecan said quietly. "I can't say more right now."
Aghast, Yvain stepped aside and gave the healers more room for their work. Helplessly he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. Usually every inch the well groomed, self-centred and supercilious aristocrat he now looked virtually crestfallen.
"What a show" Merlin thought bitterly. "One might even think he'd really care whether Arthur lives or dies." He watched the Duke following his 'son' to the bed, while a servant girl already began to clean up the mess Arthur's bout of sickness had left on the floor. Heaven only knew how Yvain's staff managed to be everywhere and always in place and time perfectly.
All of a sudden the Duke of Cornwall turned towards Arthur's best friend, perhaps searching for an answer to his silent doubts whether this illness had something to do with his machinations. If his obsessive wish to make his victory over his brother as complete and total as possible had brought this calamity to the young man he had come to love as much as Yvain Pendragon was capable of loving somebody but himself and Lordegrade.
However, on meeting Merlin's stare the Duke instinctively recoiled. The younger sorcerer's magic hit the other wizard like something solid, searingly hot, aggressive, vicious. "I'll kill you in the end for what you've done" Merlin thought and Yvain could hear it as if the words had been yelled at him. "Whatever you try, however you may twist and turn, I won't let you come for my friends again, ever!"
Without even knowing it, Merlin let his adversary have it all, his hatred, pain, fear, despair and his overwhelming wish to return home with his friends in tow, back to life as it once had been. But most of all, his thirst for revenge, to make sure that this nightmare would never repeat itself.
Last time Merlin had felt like this, his magic had lashed out to kill the soldier who had murdered his father Balinor. The man had been thrown against a tree, never to rise again.
Yvain Pendragon was no ordinary soldier. His defensive reflexes blocked the unwitting assault before it could hit him. For a split second he assembled his own powers for an immediate counterattack but then he gasped in surprise.
"Don't you dare touch me, you monster!"
In his back the Duke heard Arthur cry out softly. "Merlin, no, don't…." and in Yvain's mind the image of the bond between Uther's son and his other half became visible; strong, alive, unbreakable, glittering in the dark storm of wrath, spite and rejection that surrounded it.
And for the first time in more than forty years, Yvain Pendragon, Duke of Cornwall, Master Sorcerer and Head of the Order of most powerful warlocks, backed down. "I never wanted to hurt him" he muttered. "I never wanted…"
"A fat lot of use is that to him" Merlin's mental voice snarled in his head. "Look at him. LOOK at him!"
The healer's head briefly rose in astonishment when he heard his Duke stammer something unintelligible before the elder Pendragon stormed out of the room as if all devils were in pursuit of him.
Merlin went to the bed and sat down. His hand, only a moment ago a fist ready to injure and kill, once again the usually friendly paw, furtively crawled into his friend's clammy fingers.
The healer shook his head when he saw his patient calm down under the touch instantaneously. "Astonishing" he muttered to himself. "Most astonishing."
Merlin didn't hear him. In his mind he spoke to Arthur and to him alone. For once he was absolutely sure that his friend could sense his mental voice, sense it and understand it. "Do not fear. Everything is going to be all right. I promise. Uther won't die and we will all go home together."
Not too far away, in a tavern in the small town that surrounded Cearcean Castle, somebody was of a completely opposite opinion.
"And I still say it's marvellous, simply perfect" Morgause repeated for the third or even fourth time. "If Uther is executed at Duke Yvain's orders, Arthur will have no reason whatsoever to blame anybody else but his murderous uncle, as soon as my brother is his own true self that is."
"Which you have still to accomplish, my dear Lady" Maddox hissed angrily in return. "So far you have done nothing to convince me that you can cure the Prince."
"You just wait and see" Morgause said haughtily. "I am not in the habit to flaunt my powers in front of others as if I were a Circus Princess." Before Maddox could say anything else she turned towards her other companion. "You of all people should be glad about how things have turned out, Gaius" she said. "Uther's ridiculously bumbling rescue attempt has brought your precious Merlin to Cearcean. And there's no need to torture your conscience further. Uther's death will be Yvain's doing, not mine. Nor yours."
"And how is this to be of any consolation to me, My Lady" the old healer said bitterly. "Whether my friend dies of your hands or Yvain's what difference would it make to me? And by the way, Maddox is right. As he promised Arthur to keep Uther safe in return for you and your sister taking over Tintagel and Cornwall for the Druids' sake, the Prince will keep him and all of us to this bargain. If Uther dies, Arthur will not be choosy when it comes to taking revenge."
"Himself included?" Morgause hissed back. "It's all over town that my brother Arthur will watch the execution together with the Duke from the highest balcony, every ugly, disgusting detail of it."
"My Lady, you can't allow that to happen" Gaius stated firmly. "I have no idea whether the bondage Yvain and Maelfwyn have enforced on Arthur's mind will stand the sight of the execution but even if it did – as soon as you have released your younger brother from this unnatural hold, Arthur will remember what has happened. It would destroy him."
"It's not as if he had had the power to change things…" Morgause began but the old healer shook his head in impatient denial. "You don't know your brother, Morgause. The knowledge that he had watched his father die would be the death of him. Or worse. Think of the revenge Uther has taken on each and every magician he could capture, for the reason of his brother betraying him and Nimueh letting him down. Arthur is his father's son after all. He may lay waste to every city, every stronghold and every living soul in Yvain's realm, from here to Cornwall."
