Chapter 2: Camelot
(Future)
"What are you thinking?" Arthur asked casually, rocking in his saddle without looking toward Merlin.
Merlin hesitated, but this was so strange, he couldn't help being curious. It was a better reaction to feel than anything resembling fear. "How did you find out about… about me?" He couldn't quite say magic.
"You told me."
Well, that was a relief, honestly, to know he would be choosing how and when and where. But did it mean he wouldn't have to worry about someone seeing something they shouldn't during some attack and reporting him? He wasn't at all sure that such things could be extrapolated from a glimpse of the future…
"Do you feel like you could eat something and keep it down?" the king asked, glancing to the side away from Merlin, ever vigilant. Leon was in the lead by several paces, and Gwaine somewhere behind them, and Percival might have been on his own as a roving scout, or there might have been others that Merlin didn't initially notice. "There are some rations in your saddlebag."
A saddlebag probably packed by his older self. Interested, Merlin steadied tentatively-returning balance before leaning to the side to unbuckle the pouch and slip his hand inside.
Several objects he identified without needing to see them, so familiar they were. Rolled cloth for bandages, small stoppered bottles – the one that was slightly sticky around the top would be honey – and there was the feathery brush of horsetail and the broader smoothness of comfrey-leaf, both useful as a first treatment for open wounds. Below that the wrapped crumbly-square of flat-bread – the way he always packed it, in case of emergency. Those things would be more important than his own hunger pangs – and evidently he hadn't changed that much, if he still packed the same things in the same way.
He pulled out the packet and unwrapped one corner to nibble experimentally, not wanting to vomit again. Not in front of the king… who spared him a smile and a nod of encouragement.
Which still unsettled him, vaguely. It was so unusual as to be nearly unbelievable – but Merlin couldn't offend the king by teasingly assuming the concern to be manufactured.
What was the relationship like between the king and his older self? Now that the magic wasn't a secret anymore? Did he still tease the king, and did Arthur shoot comments at him like arrows, enjoying the victory when Merlin couldn't hide annoyance? Was he allowed to argue?
Did he still lie, about anything?
Turning his thoughts in another direction as they maneuvered their mounts down into a dry wash, and back up the other side, Merlin recalled that Morgana could be a threat, today. Would be a threat, soon. He decided that thinking about her was better than contemplating opening up his mouth to his Arthur – the one who didn't know – and saying, I have magic. And everything else that went with that confession…
Though it seemed to have gone all right, didn't it? If this was the Arthur he ended up with in ten years?
He knew the route from the Valley of the Fallen Kings to Camelot, but that wasn't the path they were on, now. A longer, less direct path, to prevent anyone who might lie in wait along the way from the Valley to Camelot from springing a second trap? It was midafternoon now, and would be past sundown when they arrived in the city.
"So Morgana did the spell that brought me here?" he ventured, licking crumbs off his lips. "That means… she survived the battle when we took Camelot back? We haven't been sure…"
Arthur made an affirmative noise, and drew his hand back to rest on the hilt of the sword in his belt – The Sword – Merlin saw. Did the king know about that, too?
"And we haven't defeated her for ten years?" he continued, relieving the awkward disorientation of the moment in focusing on the threat. "Has she been hiding, and… plotting, this whole time?"
Arthur grimaced, and somehow his glance at Merlin emphasized the scar on his face. "Not exactly…"
"Oh," Merlin said, a bit more disconcerted. Ten years of Arthur surviving – but ten years of that same tension, knowing Morgana wanted them dead and would try again and again to kill them.
Then again, he knew she wouldn't succeed for ten years, now, didn't he?
His head throbbed, and he leaned forward over the saddle-horn to press his fingers against his temples and close his eyes.
"It hasn't been completely terrible, though." Gwaine spoke from somewhere over his left shoulder, not too far. "We're not too disappointed, since we know we can't defeat her yet – but it's been good to know she won't win either, at times."
And they'd had ten years to come to terms with the idea that this happened… but it was happening to him, and it was happening now, without warning.
"I think we're all clear, sir," Leon called back from the scout's position.
"D'you think she knows the spell worked, and Merlin switched with himself?" Gwaine wondered indiscriminately.
Arthur grunted noncommittally.
