Merlin opened his eyes. The first thing he noticed was that, somewhat to his surprise, nothing hurt. He glanced down at himself, just to be sure, but everything seemed to be attached and in working order. There wasn't even any blood on his uncut shirt, which was nice, since he doubted that the spirits would be offering him a change of clothing anytime soon, and walking around drenched in blood was uncomfortable at best.
And there had been so much blood. He clearly remembered being skewered with that sharp little dagger—an experience with very little to recommend it—and he remembered the blood pouring out of him, taking every vestige of warmth with it.
Really, it was almost funny, in a dark, not-remotely-humorous-at-all sort of way. He'd spent essentially his entire life dreading the fire. He'd been so damned sure that when his luck finally ran out and death caught up with him, it would be in a searing burst of heat and light and crackling wood, and while the thought hadn't been what anyone sane would call comforting, he'd eventually come to terms with it. Mostly.
If there's one thing on which most religions regretfully agree, it's that the gods love irony, so he probably shouldn't have been surprised when, instead, his death turned out to be dark and frigid, with the Dorochas' lipless mouths leeching his warmth, his strength, his life, away by fractions of degrees. The slow, relentless cold, draining him of everything he was while he watched, helpless, trapped within a column of ice, was nothing at all like the bright, quick agony of flame. He hadn't prepared for that. He hadn't been prepared for that.
He hadn't been entirely prepared to be stabbed, either, but there had been a few relatively bright sides to that part. First and foremost was the simple fact that if he was the one bleeding out on the altar, it meant that Arthur wasn't, which meant that he still had a chance at bringing about that golden age Kilgharrah insisted he was fated to create, which, in turn, meant that he, Merlin, had done at least some of what he'd been created to do. He could, and did, regret that he hadn't done more; he could, and did, regret the mistakes he had made along the way, but he hadn't failed entirely. It wasn't much, but it was something.
There was also some bitter comfort in the knowledge that he had kept his secret to the end. Yes, Arthur had put a blade through his heart—and yes, he'd had more than a few nightmares about that very scenario—but he'd done it, insofar as such a thing was possible, as a friend. Arthur had not been forced to realize that Merlin was everything Uther had raised him to despise, so Merlin had not been forced to see hatred in Arthur's eyes as he drove the knife between his ribs. There had been no fury in his face, none of the contempt or disgust or betrayal or loathing Merlin had dreaded seeing through golden eyes as the steel arced downwards. And, he admitted, when you came right down to it, that was the part he'd truly feared. Dying was one thing— happened to everyone, sooner or later, and frankly, it was a miracle he'd lasted even this long— but the thought of dying at Arthur's hand, or worse, the thought of Arthur genuinely wanting to kill him, for the magic, or the lying, or both… well, that had hurt.
If it had to be Arthur doing it, (gods, why did it have to be Arthur doing it? Not fair, not fair notfair,) this was the best scenario he could have hoped for. It had been as clean, as merciful a kill as the situation allowed, with no intention or attempt to cause more pain than was strictly necessary. Arthur hadn't killed him because he thought Merlin deserved it, or because he thought it was fair and just and desirable. He had been dispatched as a sacrifice; not slain as an enemy or executed as a sorcerer. It was probably a far easier death than just about anyone else in the world would have granted him. That was something, too. Not much, but something.
Yes. It was something, at least. It was going to have to be enough.
He looked around, mildly curious as to what the rest of eternity was going to look like.
It looked like… nothing. Gray and dim and featureless, like standing in an empty field in the misty predawn, or sitting in a befogged boat in the middle of a calm lake. It seemed to stretch on forever—and probably did—and all was as silent as… well, as a grave.
No one had ever said that death was going to be boring.
He picked a direction at random and started walking. People died every day; there had to be other… what was he now? A ghost? A spirit? Whatever he was, there had to be others like him around somewhere. He hoped so, anyway. Forever was a long time to sit around talking to oneself. And setting out to find them would at least give him something to think about besides trying to convince himself that death wasn't as bad as all that. If whoever he found was friendly, then so much the better, and if they weren't, at least he'd be too busy fighting to think about anything else. It was as good a plan as any. He'd find the others.
Others. With a quick indrawn breath, it suddenly occurred to him that maybe, just maybe, he'd find, not just ghosts, but ghosts he knew. He might be able to see Will again. Or his father. Or maybe… (don't get your hopes up, Merlin, don't do that to yourself, you idiot, don't, oh, damn, you're doing it,) or maybe even Freya.