The sorceress chewed on that visibly for a while. "Whatever you say, you will not convince me to risk my neck – and yours' by the way – for the sake of Uther Pendragon. I want to see him and his accursed brother dead for murdering my parents and there's an end to it. However…." She raised her hand to quieten the two others "I have to admit that you do have a point, Gaius. We will deliver my brother of captivity and reverse this abominable mind-gag Yvain has imposed on him before the Duke can force Arthur to watch the execution. This way Camelot's Crown Prince can see for himself that there was nothing anyone could have done to save Uther."
Maddox opened his mouth to say something but she interrupted him brusquely. "And there's an end to it" she said. "Please don't forget that I could act without you any time, but you could do nothing to help my brother without me!"
Maddox gritted his teeth when she stared him and his opposition down but he kept silent. So did Gaius, albeit for other reasons. Silently the old healer took a solemn oath to see to it that Uther would live. After much self-torment and remorse, the physician had been willing to give in to Morgause's demands. He had agreed to help her murder Uther, in an 'accident' or a sudden 'illness', as the only way to save the Prince. But he had no intention of letting this abominable execution take place. Besides his anguish for his closest, if unreliable and untrustworthy, friend, Gaius knew that, other than Morgause thought, Arthur would never forgive himself for letting his father down.
"Seems we are still in the same league, Merlin" Gaius thought. "Your pet Pendragon or mine – it's all the same in the end."
Meanwhile Morgause had gathered, and with profound relief, that she had overcome all opposition from her companions. "Well, then" she said with an unusually friendly smile, "time to make plans. How can we enter the stronghold, get to my brother and bring him out without anyone being the wiser?"
They spent the rest of the night going over all sorts of solutions again and again until finally a plan had emerged from their deliberations. In three days' time, one day before the execution, they would enter the castle on Arthur's behalf.
Exhausted they went to bed; Morgause in order to find some sleep, Maddox to gulp down his mortification and apprehension of the repercussions Morgause's reckless plans would have with a jar of whiskey and Gaius to make some plans of his own.
However, when the sun began to rise and the first birds could be heard outside, they all had found a transient respite in sleep.
At the same time, Merlin started from his fitful dozing. He thought he had heard something. He pricked his ears but all was silent now. After a quick look that assured him that Arthur was still fast asleep under the influence of one of Brecan's sleeping drafts, the warlock tapped sleepily towards the door and tried the handle. As expected, the door had once again been locked after the healers had left.
For a second Merlin pondered to open the door with magic and sneak down his way to the dungeons to speak to the imprisoned King. Should he or should he not tell Uther that even the perspective of watching the execution was almost killing his son? Should he talk to Yvain instead, persuading him or threatening him into letting Arthur go away for a while, abandoning the King in the process?
Merlin was so engulfed in his thinking that he never heard the soft steps behind him. The spell that knocked him out he barely felt before his body hit the carpet.
For a while the young sorceress looked down at him, her face showing that she was in some kind of conflict. She even squatted down by his side. Finally she brushed a strand of black hair from his face. "Sleep well, you idiot" she whispered. "Why didn't you just talk to me?"
At the touch of the other woman's hand on her shoulder the witch looked up. "My Lady, we have no time to lose. Is Merlin all right?"
"Yes, he's fine" the sorceress said. "Now, let's have a look at the other wretch." She chuckled. "Really, where would these gallant, brave men be without us and our help?"
Both women went to the bed and scrutinized at the sleeping man. The sorceress sat down and her hands found the sensitive spots in Arthur's neck. Effortlessly, gently she entered the Prince's mind. She found the vast, grey castle much like Maelfwyn had found it before her, a bit livelier, a bit more crowded and bit more solid for what Maelfwyn had achieved before he died. "Arthur, where are you?" she silently called for the young man's true self. The castle around her and its inhabitants seemed to blur, to lose colour and coherence while she repeated her silent call, again and again.
She smiled lightly when she finally heard voices calling for her from the vaults deep down. Not Arthur's voice, not yet.
She made her way to the dungeons and opened the door with a single thought and there they were, as Maelfwyn had buried them alive by locking them in when he had left Arthur's mind for good.
"Give me a bit room to work, will you?" the witch said gently to 'Guinivere' and 'Merlin', both perfect impersonations of Arthur's memories of them, and they backed away from her. Fondly she caressed the hair of the unconscious Prince in front of her. "It would almost be worthwhile to let you sleep" she whispered. "I always loved to tousle your hair when we were kids but you always threw a tantrum."
She sighed and concentrated, banishing all distractions, desires and memories she had taken with her when she had left Camelot from her mind. Gently, soft and cool, utterly soothing and comforting Morgana let her magic flow into her foster brother's mind until he stirred under her hands. When he opened his sleepy, still unfocused eyes, the dungeon's walls around her began to dissipate until they vanished. The two impersonations lost coherence too until they had once more become what they had always been; integral parts of the Prince's mind.
Morgana smiled radiantly when her surroundings took on the familiar appearance of the stronghold that been her and Arthur's childhood home.
Happily she gazed into her brother's face. "Welcome back" she said, using her last opportunity to ruffle his hair. Arthur smiled back at her, still somewhat sleepy. Suddenly his eyes widened; then they became wild. He bolted upwards and began to scream.
It was this moment of realization Morgana had feared more than anything else.