"Do you think she'll try to attack him inside Camelot?" Percival said quietly from beyond Arthur.
"We'll be ready for her if she does," the king answered grimly.
Merlin pushed upright, blinking around dark spots in his vision. It was strange to think, he was the target and Arthur determined to protect him. He was quite done with reversals for the day.
"Why did she do it?" he asked the king. "Why me? I thought…" Arthur looked at him, and shame flushed suddenly through him in wondering if this was a story he'd told – yes the poison, of course she'd want Merlin dead, also. But others just as much, as far as he knew – Gwen, and Gaius, the knights… "I mean, she was always after you."
The king inhaled deeply, straightening his spine to look down the track ahead of them. "We spoke, you and I, about how much we should say to you. How much we should tell you, since you'll return to your own time and might then feel trapped by knowing decisions you'd already made… do you follow?"
"I suppose," Merlin said hesitantly. Not really was closer to the truth, but he was as unaccustomed to admitting ignorance, as weakness.
"If I said to you, Merlin you grew your hair down to your waist on your chin as well as on your head," Gwaine said lightly, "would you go back and do it because you had to, or because you wanted to? Or would you vow never to do it, to prove that things can change?"
Merlin squinted at him, sure that he was teasing. Long hair would get in the way. And – "Doesn't a beard itch?"
Gwaine snickered. Behind his own short golden beard, the king grinned and looked almost as young as the Arthur Merlin had left Camelot with that morning.
He could almost grasp what they meant. He'd faced questions of destiny before, after all. Had he saved Arthur's life, had he committed to protecting Arthur no matter the cost because it was his destiny and therefore an inescapable duty he might as well accept and do his best at, or because his choice was free and he wanted to, willingly risking himself and carrying the burdens that came with the role? But this was so much different than being told the future by Kilgarrah, or even seeing flashes of it in a crystal.
Use the knowledge of what you see for good, Emrys… He shivered.
"So I will get back?" he ventured. Arthur said since, but didn't he have to go back if he was going to live for ten years and switch with – himself. His younger self.
Hells, his head pounded.
"You'll get back," Arthur promised, solidly confident. "I remember it happening."
"Okay," Merlin said, swallowing a lurch of bile. "How? And when? If… if you don't mind my asking?"
The king didn't seem to mind at all. "In about a week's time – your older self, our Merlin, he'll do the spell that gets you back."
"The ritual," Gwaine corrected, and the king shot him a disgruntled look. "Well, he always said ritual."
He'd never done anything like a ritual. What sort of magic did his older self practice now? Now that people knew about him? And if people knew about him – if Morgana knew about him, what about–
"What about my mother?" he blurted, aghast that he hadn't thought about her before that moment. How careless of him! Because the secrecy of his magic kept his mother safe in tiny far-away Ealdor, but- "If Morgana knows about me, about the- and that I use it for-"
"Don't worry about your mother," the king reassured him. "She's moved to Camelot years ago. Everyone loves her, and she's indispensable in the citadel, though she won't take a title…"
Merlin sighed in relief, realizing a bit of disconcertedly that the king's words also meant nothing more ordinary and unrelated to Morgana's grudge, had happened to his mother in Ealdor. He wondered what indispensable in the citadel meant.
And then his scattered thoughts gathered around the view that was opening up in front of them, warm gold fading slowly in the clear dusk.
The forest ended nearly half a league sooner than he remembered. The fields were wider – the stone rows separating one from the next were different. Longer, and more of them, marking acres more of crops and grazing-meadow as those who worked the land moved stones and rocks they encountered to the edges, a place to walk when the crops were growing. There were workers present, though most had tools over their shoulders to head home for the night - and the shape of Camelot in the distance was subtly different. Not the towers of the citadel, but the lower town. The stone structures spread further from the walls, and those constructed probably from the timbers felled from the edge of the forest had shifted their boundaries also.
Camelot had expanded.
"It grew," he blurted, immediately feeling stupid for stating the obvious.
No sarcasm answered him, word or look or gesture. There was only pride and happy contentment in the look the king threw Merlin's way, something more real and genuine and unplanned than he'd shown Merlin til now. He couldn't help watching the older version of Arthur as they approached and entered the lower town, rather than the familiar-yet-changed buildings and carts and booths and people. It would feel awkward to catch glances becoming open-mouthed staring in any case – especially in this case – but his king was magnetic in a new way.
