Long ere the break of dawn, Merlin had risen, hurriedly dressed and stolen out of the castle. Though he knew the usual routes of the patrols, and many secret ways in and out of Camelot, his escape would have been difficult for even a skilled thief. An almost full moon hung in the sky, shedding its pale light over the citadel, and the guards on their redoubled patrols bore huge torches in their mailed fists, filling the air with oily yellow light. While few would admit it, each man's vigilance was born from fear that the spectre of Lady Morgana, or her conjured horrors, would reappear out of the night, for she haunted Camelot like a sprite from a children's fable.
Fortunately, Merlin was not reliant on his lightness of foot alone. As he walked, he drew on the elements of Fire and Air, holding them in tension about him. According to the natural philosophers, Fire was the element proper to the celestial spheres, to which it constantly sought to return, and hence flames streaming from torches and lamps always flowed upwards, pointing the way to their starry homes. Tonight any illumination born from the element of Fire, whether gliding down on moonbeams or thrown from flickering torches, would merely slip around Merlin, rather than glancing directly off him. In the same way he stilled the surrounding currents of Air, so that they did not betray the rustling of his clothing or the sound of his footfalls. He was not truly silent or invisible - he could still be detected by too close an examination - but so long as he was careful, and maintained focus on the spells, he could pass through even well-lit areas as if creeping through shadow. Manipulating the elements for any length of time was exhausting, but he had learnt to conserve his strength by merely nudging the substances that surrounded him, standing at their fulcrum.
Magic had always come naturally to Merlin, and it was stronger with him than with Gaius, who had studied it for decades, or even the sorceress Nimueh, who had been puissant in the ways of the Old Religion. He had commanded an ancient dragon, killed men with mere thoughts, called down lightning from the heavens, and restored life to those nigh unto death. Yet despite possessing all these abilities, he understood the underlying foundations of magic little more than when he had first arrived in Camelot.
No more was it possible for him to rely on the intuition of his childhood. His encounters with Morgause and Morgana had shown him how little he comprehended beside those priestesses of the Old Ways. Perhaps his raw power still waxed greater than Morgana's, but she had advanced so much under the tutelage of Morgause that, should she continue to gain knowledge at this pace, she could well overcome Merlin in direct combat when next they met.
Merlin did not intend to give her that opportunity.
The trouble was that, for the longest time, he had found no one to teach him. Uther might have been gone, yet Arthur was still no friend of magic, and nor was the Holy Church, who Arthur could not risk antagonising. For his own protection Gaius had destroyed all his books of spellcraft during the Great Purge, but for that one precious grimoire he had gifted to Merlin. Gaius himself had initially refused to teach magic to Merlin, or cast spells in front of him, and could only be induced to discuss the subject with extreme difficulty, in hushed tones. Of late, when Merlin had pressed Gaius to instruct him, arguing that the magical threats Arthur faced were so great that only a magician of equal power could safeguard him, Gaius had begun sharing in more earnest what he knew. Yet it was always in minute amounts, and this was followed by weeks of regretful silence, fear and paranoia over what would befall Merlin if his magic was discovered.
The great dragon had rendered Merlin no aid, either. The dragon had met with him in secret half a year ago, when Merlin had finally despaired of all the obstacles in his path, and ridden out into the forest surrounding Camelot to commune with the great beast.
"Where were you?" Merlin had shouted. "I have been calling you for three days, and I only heard your answer this morning before dawn."
The dragon had not been pleased to see Merlin. His mammoth voice had shaken the very ground beneath Merlin's feet.
"You summon me time and time again, young warlock, like a woodsman recalling a pet hound after a hunt. This time I perceive you are not even in mortal danger. I am not a dog to come running to heel whenever it pleases you."
"I am a Dragonlord," had said Merlin, sullenly. "I will call you when I please, and you will answer." Although part of him still thought Kilgharrah a friend and fellow magical creature, another remembered the dragon's callousness when it came to human life, and the sly fire that had smouldered in its eyes the night Merlin had released it. Camelot had burned for nigh on seven days and seven nights, and how many lives had been lost? My fault. My weakness. I thought him a friend, as I did with Morgana. This is an ancient and alien beast, and but for my father's inheritance I would be his prey. I may yet be, should I fail to be useful to him.
