Chapter 4. Crystal Clear
Early April
Putrifying fish, Morgana decided. That's the smell.
The wyvern twisted before her, leathery neck folding like its cousin the snake, aiming for a bite. Morgana splayed her fingers, holding the creature off. Here on the Isle's broken ramparts, high above the lake and ground below, there was nothing but a spell that could save her.
"I'm not scared of you," she whispered. If this beast made it past her, it made it to the Druids. And if she didn't stop it, who would?
It locked its glowing red eyes on her and spread its bat wings.
Morgana hissed.
She split two spells, one a building blast of magic and the second grabbed the stone beneath their feet and strained. Her magic pulled her tendons taut, locked her jaw so her teeth clicked and ground.
Heavy, very heavy.
The wyvern lunged, and Morgana heaved.
The stone beneath the beast shifted, and with a shriek it twisted, rolling, colliding with her in a mess of wings and limbs. The sky spun.
The magic she'd been gathering blasted from her, her head hit something with a clunk and her vision blurred. She blinked, trying to clear a creeping darkness. The wyvern was still there- spinning. It was screeching. Good, she'd scared it.
She sat up, feeling a swoop of lightheadness. A hand to her head revealed no blood, so this would pass. She closed her eyes, feeling the ground spin, and spun fire.
"Forbaerne."
She felt the heat, saw the light flash before her eyes, and struggled to hold down the nausea. Stay up, stay fighting. Didn't she know a spell for internal injuries?
It wasn't coming to her quickly enough. She squinted, the sun suddenly too bright, and was goddess-blessed to see the creature hovering fearfully far to the side.
She clenched a fist, drawing the strength for another ball of fire. It didn't come readily so she adapted to create a bubble instead. A sheen of fire, thin enough to pop harmlessly on impact, but large enough to intimidate.
This was called a bluff. As a youth Morgana had rolled her eyes and explained that in the end game, if one played their cards correctly, then there was no gamble: only the win remaining.
Sad that Arthur's scoff about real battle had been too true.
The wyvern screeched, turned, and flew away. Its pack followed, crowing. They would roost across the lake, in some high trees, and just when she'd started to breathe again they would come back for their home.
But in the meantime she had a few days to recuperate. And fie on it for coming to her now; the internal injury spell was a simple one.
Well, simple if you had time. Complex if you had only moments. She had time now, so using a bit of magic she drew the runic circle above her head and curled her knees beneath her, resting comfortably. Ambient magic would gather in the circle while she caught her breath- a trick she'd taught the infamous Merlin, before she'd known it was him of course.
Below her, Druids stepped out of hiding.
Tents colored the courtyard, and axes had formed out of rubble. The largest boulders from the fallen walls and the toppled third tower were being broken down into manageable pieces, and carted away with Mordred's spell for weight.
Of the blackened, crumbling, rotting heap the Isle had begun as, at least this was progress.
Aithusa chirped, cresting into view and tilting her head.
"I'm fine, just resting."
Aithusa leaned close, nostrils wiggling as they sniffed her, then touched her head to Morgana's and sent her an image.
A brown horse dipped it's snout into the waters of their lakeshore, drinking deeply. No rider in sight, and the saddle and bridle with no identifying colors.
Aithusa tossed her head, wanting to lead her there. Whose horse was this?
Morgana murmured a few words, popping the rune magic and letting the healing spell wash away her headache.
While she could use her own magic to get across the lake, this was a good opportunity to get Mordred alone.
Lakewater splashed as Mordred struggled with the oars.
In hindsight he was a bit young to be her ferryman, perhaps only twelve or thirteen years, but she needed to know. What had he learned in the wild, a crystal of foresight hanging from his neck?
"Mordred, are you a seer?"
He traced her eyes to the crystal hidden beneath his shirt, then shook his head. "It's like holding a blanket down in a windstorm. It takes a lot of brute force and focus."
Unfortunate but understandable. "I also have difficulty controlling my visions. But with my natural gifts I wonder if the crystal could be navigated more easily. What do you think?"
He hesitated. That was good. Suspicion would have been hard to work against, but building a little trust would be easy.
She cut him off, "Just a thought." She waved it away. "How does following Alvarr compare with Aglain?" Aglain had been the dark-skinned Druid leader that had taken in herself and Mordred many years ago, and paid the price for it.
Mordred frowned, thinking, and water splashed into the boat as he fumbled with an oar. Fortunately, they were more than halfway there now. "More nomadic. I think I would have liked to settle down somewhere, but it feels safer to keep moving."
"My Isle is probably the safest place you can be."
"Maybe," he said. "But eventually someone will come with swords."