Arthur let his focus slide away from Merlin and turn outward, perfectly happy to have his attention requested again and again and again by people calling and waving. That was different, too – he was used to Arthur acknowledging the people and enduring their curious regard, on returning from a patrol or a more serious quest, but there was personal animation and pleasure in the way the king responded, even to a handful of children screaming out their welcome.
They hadn't dared express themselves so vocally, yesterday… and ten years ago.
"He usually dismounts and walks the streets up to the citadel," Gwaine leaned to mutter in Merlin's other ear. He shied a little from the lines on his friend's face and the gray in his beard below his mouth, not yet comfortable with the evidence of time passing – so swiftly, for him. "If we have the time, and no one's injured. But he's probably interested in getting you back in the citadel, and safely settled."
Merlin hummed acknowledgement. He couldn't deny the pull of comfort anticipated to get home at the end of a decade-long day and sleep off the toll of some serious magic. Maybe get a second opinion on the king's certainty that this was temporary and non-lethal, so he could relax and deal with the overwhelming concepts and sensations.
"How are you doing?" Gwaine continued. "You're all right? Hells, you used to be so skinny…"
What, was he going to be fat in ten years' time?
"I'm fine," Merlin said immediately, tucking his chin away from the knight's sharp gaze. He wasn't sure he liked how well they knew him – though he supposed they'd known him ten years longer than he'd known them, at this point.
"All right," Gwaine said, unconvinced, but sat back in his saddle and allowed his mount to drop a bit further to the rear. "If you say so…"
They rounded the corner just down from the tavern, and Merlin squinted ahead to see if the Rising-Sun sign still swung from its post – yes, it was still there, and-
Below the sign swung another emblem, one he recognized immediately, even at the distance – it was purple and crystal and feather, a totem of magic and healing, and he almost choked on the abruptness of his inhalation.
Five paces ahead and to his left, the balding cobbler – about half as much hair, now – stepped out on his threshold to point at an odd glass globe in a curved metal frame suspended from his own sign, the upside-down foot-shape where boots and shoes were molded and stretched. Merlin couldn't hear the words he spoke, seemingly into the open air, over the clopping sound of their horses' hooves, but the globe gleamed with internal light so suddenly Merlin almost flinched off his saddle.
That was magic. That was magic. That was-
The cobbler noticed them secondarily, and raised his voice to call out a greeting – "Majesty!" - completely careless of the magic that just lit a lantern-substitute outside his door. A moment later, noticing Merlin, the man flourished his wave slightly to include him also.
There were folks calling out greetings to the individual knights also, Merlin realized - that was different, and the king seemed not to mind sharing the attention and popularity, either. But he couldn't breathe for a moment, realizing the glowing orb lighting a good twenty paces of street-corner was not the only one of its kind.
Not the opposite corner, but the next shop down. And two outside the tavern, and one more across, further down but not to the next corner…
That made him aware that he could hear his name called out from the crowd, too, which had never happened.
He twisted to look behind them, dodged a bit to see around the knight and couldn't – couldn't make sense of the placement of the light-globes. There was no pattern that he could see.
"I said there was magic in Camelot," the king said mildly.
Merlin stared as if at a stranger – a bearded, scarred stranger that so resembled Arthur, but wasn't. And yet, he was also more Arthur than ever before. Merlin's wildest dreams had been left far behind in the dust of the road, neglected under their horses' hooves as inconsequential.
"All these people have magic?" he said incredulously.
"Oh – no, they're not using their own magic," the king corrected. "The round-lanterns are enchanted themselves to allow people without magic to light them, with a-"
The explanation sparked a memory of his first month in Arthur's service, and a tournament and a knight who cheated with magic even though it wasn't his magic – did that make him a sorcerer, then, or not?
On his other side, Gwaine spoke casually right along with the king's words, "It's a-"
"Summoning spell," Merlin blurted at the same time as both older men. The king nodded, looking pleased. "But not everyone has one?"
