Strongest of the Warlocks: Chapter Twenty-Four: May Day Massacre
AN: I was not expecting a sudden burst of love for this fic, but boy did you guys deliver! Thank you for inspiring me to update this!
Fingers spun water around in a basin, murmuring a spell that made eyes glow golden.
Blood would be spilled that night.
Merlin was lingering and she knew it. Percival's hands were large and warm where they held Merlin's own, standing just outside the gates of Camelot. Her fingers might've been healed now, but her arm was still in a sling to keep her from reopening the shoulder wound from the crossbow bolt that one of the knights had shot her with.
"I'll see you soon," she promised, "I've been saving up my days off."
Percival's lips curved. "Mercia is a long way."
"So, we'll meet in the middle." Merlin would've waved a hand, but they were both caught so she had to settle for shrugging a bit haphazardly with her one good shoulder. "The White Mountains for a picnic."
He brought her good hand up to kiss her knuckles and Merlin still smiled despite the bright flush. It was the little things that left her positively breathless and dizzy to know that after two years their paths had converged once more in a way that Merlin had always wished yet never expected.
"A picnic?" he asked with a bit of amusement.
"Oh, Percival, don't tell me you wouldn't enjoy a picnic in the mountain range that most sane people avoid?" Her eyes gleamed.
The mountains lay before the Isle of the Blessed and had to be crossed in order to reach it and they were a bit treacherous, rarely crossed. Most tended to take the long way by going around them.
"Or, better yet, we could meet in the Valley of the Fallen Kings, no one goes there."
Percival arched an amused eyebrow. "No one goes there because of the magic and the ghosts, Merlin."
"Exactly!" Merlin beamed. "It's perfect!"
Percival leaned down and kissed her and Merlin's eyes fluttered shut briefly, raising a hand to cup his cheek, only releasing him when he parted from her to hoist himself up onto the saddle on his horse.
"I'll be waiting for your letter," Merlin's smile was impossibly wide and she blew him a kiss.
"I'll be waiting to write it," he replied simply, sparing her a last grin before taking off.
Merlin watched his back until he disappeared completely with a bit of a sigh. She considered turning around and heading back inside the city walls, but it wasn't like she needed to get anything done at the moment; she was barred from actually helping too much until her injuries were completely healed, which was annoying.
It was strange being back in Camelot, like walking through a dream, or, at least a hallucination. Merlin was too wary to call Camelot a dream. Elmet before it became barren was a dream, Camelot was a city ruled by a dictator with an iron fist, and that was as good as a nightmare to Merlin.
Things had changed since she was gone, though, and the thing that hit her the most was the execution of Gwen's blacksmithing father, Tom. The story had been told to her by Morgana, bitter and angry about how Tom had been deemed guilty of using magic even when he'd been ignorant of what his client was paying him for. Uther just didn't care.
No…Merlin didn't want to go back into the city, Merlin wanted to go for a stroll, as foolish as it was; she only had her little knife tucked into her sash -her sword still in her room- and her magic in her veins.
Leaves crinkled under her feet as she stepped into the forest. The air was clear, the sun was warm…Merlin swung her free arm around herself, closing her eyes and just taking it in. This is what she'd missed the most; freedom.
She could feel him even before she opened her eyes, and a smile warmed across her face as she opened them to find the one that had probably traveled a great distance to see her.
"Merlin," Iseldir said with so much relief and Merlin was already striding forward to reach his side, throwing her good arm around him, her forehead dropping to his shoulder as he wound his own arms around her, holding her tight with a relieved exaltation to the Goddess that made Merlin smile. "I'm so glad you're all right."
He leaned back to get a good look at her, taking her face in his hands, his eyes tracing over the healing cut on the side of her face. "Are you all right?"
Merlin had long since given up on claiming she was fine. "I'm healing," was all she could say, her mouth twisting into something that wasn't quite a smile. "Mum told you about what happened, didn't she?"
He smiled warmly. Iseldir had always been fond of Merlin's mother, and vice versa. They were two people who had met each other at the wrong time in life, Merlin thought. She'd never met her own father but Iseldir was the closest thing that she had to one and with him she was never disappointed. Better the godfather who would always visit and take her to through forests and craggy rocks and up mountains, if she so chose, than the father who had never known her and who might as well've been dead. Merlin didn't think she'd mind if he was dead; her mother had hardly ever spoken about her father, leaving Merlin to wonder if he was really even a good man to begin with.
"She was so relieved to hear that you were safe that she headed towards Camelot right away."
Merlin started in surprise. "She did?"
Hunith was, for the most part, largely estranged from Gaius -like mother like daughter- and had never even made it to Camelot when she'd gone into premature labor. Merlin's mother didn't really talk much about Merlin's birth apart from that. She always got so nervous, even when her June birthday rolled around and she never liked going to Camelot.