"You are not a Dragonlord!" Kilgharrah had rumbled. "You have a Dragonlord's voice and a Dragonlord's blood, but you lack a Dragonlord's wisdom! Had you but a fraction of the understanding your father possessed, you would not use the Dragontongue to call me at whim, with the levity of a farmer's boy calling his old pack mule into the barn! Now ask of me what you will, and release me. I tire of you."
"I want you to teach me magic," Merlin had said.
"No," the dragon had replied. "I cannot teach you. You must seek a teacher of your own race, or of the same order of existence. You must learn the magic of men before you essay to learn that of dragons, for although you speak with our voice, your flesh and blood are those of a mere man, and your mortal frame cannot hold the fury of our songs."
"But you've taught me spells before!" Merlin had shouted.
"I did share certain knowledge with you, in a way that you could comprehend. For me to give you spells the human mind could accommodate was a greater feat than you imagine, Merlin. For although you could train a dog to perform certain tricks, you could not teach it to joust in a tournament or command an army. And though you could teach a songbird to mimic the language of men, you could not empower it to compose a ballad or speak philosophy in the marketplace. You must learn the spellcraft of your own kind before you aspire to the knowledge of the Drach. Elsewise my spells will burn you up from within, like the very Fire which is our lifeblood, and which your lungs cannot even swallow."
Merlin had threatened to command the dragon to teach him then, which had only increased its anger.
"You have more power than sense, Merlin! This is precisely the insolence I spoke of. In refusing to teach you, I am merely safeguarding your own life, for I still bear you some affection, despite all you and your kind have wrought. Your father trained to master the Dragontongue for many years before that power was entrusted to him, yet he never presumed as you do. A dragon fledgling would have centuries of experience before it dared approach me and seek my tutelage, yet you threaten to wring that knowledge out of me by force! Such knowledge would kill you, and then I and my kind would be free, for the last Dragonlord would die, but it would not go so well with Arthur. Not that Arthur has done aught to ease the plight of the Old Ways in Camelot.
"Understand, Merlin, that with dragons magic is not a subject of academic study. It is the very essence of our being. Teaching magic, then, is a sacred art, for the teacher imbues his pupil with his words, his breath, his very life-force. And your manling body cannot contain the life-force of a dragon. Were I to breathe any but the gentlest whisper of my magic into you, it would shatter you. You would perish, and Arthur soon after, and I would have no tears to shed for either of you. So if you care for Arthur or your kingdom, you will not ask this thing of me again."
They had parted with ill will between them, Merlin riding back to the castle and vowing not to call the dragon again except in extremity of peril.
That had left Merlin with the single spellbook Gaius had given him, and its limitations were many. For a start, it mainly represented one school of magic, its incantations compiled many ages ago in an ancient and mystical form of the Saxon tongue. Merlin had come to realise that while magic was universal, the forms it took must have varied as much as languages and customs did among the races of men.
The oldest surviving kind in Camelot was that of the ancient Wallish, who were the first recorded people to inhabit the land where the city stood. It were descendants of the Wallish who made up the bulk of the modern people of Camelot, including the druids and keepers of the Old Religion. Later, Albion had come under the control of the Italics, who had brought many wild magics from the far south, but these were faded except in a few places where their rites had marked the landscape, much like the roads and crumbling bridges their empire had left behind. There were magics brought by the warlike Saxons and their cousins the Danes and Vykings, all fierce peoples from beyond the frozen north. And finally, the Normans had come up from the warm south, their magic like a heady blend of all the others, except arrayed in Norman notions of chivalry, romance, glamour and elegance.
Among all these styles of sorcery, the one which concerned Merlin the most was that of the Wallish. While most Wallish had converted to the Nazarin faith, practitioners of magic had survived among them with unusual vigour. Not until Uther had sought to bring Camelot in line with the other kingdoms and the unrelenting doctrine of the Church, during the Great Purge, had acceptance of magic in Camelot been torn up root and stem. And still, in the small villages and impenetrable forests of Camelot, the Old Ways with their softness for sorcery flourished. The druids and high priestesses persisted into the current day, hiding in untold numbers, and they were potent enough to threaten Arthur, against whom they bore a legitimate grudge. It were these people who had trained Morgana, and until Merlin understood their power, he had no defense against them.