"We were thinking about designating locations according to necessity and convenience," the king told him, unconsciously slipping into more formal language so smoothly Merlin glimpsed the years of practice. "But in the end we decided it was better for the people to choose, who wanted one and who would prefer not – hate and fear die but slowly, I'm afraid."
And well did Merlin know that. But – there were enough round-lanterns lighting up and down the street and further around the town to be significant.
"That wasn't your idea," Gwaine murmured mischievously. "Merlin told us-"
"Well, I said it to him first," the king declared.
Gwaine scoffed in derision and both of them were comfortable with that, and Merlin… realized that, whenever and however the idea was raised, he was going to get to hear the truth of what Arthur said in response, for himself.
And then they were entering the courtyard, and Merlin was holding his breath again, with restive anticipation. This was more the same, white stone and horseman statue and the guards all interchangeable in their mail and tunics and helmets with nose-guards that concealed most of their faces. It was comforting to know some things didn't and wouldn't change – he couldn't even see evidences of old battles or skirmishes like they'd had to clean and fix at different times in the past.
In his past.
But then they were dismounting and handing over reins to stable-boys and Merlin didn't recognize them.
"Where's Tyr?" he said when the king turned toward him.
Arthur smiled and slapped his mount's rump affectionately as the horses moved away, following their handlers to their own creature comforts. "Stable-master, now. His boys are almost old enough for this duty… A couple more years."
Oh. But… yeah, of course. The servants his own age would be parents, now, and the children who'd dallied about chores and duties would be grown into responsibility. The thought made him feel the weight of the day's exhaustion, all over again. Dusk was closing in toward dark, and he might be hungry if he sat still long enough for his stomach to settle after his unusual journey through time, rather than space.
"Do you want me to come with you?" Gwaine offered.
"No," the king said immediately, more teasing than commanding.
"I asked him," Gwaine returned, addressing the king but gesturing to Merlin.
"You have reasons why you should get back h… ah, to your quarters," the king told Gwaine, with significance that the knight understood and Merlin didn't – and it annoyed him, except… he didn't really want to know, did he?
"Yeah, you're right." Gwaine's grin was still easy, bright and wide. "I'll see you tomorrow, Merlin?"
"Yeah." He nodded, and Gwaine, having turned his own mount over to the stable-boys, turned his stride back toward the portcullis and the lower town.
Didn't he live in barracks anymore, then?
"I'll have my manservant pass the word that everyone is to leave you alone unless you seek out company and conversation," the king continued, gesturing for Merlin to ascend the stairs – with him, beside him, rather than leaping upwards and berating Merlin in a shout over his shoulder for lagging behind.
Because, yeah – he was pretty sure he didn't want to know which servant ended up marrying which other servant, even. Or what they named their children.
It would ruin the gossip for years…
"I suppose there's going to be gossip to deal with," Merlin answered, trudging after him and aware that the other knights were forming something of a distant perimeter as they moved, and entered the citadel. Keeping them private, and shuffling off any encounters. It was going to be obvious that he wasn't their Merlin, and that meant magic… but no one would panic about that anymore, would they?
"There's always gossip, Merlin," the king said with another of his melancholy-sympathetic looks. "You're a fascinating topic of conversation. Much more so than an ordinary king. So people will talk, but it won't be the scandal you're imagining, probably. There's always something going on with magic, in Camelot."
Merlin stopped still halfway up the stairway, suddenly breathless to hear the king say that so casually. Arthur paused two stairs above him, frowning slightly in place of asking the question.
"There always was," he managed, "something going on with magic, in Camelot. You just… didn't always know it."
The king cocked a brow more amused than stern. "So I've been told."
And he wasn't even angry, Merlin marveled, climbing the stairs behind Arthur rather doggedly. "You know there are some folks I wouldn't mind seeing," he said. Not even intending to check that they were going to be all right for ten years, too… well, maybe a little. "I mean, other than… the knights… and you, of course…"
Reaching the top of the stair, he looked up into the king's face and startled an expression there of some distant and yet deep pain. He almost opened his mouth to demand in alarm, what is it, what's happened, but then the look was gone and Arthur was lifting his brows in another question.
"Um," he said, suddenly aware of ten years, again. What if he learned something he didn't want to know? Something he'd need to change, and then if he couldn't?... "Is there a… Her Majesty?"