Traveling to Camelot on foot took a lot of time, but if she'd found out soon after Merlin returned to Camelot, then she would've had to be moving very quickly to make it there from Ealdor. "But Ealdor is so far away…"
Iseldir cleared his throat slightly. "She wasn't in Ealdor."
Merlin paused at that and then stared before realization dawned. "She was traveling with you." She'd only stayed in Ealdor so that Merlin could have some normalcy in her life, not that there was much of that to begin with, but it hadn't felt much like a home in ages. Merlin was a lot like her mother, she knew, particularly with their shared wanderlust, hating to be tied down when there were places to travel and discover.
Her mother had written to her before the whole debacle with the bandits and Cenred, letting her know that she was almost done clearing the house out, but somehow Merlin had never thought she'd get the nerve to actually leave.
(She wondered how often Iseldir and her mother communicated, because they had always seemed to know each other uncommonly well ever since she was a child)
"She was, she is," Iseldir was quick to correct, faltering slightly.
Dread settled into Merlin's stomach like cold, hard lead. "What is it?"
"Merlin…" Iseldir spoke slowly, carefully, like he was afraid that explaining things too quickly would set her off. "Your mother is very ill."
"Ill?" The word hit her with more force than she would've thought possible. "How ill? Something she caught from the weather or—" The rest of her words were choked at the merest thought.
Iseldir shook his head, taking her hand, and leading her further into the forest. If anyone else had done so, she would've stopped short and dug her heels in, but this was Iseldir; if Merlin couldn't trust him, who could she trust? "It's a curse of some sort, powerful enough that I can't break it, and I have my suspicions about who cast it."
"Who would even want to hurt Mum?" Merlin pressed, her shoulder jarring slightly with the sudden movement of attempting to keep up with his long strides. "She's a good person!" Hunith had no enemies, not like Merlin who seemed to have them in spades and acquire more as the days went on.
Iseldir cleared his throat. "I believe Nimueh was trying to hurt you."
That drew Merlin up short. "Nimueh?" She'd heard that name before. That was the woman that had poisoned the chalice that she'd drunk from, the one that had almost lured Arthur to his death. Gaius had known her well, she remembered him telling her, that was how he could easily describe her to Gwen when they were searching for her after the poisoning.
Gwen bringing up their similar appearances -dark hair, blue eyes- hadn't improved Merlin's mood much.
"Why? I've done nothing to her!" Nothing other than disrupt her plans, of course, not that Merlin wouldn't like to return the favor, because she certainly did, she just hadn't gotten the chance or opportunity to do so.
"That's a bit of a long story," Iseldir sighed, "but your mother is just through this thicket."
There was a single tent, which was strange; Iseldir, didn't usually travel alone. Well, that wasn't necessarily true, Merlin had to admit, he rarely traveled with anyone when he was coming to see her.
"Mum?" Merlin pushed through the flaps of the tent, barely bending down.
Hunith's skin was flushed with fever and she didn't even stir at her daughter's voice, which only made Merlin's worry grow. She knelt at her side, taking in her mother, whom she hadn't seen since that fateful night, who hadn't heard from her daughter since the terrifying moment her scream split the night.
Hunith's clothes were worn, like they'd always been, but now it was clear they were well-traveled with patches of dirt and grass stains. Merlin pressed the back of her hand to her mother's brow; heat was practically coming off her skin. Her fingers moved to press against the pulse at her throat, feeling how thready it was, thrumming against her fingers.
"How long has she been like this?" Merlin demanded of Hunith, continuing to assess her mother with the skills she'd leaned from Iseldir and Gaius.
"A few hours—" Merlin was already moving her hand, her eyes flashing gold with a murmur of a spell. "I doubt you'll have any luck, dear. You learned all that from me."
Merlin's cheeks pinked but she couldn't quite deny that, feeling the burn of spell, stronger even than the drought Anhora had brought on. "There has to be some way to break it, though. You said spells like these have to be lifted or the caster killed." Personally, Merlin had reached the point where she was perfectly fine with that happening. "Wait a second…why did she care so much?" It couldn't have just been because she'd kept Arthur from dying when Nimueh lured him into that cave with the Morteaus Flower…unless that creature beneath Camelot, the Afanc -the one that had been making everyone sick from drinking the water- had been her doing as well…or even the wraith that had been Tristan du Bois' resurrected corpse hellbent on killing Arthur…just how much could one woman be blamed for?
"That's…complicated," Iseldir admitted.
Merlin glowered. "Uncomplicate it." She took a skein of water from him to dampen the cloth on her mother's brow.