He quickened his pace, not sure if he'd been walking for a minute or an hour or a week. Not that it appeared to make any difference; he was still, so far as he could tell, ploughing through an infinity of twilit fog, and might well not have moved at all.
"Leoht," he mumbled, not really thinking about what he was doing, and was more than a little surprised when a glowing sphere obediently manifested over his head. Not that it showed him anything with regards to his surroundings, but what it implied was stunning.
Had his magic followed him to the realm of the dead? How? Why?
Was there something more he was supposed to do?
If there was… what was it? How was he supposed to do it? Was there anyone who could tell him what was going on? He didn't know, he didn't know what to do, he'd never known, he'd mostly just made it up as he went along because prophecies weren't instructions, damn it all, cryptic draconic hints and half-glimpses in crystals were next to useless, they were just barely enough to tell him that whatever he was supposed to be doing, he was doing it wrong.
He stopped short, his mind spinning, as it occurred to him that the people he'd been hoping to see had, every one of them, died in his arms— because he had failed them. Why would any of them even want to see him?
Will, brave, stubborn, hotheaded Will, had been killed in a battle that, as he had bitterly pointed out, Merlin could have won in half a minute if he hadn't been too much of a coward to use the only real talent he had. Balinor had been safe and sound until Merlin had lured him out of hiding and to his death; twenty years of caution gone for nothing. Freya… there was no thought left about her that he hadn't rehashed in his mind until it was worn smooth and featureless as a river stone. He'd wanted so badly to save her, and he hadn't. He really hadn't. The best he could say about his own attempts was that she'd been dead before she went to the fires, instead of after.
And then there was Arthur. With a sickening jolt, he realized that he'd been so focused on making sure that Arthur didn't die today that he hadn't given a thought to making sure he didn't die tomorrow. And this was Camelot; there was always going to be another enemy, another peril, another disaster, another something that, (for reasons that, sadly, usually made a great deal of sense,) would make a beeline straight for the citadel with mayhem in mind. So far as Merlin had ever been able to tell, killing Pendragons was the primary goal of just about every living creature in Albion, magical or otherwise, not to mention a fairly large selection of the dead ones, just in case there was any danger of having a quiet day in between emergencies. Making sure that Arthur didn't die was a full-time job-and-a-half in and of itself, and somehow it hadn't occurred to him that, after this, he wasn't going to be there to do it.
Had this been a terrible mistake? Should he have tried harder to find another way?
It was far too late for second-guessing and should-haves, and it wasn't as though panic ever really helped anything, but it was too late for logic, too. He wrapped his arms around himself. And panicked.
*.*.*.*.*.*
Dorocha didn't hunt while the sun was in the sky, but then Dorocha weren't the only danger in Camelot. The lower town was filled and overfilled with frightened, desperate people, and the tension was spilling over into some very unfortunate, if predictable, outcomes. In short, there were fights. There were attacks. There were fires. There were accidents. There were illnesses.
There were more patients to tend, more work to do, than one old man could handle alone, especially without the help of his apprentice, and he was trying very hard not to think about his apprentice just then. Too many people needing help; not enough beds, or supplies, or time in the day to give each of them anything even close to the sort of aid they needed. And that was before trying to figure out something respectful to do with the bodies of the ones who didn't make it, or trying to find enough hands to do it.
Gaius had commandeered Gwen's hands without thinking twice, and it wasn't entirely for her intelligence and compassion. She was doing a good job, especially with the frightened children crowding the infirmary, and he suspected that having something hard to do—something that took energy, and concentration, something where she could see a tangible, positive result from her efforts—would help her more than anything else.
And having her nearby was helping him more than anything else. He wanted to keep her in sight, because she was all that he currently had of the three young people he had, each in their own way, thought of as almost his. All three of them had loved her, again, each in their own way; two of them still did, and of those two…
Of those two, in all probability one of them was never going to come home again. He didn't have much doubt which of them it would be, although given that both of them were equally stubborn, and equally dedicated to protecting the ones they cared about, and equally stubborn, (it really did bear mentioning twice,) and sometimes seemed to be actively looking for opportunities to lay down their lives for one another, there was a distinct possibility that it was going to come down to a footrace as to which of them could make it to the altar first.
Whichever one came home was going to need Gwen's comforting presence, and he was going to need it very, very badly. Keeping her safe and close at hand was the least he could do.
"Gaius," she said late one afternoon, coming out of Merlin's room, which (after a very hasty tidy-up and a very thorough search for incriminating objects,) had been pressed into service as the children's ward. She had an empty jar in her hand. "Is there any more tincture of motherwort? Nearly all of the children have needed it, and I'm afraid I've run out."