The king's grin was crooked and sly, as he led Merlin further upward, into the tower where the physician's chambers were located. "You're asking about Gwen," he said.
"Well…" Merlin reacted defensively. Wasn't this high? Did they add more steps somehow? And wasn't it odd to be panting and trembling and no one snickering or laughing or shouting impatient irritation? "You've only just rescinded her banishment, and I know that you love each other and you plan to marry… but it's still awkward and uncertain right now… so she's been absent from Camelot - with Elyan - until things are sorted and settled… and it makes you snappish."
Arthur's grin had faded to a small smile as his gaze drifted back in memory. "Was I," he mused. "As it turns out, Her Majesty Queen Guinevere of Camelot isn't here in this time, either. She's away at the seaside for a fortnight – Hunith is with her, actually…" He paused significantly, eyes twinkling. "To look after the children."
The king pushed open the door of Gaius' chamber.
.….*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..
(Past)
Damn that spell.
Some part of Merlin's mind tried to remind him of all the reasons he'd compiled over the years, to consider Morgana's spell of exchange one of the best and most pivotal things that ever happened to him.
He ignored it easily.
"It's a sorcerer, innit?" one of the knights said, easy in his saddle above Merlin. Not the one to whose saddle the rope connected to Merlin's bonds was tied. "The one who did that – whatever it was? That flash of light, and the king's servant disappeared?"
"There wasn't anyone else that could've done it, was there?"
Merlin cleared his throat. "It wasn't me who did that, you know – that magic was done to me, just as much as-"
He wasn't allowed to finish defending himself.
"Don't try anything, you hear? The king will believe we had to kill you to defend ourselves, understand?"
Why certainly, thanks ever so. Grudgingly he admitted that memories and fears of this sort of thing had faded in his mind.
His body was weak and uncoordinated, stumbling bound at the center of the cluster of mounted knights, escorting him to the citadel and then to the dungeon. Fog coalesced and swirled around the edges of his vision, while the focus advanced and retreated unpredictably. One moment it seemed as if the rutted pebbled path was inches from his nose – he lurched back and almost twisted his ankle catching his balance – and the next moment it was several paces below his boots, moving aimlessly in midair.
The march seemed interminable, and he found his attention drifting away from the disappointment of Arthur's reception – though really, he should have expected; Arthur was still not good when magic that was abrupt and unexpected and incomprehensible threatened what he loved.
Niwiht geniwian… He'd memorized the incantation til it lilted through his mind at odd times like the refrain of a ballad. Her, aeteom ic… Valerian and belladonna and chamomile and six bowls and two bottles and willow charcoal… Min geosceaft geteode and yoenoesae.
He'd been given his horse, before – in the future of this time – maybe that made the difference? Magic did exhaust the physical body, even when one wasn't the caster… He'd been given something to eat before, too.
Cobblestones was a notice immediately disregarded. His life consisted entirely of the ache in his joints and lungs, one step after another after another, one breath after another after another after… His only purpose was the end of the journey; details of where and what then, unimportant.
"Who is that?"
"What's he done?"
The curiosity in the voices of lower-town bystanders was almost cruelly sharp, and he flinched, ducking instinctively away. The knights who surrounded him on their horses made no reply – for which he was pathetically grateful.
Hells, he just wanted to be left alone to sleep this off.
Voices thundered through and whispered around a single almost musical note of sound that shivered through the hollows of his head, unchanging and interminable. Hands shoved him, tugged at him, and he blinked sluggishly at his boots, wondering why stubbornness insisted that he cling to consciousness.
Because he didn't trust anyone to take care of him.
He was lost and alone and the feeling was unsettling, because it had been discarded so long ago, like a garment that was stained and rank-smelling. You don't have to do it all alone, Merlin, we're here. We'll help… But those were men his friends hadn't grown into, yet.
The gloom of encroaching darkness bloomed around the edges of his vision, as he stumbled through the portcullis into the citadel courtyard, and he wished for the ymbscman-lanterns of his own time in Camelot.