"I look forward to it. Blood is my favorite spice."
He grimaced, she thought. I'll have to leave the cannibalism jokes for the adults.
The boat squelched on the mud of the shallows, and she hopped out with her dress around her knees. Mordred worked to drag the boat in and Aithusa dropped, circled her in flight, then glided over to the brown horse.
About fifty paces away, the brown horse stood grazing at wiry early spring grass. But it perked as it saw Aithusa's large shadow overhead.
She snapped, "Aithusa stop scaring the poor beast and get back here."
Aithusa chose to sniff it, and the horse bolted.
"Aren't you a little old to not understand you're a scary dragon?"
Aithusa chirped- had probably done it on purpose, the little brat- and landed near the treeline, aiming her snout into it.
Morgana readied a fistfull of magic. Winter's dead remnants crunched underfoot, and in between the thin birch trunks lay a body, dead by the looks of it. He faced the dirt, back caked in dark dried blood.
Mordred sidled up to her, and she told him, "Check his pockets."
Had the man been magic, trying to escape persecution? How could he possibly have known to come here? At least Alvarr had the excuse of Mordred and his crystal.
Mordred gasped, hand flinching back, "I think he's alive."
Goddess, with that bloodloss? "Back to the boat." She found Alvarr and sent him a mental spear, "I need you at the shoreline with whatever medical supplies you can muster."
Mordred had nodded, then pressed his hands into the man's lower back, murmuring a few words. It let him flip the man over his shoulder with easy strength.
"Careful with his head," she said, then got down to business.
Healing, she felt, was like stitching. Times like this, it felt like cross stitching a tapestry at high speed while simultaneously spinning thread out of wool.
She'd largely pawned her ladylike cross-stitching off on Gwen, and she didn't regret it in the least. It's not like it actually helped her magic skill- it just made for a good analogy.
Alvarr waited on the Isle's dock with two others. The dock was no healing hut, and those rags were no bandages, but they would do. They would have to.
They moved around her, but once the man was laid out on the ground, she had to go deep. She shrunk until she was the needlepoint itself, and she plunged.
She wondered what Merlin saw. When he'd hitched a ride on her Sight to look into the past, she'd hitched a ride on his. Magic had been beautiful, she remembered, golden and delicate and vast.
Floating in darkness, a meditative state behind her eyelids, she read the pain of the body by the way it thrummed around her own. Mouth dry, joints aching, back aflame, and lethargic cold. She categorized the symptoms quickly to likely causes, she'd seen every one with Aithusa and Morgause. Dehydration. Infection. Blood loss.
She could not fix everything, she didn't have the knowledge. The blood loss was the worst of course, and she pushed her magic to the man's back, lending her energy to where he now had none. There had to be better ways to do this, it took so much of her strength. Slowly the wounds sealed, strenuously, painfully, into scars, and Morgana had to catch herself as she pulled back- nearly falling.
She felt breathless, but tried her best to hide it. "Alvarr, do you have healers in your group?"
"Not ones who could do as much as you, but it doesn't take a healer's eyes to see this man has the blood sickness."
Infection, he meant. "Do they know herbs at least? I'm pitiful at that."
He nodded, turning slightly as he mentally sent orders to his people.
Mordred crawled closer, touching a careful hand to the man's flushed cheek, likely feeling the raging fever there. "He has magic," he said instead.
How did the Druids do that, somehow read that someone had magic?
Mordred pointed at the man's back. "I told you men would come with swords."
Blinking, she looked down and saw the wound she'd healed. Black scabbed over blood flaked off of fresh white scars, but the burned words were clear.
NICE SPELLBOOK
FIND ME
JOIN ME
OR DIE
Morgana lay on her back on a spare bedroll, staring at stars, counting her conclusions across the constellations.
She'd read the journal of the thief a hundred times, and it confused her more than helped. That long segment about warmth and food for the lifecycle of a creature… what was that about? A chicken egg? Had a madman taken her spellbook?
How had they found her?
They planned to kill her, likely would attack the Isle, if she didn't ally with them. But who were they? Where were they?
Would she even join them if she knew?
Merlin was Emrys. If she went against Camelot again, she could not beat him, she never had and likely could not. He was her destiny and her doom, whatever that meant.
But could she trust him instead? He'd taken her magic, lied to her, tried to kill her. She'd tried to kill him. He'd saved her from a pit and put her in a different cage. And, goddess, there were times he'd been her only friend. Goddess, she prayed, help me protect this Isle. Tell me what to do. I am your last priestess and I live to honor you.