Iseldir heaved a heavy sigh. He'd known that one day they would have to have this conversation, it wasn't very well something that he could avoid forever. Merlin's destiny would've been a difficult subject to broach at six or twelve or even sixteen. How did you tell a child that she could one day bring about the return of magic to Albion? Iseldir still didn't know. What he did know was that Merlin was becoming something…something new and something powerful, should she ever decide to complete her magical studies to attain the status of a High Priestess. She was a born of the earth and the sea and the sky, of magic itself, and the Goddess had chosen no one better.
But she'd made mistakes before, like giving Nimueh a human form.
Iseldir dearly hoped that Merlin that didn't become another mistake of the Goddess'.
With a heavy heart, he asked the question that would unravel the truth. "Have you ever heard of the May Day Massacre?"
Merlin frowned in confusion. "No, why? What is it?"
"You could say it was another dark spot in Camelot's history of Uther being king." Iseldir's eyes darkened slightly. "Nimueh, probably using her Sight to foretell her eventual expulsion from Camelot and your birth, foreseeing how you would surpass her, left Uther with a warning, as far as I can tell, Uther took it as a threat, which it probably was. She told him that the person to bring magic back to his land would be born on the first of May, two years hence."
Merlin could see where this was going and it horrified her.
"Uther ordered every child born on May Day be rounded up and then executed to keep that from happening."
If Merlin hadn't already been sitting, she would've certainly crumpled at that, shock and terror burning through her with a fire that couldn't be quenched.
"He did what?" she asked weakly. How many children had he executed for no other reason than having the chance of being born on that one day? How many lives had Uther destroyed in seeking to eradicate magic from his kingdom?
It made Merlin absolutely sick to her stomach.
"Merlin."
She looked up.
"You were born on May Day."
That drew Merlin up short. "No," she corrected him slowly, "I was born on June Day…I was two weeks early."
But Iseldir shook his head, he had been there, after all. "You were a month and two weeks early…you couldn't very well say you were born on May Day, could you? Uther had no problem chasing your father down, even into Ealdor, and he would've had no problem executing you for the circumstances of your birth."
Merlin couldn't even stand to be in the same room as Uther, her throat closing tight. It was a traumatic response, Merlin had seen enough of them to recognize it in herself. Uther hadn't physically injured her, not like how he'd slaughtered thousands of her kind, not like Cenred had, but it didn't make much a difference to Merlin.
Fear ran through her veins in the stead of blood at the idea of being alone in the same room as a king. Never again, Merlin could never do it.
She cleared her throat, trying to focus hard. "Why?" she asked finally. "Why was making sure no one surpassed her so important?"
"Nimueh…wasn't necessarily human to begin with," Iseldir admitted.
Not human? That drew Merlin up short, thinking hard about the woman she remembered. She'd seemed human enough, but, then again so had Aulfric and Sophia despite being Sidhe. "What was she, then?"
"A water nymph." Iseldir's lips twitched slightly. "Lady of the Lake, we used to call her…the Goddess' most devout follower or handmaiden, depending on who you asked."
Merlin stared, blinked, and then stared some more. Nimueh hadn't struck her as devout when she'd seen her, powerful, certainly, but devout? "What happened?" she asked. What went wrong was what she meant, but she stalled her tongue.
Iseldir shrugged. "Water nymphs don't have power like human sorcerers do. It's possible she got a taste of what she could become and wanted to see how far she could take her magic, but even I couldn't say."
Merlin didn't like that, not knowing the reasons behind why people acted the way they did. She looked down on her mother, still unconscious, breathing in and out deeply, moaning faintly. She had more questions, more things to ask Iseldir, about Elmet, about what Anhora had said, about how he'd called her 'Your Highness' with so much familiarity, but now wasn't the time.
Merlin would have to wait to get those answers, there were more pressing issues to be worried about.
She bent down to press a kiss to her mother's flaming cheek. "I'll figure this out," she promised her, "I'm going to make you better."
Kill Nimueh, if necessary.
At sixteen years Merlin would've been physically sickened at the thought, but she was two years older and wiser with blood that had been cleaned from her sword and her hands. After Mum was better, Merlin would get back to her roots, to using her magic to make things grow like she wanted them to.
"I'll be back," she swore to Iseldir who looked like he wanted to tell her to slow down, to tell her to be careful and to not take risks, but Merlin couldn't afford that, not for her mother.
So, instead, Iseldir kept his mouth shut. He couldn't heal Hunith, and it was doubtful that Merlin would find a solution…more likely she'd have to find a way to locate the caster…but something was better than nothing.
Merlin had moved quickly through the lower town, avoiding looking at Tom's forge for too long before she made her way back into the castle. Arthur wasn't there, of course, he was off hunting with his knights. He'd long since learned that taking Merlin with him was just going to result in catching nothing, because she blundered her way through the forest -on purpose, which annoyed him more because he knew she could be quiet-, that and she was technically still injured, so, even more of a reason not to bring her along.