Arthur never would call them that. S'not that hard to say…
Stairs descended from his boots, each block expanding like the building of a thunderhead in the sky, the inflation of a butchered bladder for children's play, and he despaired. There was no way his knees were going to bend and straighten that many times, hold him and carry him down. He'd try for the first step and keep falling, his legs crumpling beneath him as the rest of his body struck every edge.
He couldn't see the bottom. He'd fall forever, and by the time his friends were friends enough to realize, he'd be out of their reach…
Hells, he got maudlin when he felt like this.
His arms were lifted and stretched, pulled from their sockets as his feet bumped and clattered, loose on his ankles. Thud!-thud!-thud! The first three steps stubbed his toes inside his boots, and gloved fists were rubbing bruises onto the insides of his upper arms, as the cord of his bonds was rubbing bruises onto the knobby bones of his wrists.
"I can manage the stairs myself if you let me go slow," he mumbled, resisting from irritation.
"Shut up, or we'll toss you down," Sir Brendan growled.
The guards on the prison level heard them coming, and stood ready beside the door of Merlin's cell – thick wood-plank, solid iron hinges, and a tiny window carved at chin-height. Merlin was well-acquainted with that cell; it meant there were no other prisoners at the moment. It meant straw on the floor, even if was moldy and shuffled underfoot like the matted hair of a cur's coat. It meant a cot, even if his feet would hang off the end, and the canvas sling would stink of urine and fear.
He was shoved unceremoniously inside, and hostility slammed into him like a fist in the gut with the decisive closing of the cell door. The key scraped in the lock, raising hairs on the back of his neck.
"This one's a sorcerer, so watch him and yourselves. No telling what he might try, but the king wants him alive and able to talk. For now."
"I didn't do that magic," he insisted, loudly enough that they paused to listen. "I told you, it was done to me…"
"Shut up!"
It might have been more amusing if he wasn't so abominably empty. No energy, and magic needed at least a little.
He stumbled to the nearest wall, leaning against its impervious solidity, and slid slowly down to sitting, listening to his heartbeat slow – and slow – and settle. Eyelids a faint soothing consolation against the burn in his vision, and he drifted in the darkness almost pleasantly. He twisted his hands to press the first two fingers of each against the pulse point in the opposite wrist, and the loop was closed – a perfect circle in essence, if not in shape. From his heart, down his arms, past his fingertips… and back.
"Wot's 'e doing?"
"Don't matter, does it – so long as he's not doing magic…"
The voices outside his cell grew indistinct, but sounded increasingly of boredom. And then, dice.
Inhale – exhale. Deep and slow and controlled, and the aches in his body succumbed to dullness below his hipbones and ankles and behind his shoulder-blades in the stone of the wall.
Breathe, and drift, and wait.
Gaius was in Camelot, somewhere above him. He'd be done with his rounds now. Maybe preparing some fresh ingredients for tomorrow's tinctures, or reading for research or pastime. If dinner was ready, he'd be waiting for the young servant who lived in his back room to return from patrol…
Merlin regretted his old friend's worry more keenly now than he ever remembered when he'd been the direct cause of it.
Sir Brendan wouldn't have told Gaius what happened on this patrol. There weren't orders for that, and Brendan was not a man to act in the absence of instructions from a superior. Though that might work in Merlin's favor, actually, if Gaius hadn't been told anything about today…
He filled his lungs and held himself poised just so, before relaxing in the slowest increments his body could maintain, pushing the last air out with a tightening of muscles where the discomfort of repeated vomiting lingered.
Could use some drinking water. Washing, too – but he had his doubts about anyone bringing him anything, even dinner. Brendan wouldn't, on his own, and Arthur… Arthur might forget to order a meal for his prisoner, if he was very late in and frustrated by the failure of his search.
Merlin regretted that, too… But Arthur might very well deliberately neglect to order a meal for him, if he did remember. If the young king was considering his prisoner with antipathy.
We hounded you for the better part of a week…
He'd mostly and ambivalently assumed that Arthur meant he'd been pestered for information about the future that he'd persisted in refusing to give. Maybe endured some skeptical scrutiny. But if Arthur didn't even believe him… what would he do?
Merlin breathed, lazily watching pink and purple – green and yellow – shapes spin and shift against the backs of his eyelids. It didn't matter, did it? Whatever Arthur decided he needed to do, if he wasn't going to cooperate with Merlin in this, then… he'd need to do it on his own.