That understanding was not easy to come by, however. The agents of the Purge and the censors of the Church had destroyed almost all records of magical practice in Camelot, except those which they considered useful for the study of medicine, astronomy and philosophy, and even these were tightly controlled. Moreover, the druids and Bendrui seemed to have reckoned their arts so sacred that they could never be written down, preferring to transmit their knowledge in person, so there was almost nothing to suppress to begin with. Were Merlin to learn more about this art, he would have to find someone willing to teach him in person.
And, as if in accordance with the dictates of Fate, such a person had appeared to Merlin not three months ago, to deliver him from his despair.
Merlin drew close to his destination now. Here, on the outskirts of Camelot, stood the ruins of a dilapidated stone building, once a temple to some deity of the Old Faith (an archdemon, if the bishops were to be believed). Its walls had been but low, its foundations simple and solid, laid in the ancient Wallish-Italic style that Merlin had come to know as a sign of the Old Religion, in contrast to the enormous towers and lofty arches favoured by the builders of the Nazarin cathedrals. (Even the architecture betrayed the differing attitudes of the faiths: the structures of the Old Religion sat low and deeply rooted in the earth, while the Nazarin church-builders stretched their spires up as if to seek God in the Heavens, and shun the corruption of the material world). The bright moonlight washed everything silver as it flooded over tumbled walls, cracked grey flagstones, rotting wooden beams, and the tendrils of vegetation that entangled the fallen masonry as the wood reclaimed the land.
Merlin stopped short for a moment, sensitive to the melancholy sight of this once sacred place shrouded in moonbeams, its hymns fallen silent forever, its followers dead or driven away, its teachings lost to history. Sic transit gloria mundi, as the Archbishop often said, so passes the glory of the world. And how true that was, for practices which had endured for thousands of years had been wiped out in a few generations by Uther's zealotry. But if that were so, if the world could overturn in the blink of an eye, didn't that also mean the current order could be swept away as easily, if he and Arthur but knew where to push? Wouldn't the great castles of enemy lords and the grand cathedrals of the witch-burning Church come tumbling down just as swiftly as the houses of these forgotten pagans? And however impossible it seemed, he and Arthur could finally build what they were destined to build…
Even as he was comforted by this thought, another occurred to Merlin. As the rule of the Druids had been transient, as the rule of the witch-burners and enemy kings they hoped to overthrow was destined to fade, wouldn't Camelot, too, be overtaken in the end? Even should Arthur and he struggle to build the future the dragon had promised, even if Arthur sat on his rightful Overlord's throne, wouldn't Arthur's crown and sceptre be toppled and borne away in these currents of Time, which spared no man? For an instant Merlin glimpsed the world with a dragon's eye, the centuries blurring past, civilisations rising and falling across this hallowed landscape, the human lives within of no more worth than a butterfly's which beat its wings for a day, and in the end, richly garbed kings and priests lay under the ground, crumbling to dust alongside the meanest beggars… alongside even him and Arthur.
This terrible vision was mercifully interrupted by a stirring from the ruin. A figure in grey robes appeared from a vine-covered wall as if she had sprung from the stone and wood itself. She advanced before Merlin and took the knee.
"Well met, Master Emrys. Why do you tarry without? Come into the bower."
Merlin shook himself and allowed the druidess to lead him into the heart of the temple. From here, she passed her hands before certain gnarled trees and the growths parted before her, leaving a rough trail for them to follow, which led on yet a little further out of Camelot and into the surrounding forest. As they travelled, Merlin walked much faster in the Bendrui's wake than he ordinarily would, for roots, thorns and brambles seemed to twitch out of the druidess' way, curtains of vines drew apart for them, and the very ground seemed to be pulling them forward towards their destination. All around them the leaves rustled, the trees whispering as if longing to commune with the Bendrui.
When they reached a clearing a short distance from the city, the Bendrui turned and exchanged her servant's manner for that of an exacting tutor, as swiftly as a traveller changed cloaks. She began drilling Merlin in his mastery of the elements, demanding that he summon each one before her in turn. Merlin brought a gust of wind to rattle the boughs around them, held flames in the palm of his hand, lifted a stone and cast it back down to earth, and made rivulets of water seep from the soil.
"Fire and Air come more easily to you than Earth and Water," Finna observed after his efforts. "Fire and Air are the elements of the dragons, and perhaps because they consider you their kin, you are more closely aligned to their magics. But you must master Earth and Water as well, Emrys, for if you are not truly rooted in the Earth, you will be but half an enchanter in this land. And as for Water, it is a feminine element beloved by all the enchantresses who congregate on the blessed islands of this place, and whose minds are made up to oppose you and Arthur. You cannot stand against them unless you understand the power of Water."