A wyvern screeched in the night, and Morgana closed her eyes. Weariness held her down like chains. Had the wyverns emboldened? Would they come daily now? If the fae didn't want her here, did that mean the goddess wanted her out?
She barked a laugh.
Did she even deserve an answer from the goddess?
She focused again on the constellations above, on the way they wheeled overhead in their patterns. They lit a vast land she was free to explore, and she imagined the air of that land touching her skin and expanding to the edges of Albion.
I am not trapped.
In the Sarrum's pit every veneer she'd ever considered hers had peeled away.
Every person wrapped themselves in lies and wishes, and through despair and self-hatred she'd learned the core the goddess had granted her.
Morgana sat up, slipping her boots back over wool socks. Most slept, and as she picked her way through the tents and bedrolls, she made sure to knock a heel against Mordred's shoulder.
She continued into the shadow of the burned Rowan tree and sat cross-legged, casting around for a twig. With it she lit a spit of flame and watched the smoke trail upwards. Her eyes adjusted to the night until she could pick out the backdrop of stars and the smoke spreading out into them.
I know who I am, she thought. I am one who never, ever, gives up.
She pushed herself with it, feeling first a lightheadedness, then hearing an echo as her skull seemed to expand up into the sky.
Mordred's voice creaked with disuse, and he cleared it twice. "Try the crystal."
"The Crystal," she whispered, feeling her magic react to its presence. She buzzed through to her toes and the bubble of her Sight expanded out and out.
She could no longer understand Mordred's words. Reality had begun to blur.
As her vision faded the smear of Mordred crouched and leaned forward. The Crystal of Neahtid attached to his necklace landed in her palm.
She fell into complete darkness- then blinding, brilliant gold.
It exploded out of her, lines drawing her in a thousand different directions. The thief, she thought. I have to beat them.
The wind picked her up and tossed, air blowing up her nostrils and yanking her hair back.
Morgause? She stood there in a red dress, blonde hair cascading around her shoulders and a smirk on her face. She held a palm out and her eyes flashed gold. Gold, brilliant gold, enveloping her- No the thief, how do I win? What path do I win?
Arthur's golden hair, cloak flapping. He was here, in this courtyard. Then he lay on his back, smoke curling from his chest, sightless in death. But how-
Merlin. He was staring at her, bloody, ragged, and full of despair. Behind him was a white cave. And over it the sun rose.
And it rose, and rose, and rose a hundred hundred hundred times and it grew larger and larger and hotter and hotter and the golden light was boiling.
She was next conscious of silence.
A bedroll tangled her hair, and her mouth tasted acrid from hanging open.
I fainted, she thought, eyes now open and measuring the stars. They'd pinwheeled a few hours worth. What an embarrassment. And I learned nothing useful.
I can't protect them.
She closed her eyes. Is it my legacy to fail?
She wanted to ask the Dolma what to do. But the Dolma was Merlin. That bastard.
Aithusa nuzzled her cheek, and Morgana smiled in spite of herself. "You're getting sneakier, little one."
Aithusa gave a small huff and curled into the hollow space by Morgana's shoulder. She'd begun to grow into her hide, going from leathery to mottled. She'd have true scales soon.
"Aithusa," Morgana whispered. "Should I give up before it gets worse? Do I find this sorcerer, join him? Do we run?"
The little dragon stretched her wings out wide, then swept one up over Morgana's chest. It was more of a blanket but it may have been the closest thing to a hug she'd had since…. She couldn't even guess.
If I run now, then I have to admit I was never worthy of being a Priestess. I have to admit I'm weak. I refuse that.
I'll heal this Isle, I'll restore the Old Religion, and Aithusa will have a safe place to live.
The vision had held Morgause, Arthur, and Merlin. She had no proof but faith that what she'd seen had been what she needed to see. She'd need a way to speak to the dead, and for Arthur and Merlin she'd need a peace offering.
Arthur had been smoking in that vision, dead by fire she suspected. Was she meant to kill him?
She scrubbed a tongue over the old taste of her teeth, and wriggled into a more comfortable position. She had a few more things to think through tonight.
One step at a time.
How to get Merlin to trust her?
Gun in my Hand by Dorothy
Footnotes:
(1) Wyverns - a fae of the show that Merlin meets in the Blasted Lands and controls as a dragonlord. We've seen them now a few times at the Isle.
(2) Dolma - Merlin used the Dolma as a disguise while checking on Morgana after he'd trapped her with the Leshy. Book 2.
Deciding how healing magic worked for Morgana was a fun bit.
With this the intro chapters are done. Time to get started!
Next Time: The Loch Avalon Monster. Morgana strikes a deal with Merlin, and Gilli finally has a chance at legs.