Between the grimoire Gaius had given her and the several books on magical remedies to ills that Merlin had copied that Gaius still wasn't aware of, she'd read them all at least a dozen times and the grimoire could only tell her so much; it was an introduction into magic not a Guide to Advanced Spellwork, which Merlin honestly would've preferred at this moment.
What was even the point of having magic if she couldn't help the people that she cared about?
And she didn't want to head down into the cave beneath the castle where Kilgharrah was chained because, not because he wasn't trustworthy -well, that wasn't necessarily true, Merlin trusted him about as far as she could throw him, but at least Kilgharrah was actually helpful, unlike some other people that Merlin knew- but because she knew that ultimately there was a price to the help he offered.
At least, though, with Kilgharrah she knew exactly what he wanted: to be free. Merlin had nothing against that, not really, but she was a healer, she had to weigh costs against benefits with everything that she did and Kilgharrah rested on a fulcrum that tipped neither one way nor the other. On one hand, it wasn't right to keep a creature of the Old Religion contained, particularly one that was the last of his kind, but she also didn't doubt that he would enact his revenge on Camelot when he was released -which was fair, given how he'd been treated, but Merlin was more concerned about the citizens caught in the crossfire.
Still, Kilgharrah was a problem for another day.
She peered around the corner into the palace library that was presided over by Geoffrey, who never seemed to like her nosing around in his stacks, but, thankfully, he wasn't at the center desk. That made it easier to move past it, heading for the East Wing of the library.
Merlin thought it was a travesty that the library wasn't more open to the public because hoarding knowledge like that never really did anyone any good.
The fingers of her good hand drummed against old wooden shelves as she moved past them, a soft murmur of a spell on her lips. She hadn't really known what to look for, just that what she had couldn't help her make Mum better, but she'd found the magic-related remedies to illness in the East Wing before, so it seemed like a good place to start.
Unfortunately, Merlin pressed down too hard on a shelf and had to yelp when that section shifted down and the wall twisted, and her with it. It came to a stop with a lurch and Merlin fell to the ground, jarring her stitched shoulder.
There were many things about this situation that she regretted but falling was definitely at the top of her list. Merlin lay there for a few moments while her shoulder throbbed with a sharp pain.
What was the name of that overzealous knight that had shot her?...Sir Bedivere, that's right. He'd never liked her very much, she remembered. She got on fairly well with most of the knights, though Leon was certainly her favorite because at least he had a sense of humor, but Bedivere had always looked down on her, thinking she was trying to rise above her station. Who went around shooting random people in the forest, anyways? Talk about having a trigger-finger and severe paranoia about enemies in the forest.
She pulled herself upright and looked around in interest. It looked like that section of shelves had hidden a secret chamber.
There was a healthy coating of dust on everything she could see and spiderwebs spun in every direction. Talismans, scepters, staffs, books upon books, artifacts…it was a magical treasure trove.
"Wow," Merlin murmured in awe. She'd never seen anything quite like it before. All that she'd learned from Iseldir had been oral and he had no powerful or magical artifacts, just the magic within him, and Gaius had just given her the one grimoire. Caedmon had made her a chime that was supposed to have a healing affect but his magic was so new that all it did was calm her, though she'd long since hidden it under the floorboards, wary of the King's inspections for magic.
A large crystal on a pillow initially drew her interest but then Merlin jolted at the sudden sound of a book cracking against the floor and she twisted around quickly, her heart leaping, only to calm at the sight of the book open on the ground.
She walked over to kneel down and pick it up, shutting it to get a look at the title emblazoned across the cover, or the title that should've been there, and whatever title had been there had been long since worn away.
The book ripped itself from her grasp suddenly to flop onto the ground and flip to the page that it had been on before she'd shut it and Merlin had to stare. "Well, all right, then," she muttered to herself, like it was just a normal occurrence for a book to act like it was possessed. She bent forward to get a look at the passage on the page.
"How to Strip Magic," she read out in surprise. She'd never heard of such a thing before. Removing someone's magic had always seemed like a cruel option, if it was even possible to begin with.
But she thought of Nimueh and perhaps there was a reason the witch feared her so.
Merlin was jerked out of her thoughts by the sudden tolling of the bell in the Citadel tower.
It rang once and then twice, and Merlin knew that to indicate injured persons entering Camelot and her immediate thoughts flew to Arthur in the forest, hunting.
The color fled from her cheeks. "Oh, no," she murmured in growing horror.
AN: The May Day Massacre is something actually attached to Arthur, but reduce-reuse-recycle lol, Uther is a terrible person, so him being the one behind it in this fic isn't surprising at all.
In some versions of the Arthurian Myths, Nimueh is the Lady of the Lake, so Freya won't be in this fic as that :)
As always: PLEASE REVIEW!