Next, as if to strengthen that connection with the Earth she had just mentioned, she moved to a patch of potent wild herbs, which the druids had often planted and abandoned to grow in such clearings as these, both for their own benefit and those of passers-by, and began listing those she wished Merlin to find. Merlin was aided in this task by the extensive knowledge of herbalism imparted to him by Gaius, just as he was aided in the study of elementalism by the readings in natural philosophy set for him by the aged physician. Even Gaius, however, would have been astonished by the Bendrui's knowledge of healing (or perhaps not, for he had learnt from them in his youth, though it had been a lifetime ago), and Finna had taught Merlin many new and ingenious uses of herbs, as well as many secret means to gather, prepare and preserve them, and finally charms and incantations by which to multiply their potency even further, so that Merlin felt he had grown as a physician tenfold in the three short months he had known her. Only one other people were spoken of with as much reverence as the Druids in the field of medicine, and they were the Beyn Avrami, but the Beyn Avrami were hindered in the potency of their cures, for their people shunned the explicit use of magic as much as the Nazarins did (not that this prevented their mediciners from being regularly accused of witchcraft and burnt with the pagans). Even without the use of magic, however, Finna's technique was so puissant that Merlin believed she could almost bring a man back from the dead (a miracle which the Nazarin priests reserved for their own Risen God, with a sort of professional jealousy, and condemned in all others as a mark of blackest sorcery taught by archfiends from Hell).
Once he had swiftly identified these herbs and demonstrated the means of preparing them, Merlin was given the task of finding yet more and rarer herbs, which did not grow in this clearing. In order to do so, he had to use perhaps the Druid's greatest gift, the greenblood. Finna had at first balked at teaching Merlin this skill, for it was reserved for advanced initiates who had sworn lifelong fealty to the druidic ways, but lately she had begun to teach Merlin more and more of her secrets, despite his outsider status. She had done this with an air of wild desperation, with much internal conflict, and with an air of one knowing she has little time left to accomplish her task.
Approaching the most ancient tree in the clearing, Finna bowed low and canted some apology to the spirits that watched over this hoary oak. Taking a golden knife from her robes, she slashed open her palm, waited for the red blood to gather, and let the dark liquid fall on the gnarled roots. Having offered her own blood, she now took the tree's in exchange, making a deep incision in its trunk and catching the sap that gushed forth in a wooden bowl. Using a spell to heal both her own wound and the tree's, she turned her attention to the bowl, which had been filled with many herbs and charms besides, and began muttering spells and waving her hand in gestures over it. When she was finished, she offered the sap to Merlin to drink, and he swallowed it down.
The rite of the greenblood had been disorienting to Merlin when he had first undergone it, but he tolerated it better now. He understood that this was how the master druids had built their praeternatural connection to the trees, and the soil on which they lived. For the duration of the rite, the tree's sap was dissolved into Merlin's blood and flowed as one with his, and they shared some part of each other's consciousness. He could feel his awareness taking root in the earth, spreading out into the greenness all around him like questing creepers, forming deep networks under the soil. Swiftly now, and with assurance, he led Finna from the clearing, raced along the green trails, and discovered whatever object she named. He led her to rare herbs, to waterfalls, to formations of stones. In this state he almost felt like the land was a second skin, and to discover the location of a ruined fort or a field of bluebells was like paying attention to his own body, feeling different textures of fine hair or clothing moving against his own flesh, and guessing what objects lay against it. It was as if he had awoken in the dark and were lying in bed wearing a new garment, and now he could divine the many different materials that made it up by touch alone. But what a skin this second skin was, alive and rustling with a hundred different kinds of trees, through which moved a thousand animals, sleeping, creeping, hooting, stalking, brushing against his awareness and making his nerves prickle.
Using the greenblood to seek out what was concealed was only the meanest of its uses. Finna had explained to him that the oak tree used for this rite had lived for many centuries, and had been born from a yet more ancient tree taken from one of the sacred groves. The tree's acorns had been sown far and wide through the forest by squirrels, so that its children were spread throughout Camelot's woods, each maintaining a connection to the parent tree. And the druids had often buried their dead at the feet of such trees, their belief being that as their blood and flesh fed the roots, the knowledge contained by the high priests would return to the tree's sap. So it was said that in the sap of such ancient trees flowed not only the forest's life-force, but the knowledge of Finna's predecessors, and that the greatest druids could use the greenblood to commune not just with the land, but with the memories of their ancestors.