He nodded. Motherwort was a mild sedative; sleep was the best medicine for many of the traumatized children, and the tincture could help soothe them enough to rest, while not being strong enough to drug them into a stupor. He wasn't surprised that she had finished off the jar.
He rather wished he could take some himself, but he ignored that unworthy impulse. "Of course, Gwen," he said, walking to the appropriate shelf and selecting a jar. It was labeled 'Motherwort' in a neat, square hand that wasn't his, and he narrowed his eyes for a moment against the pain.
Forcing his fingers to unclench, he brought the jar to Gwen. He even found a faint smile for her. "Here you are, Gwen. Don't stint if you can help it; sleep is often a better physician than we mere mortals."
She went to take it, then drew back her hand. "Is there enough to last, though? I'd hate to use it all up and then find we needed it more later on."
"Oh, we will; the first rule of field medicine is that, invariably, you will run out of what you need at the worst possible time. But we have more than enough for a few days yet." And if this goes on much longer than that, it will mean that Arthur and his men have failed and the world is lost, anyhow, he didn't say aloud. "That's one benefit of having an apprentice; it vastly increases the number of tinctures and distillations I can have made up in advance and ready to hand. Especially the more, shall we say, 'aromatic' ones."
That, as he'd hoped, won him a faint smile in return. "Poor Merlin. Between your medicines, Arthur's sweaty gambesons, and horse dung, I'm surprised he can still smell anything at all."
"To hear him tell it, if anything, his sense of smell has only gotten sharper as a consequence," said Gaius, forcing himself to speak lightly. "And tell it he does. Repeatedly."
She tried to maintain the smile; it didn't work. "It can't be much longer until they arrive at the Isle of the Blessed," she said, pivoting the discussion to what they were both thinking about, anyway. "Don't you think? It's been nearly a week. Even accounting for the early stops to prepare for the Dorocha while the sun is in the sky, they have to be nearly there."
"Quite likely," Gaius said. If they've made it even that far. "I'm sure they're going as fast as they can."
She fussed with the label; one corner had come loose. "If they—when they get there, how long do you think mending the veil might take?"
He could see her doing sums in her head—so many days to go, so many days to get back, and did the fact that they no longer needed to stop as early each day balance the fact that the horses would be tired, and the great unknown in the middle, the ritual itself. "I don't know for certain," he hedged. "But I can't imagine it's too lengthy a process." A heartbeat. Or, rather, the length of a heartbeat stopping. Don't think about it. Don't think…
She nodded dolefully. "Do you think there will be any way to tell when… I mean, how will we know?"
"I'm not sure if there will be any external signs," he said. "It's possible, of course. I am far from an expert in these matters, and I could find very little detail in what few books were…" unburnt "…available. I suppose when night falls without bringing on further attacks, that will be our surest proof that they were successful."
"I'm sure you're right," she said wistfully and glanced at the lengthening shadows. There were still several hours before sundown. It was a long time to wait for answers. It wasn't nearly long enough to prepare for them once they came. "Well. I'd better get back to the children. Thank you, Gaius."
"Thank you, Gwen," he said, as she turned to go. And of course, it was that precise moment that… everything changed.
Everything and nothing. The ground didn't shake. The sun still shone, the sky stayed blue, the wind neither picked up nor died away. No thunderclap, no rainbows. Sometimes reality just has no sense of theater.
But they all felt it. They felt it. It was as if the entire world let out a breath it hadn't realized it was holding. An ache so familiar as to be almost unnoticed stopped; something missing snapped back into place. They felt it. And they knew.
Gwen whirled about, her eyes huge. "Gaius…?" She caught her breath; it was almost a sob. "Did you feel that?"
He put a hand against the table to steady himself, and closed his own eyes for a moment. "Yes, Gwen," he said softly. "I felt it."
All around the room, people were dazedly looking around, asking one another the same questions, getting the same answers. Trying to make sense of the indescribable as a group is, perhaps, easier than doing so alone; they could at least find some solace in the bedrock I did not imagine it. This was real, that was, in the end, the only thing any of them ever really knew for absolute certain.
"They did it," Gwen breathed, her eyes wet. "Gaius, they did it!"
So were his. "It seems they did," he said.
"I knew Arthur would save us," she said, tears now streaming, unnoticed, down her face in earnest, but she was smiling through the tears. "I knew he would do it."
He gathered her in his arms for a minute, let her sob her relief into his shoulder. "Yes. Shhh, Gwen. It's all right now. We're safe," he said softly. "I had no doubt he would protect us." Whatever the cost. Oh, my poor boys. My poor brave boys…