Merlin was far from such mastery, however. Yet Finna pressed him to sink deeper and deeper into the stream of the greenblood each time he used it.
"Understand, Master, that the Druids have a strong connection with this land, and in the great war to come, many of them will side against you. You can only hope to prevail if your bond with the land is as great as theirs. For the land does not know of anointments and coronations; it is oblivious to what happens in the churches. If it is to recognise Arthur as king, you must teach it to do so. The witch Morgana spent much of her youth in Camelot, and she is skilled in the Old Ways. You may be sure that her bond with these woods, and the lakes, and the beasts of these forests, is strong. So long as she and her allies are stronger than you in the Old Ways they will have a foothold in Camelot, and she can come and go as she pleases, and nothing in your domain will be hidden from her. You cannot allow the trees and the animals to be on her side, for you cannot fight Nature. Your task will be as diplomatic and political as any Arthur undertakes. For you are to win lands for Arthur with magic; these wild places care nothing for the signing of treaties, nor do they recognise the laws of men, mere ink on scraps of parchment. They must be connected to the king through the medium of the Druids, who despise Arthur; but you shall stand in their place."
Dawn had long broken by the time the Bendrui had finished drilling Merlin. Most times he would have been frightened at the prospect of practicing sorcery well into the daylight hours, but when the greensap was in his blood, and the forest-attuned Finna was beside him, he did not fear anyone approaching them unawares, except for an enchanter of equal power.
"The dose of the greensap will wear off soon, Master, and you are exhausted. You must return now, and rest. We shall meet again soon." Finna went down on one knee again. "You must be on your guard, for Arthur has many enemies, and while only you can protect him from the magical kind, it may be his enemies of a far more human ilk that you cannot guard against."
Weary, but bolstered by the last of the greenblood in his veins, Merlin took his leave and made his way back to the Citadel as swiftly and secretly as he could manage. When he arrived in Gaius' chambers, the physician was rummaging through his stores. He stopped when he saw Merlin.
"Merlin!" he said exasperatedly. "Were you out all night again? What have you been doing?"
"Nothing. Just walking. Uh, I gathered some herbs for you." He held up a large satchel, brimming with his fragrant haul.
Gaius raised his eyebrow. "You've been very fastidious in gathering herbs of late, Merlin. I suppose there's no special reason you gather them at midnight when I'm still in bed? Never mind, I will have the truth from you later. You're very late, you know Arthur expects you at the ceremony! It will be very unfortunate if the king is humiliated by having his personal manservant be tardy again! Please don't put that boy through any more at the moment, Merlin, he's suffered indignities enough."
"Arthur's suffered indignities?" Merlin spluttered.
"Yes, he has. You know it's not been easy for him, making excuses for you. Now, I need to run. Elyan's told me he has a special case that requires my attention. I must make haste if I'm to see the patient and be on time for the king. Arthur's left some clothes for you, Merlin, I put them in the corner. Arthur said you couldn't be trusted to dress yourself. I believe his exact words were that you look like a starveling street urchin, rather than the manservant of a great lord."
Merlin glanced where Gaius pointed, and saw a fine blue tunic and pair of hose. "Really?" he said. "Arthur's happy for me to run about like a starveling when I'm waiting on him hand and foot. And now the whole assembly of lords will have their eyes on me, he wants to attire me properly?"
"Don't be ungrateful, Merlin. There's a sandwich for you under the cover. Make sure you wash!" Gaius, burdened by many bags and pouches, left his chambers.
Merlin threw the satchel on the table and sagged down into a chair. The last of the greenblood was ebbing away, and he wanted nothing more than to sleep. To sleep for a hundred years, and dream the slow green dreams of the ancient trees.
"My destiny is to protect Arthur," he whispered to himself. "I will rest when he is safe."
Painfully, slowly, with joints creaking like the limbs of an oak tree, he pulled himself to his feet.
A/N: Araline Delia, thanks for the kind review! I like the spelling Gawaine better because that's how I used to read it as a child, even though it may be jarring for some readers.