The chill of the stone made him shiver out of rhythm. Time was a far riskier property than magic itself. There was a reason only a handful of magic-users ever had been recorded as achieving the ability to meddle – and usually with disaster written fairly clearly between the lines. Taliesin had been one, and his success was… debatable.
Cornelius Sigan was another, with his power over tides and night-and-day – and he'd molded his existence to the crystal that held his time of death in abeyance. Waiting and waiting and waiting and trapped for eternity. If Merlin knew how to grant him the release of death without involving the possession of another human being, he'd do it without hesitation. He was quite sure when it came his time, he'd prefer death and whatever came after – Avalon, for him? If he'd atoned sufficiently for his sins, perhaps – to that sort of endless frozen insensate immortality.
Pennywinkle, caroh-fruit, and willow…
He allowed his breath to hum tunelessly through his nostrils – one note for exhale, and a half-step up for inhale. Conserve energy, rebuild resources.
Meadow-sawge and yellow-dock and blood, and get to the Isle with enough time to prepare the Faelg…
Above his desire and anticipation to see Gaius, and the help he'd probably need from the old man. Beyond his consternation with Arthur's reaction. This he must do, and do well – replicate Morgana's spell of exchange, and bring his younger self back to this time – again? – that the next ten years, the last ten years, might be lived.
Again? The philosophy of the thing didn't matter so much as the practical facts.
That was all, and that was everything.
Belladonna was something Gaius didn't keep on hand, and though fennel grew in the palace garden they probably wouldn't let him harvest any for personal use – they probably wouldn't let him just harvest anything - and he'd need to get the thistle at noon and the pennywinkle at moonrise. He and Gaius had researched and debated the wording of the incantation so long and so often he could recite three separate versions in his sleep.
If that wasn't, of course, inherently perilous.
Hum-in… hum-out.
And then it was within an hour of midnight, unless he missed his guess. Torchlight flickered silently in a patch on the wall opposite, the square window-shape enlarged and oddly angled.
He let go of his pulse-points and leaned over one knee, palms gritty on the floor to push himself high enough to get his feet beneath him. His boots were soundless on the straw, and he looked through the door-window, around the corner to the bottom of the stair.
One guard, with shorn head and chin, blinked half-asleep into his own thoughts, arms crossed loosely over his chest, the rest of his body slouched in absolute passivity. The other leaned over the table between them, ear pillowed on his fist, stupidly turning the dice from one side to the next to the next.
In a moment one of them would suggest getting up to check the prisoner. They'd debate that in a lazy, desultory way – whether they should, and who, whether they'd get caught if they didn't, whether they'd feel guilty if they weren't caught… they'd lament the impossibility of something to drink – something to eat – the length of their vigil before replacements came for the next watch.
Merlin smiled and spoke gently, too softly to be heard. "Swefe nu…"
There were rules about performing magic when the range of focus was compromised by distance or corners. But it was such a small spell and the guards were entirely unresistant, and Merlin's own strength was gathering again.
The first guard dropped his shorn chin down onto his chest. The other adjusted the balance of head to fist and elbow to table, letting the rest of his weight settle. The dice lay quiet under his hand, and-
"Unclyse," Merlin told his lock – swiftly adding the qualifyer, "swiglice…"
The mechanism slid piece over piece, and the iron-bound wood-plank door swung open without a sound.
Merlin wasn't as young as he used to be – and didn't the others scoff when he was so incautious as to let that sentiment slip, in those words or others! – but Camelot was home. The tapestries might shift, a plinth with a vase might be exchanged for a table with a marble sculpture, but the bones of the citadel were steadfast. The corridors – the echoes – the routes and alternatives.
Arthur habitually required fewer guards at fewer posts than his father had, but in this time they were still spooked by Morgana's second conquest and subsequent disappearance. Only a handful, he remembered, had been privy to the information that Sir Boran had given his life in wounding Morgana before she'd fled with magic.
But the guards had not yet been trained to expect and anticipate how magic could complicate their duty.
Shouldn't Uther have drilled that into them?
Merlin huffed to himself in wry amusement, clinging to shadow for a moment and casting the slightest impression of another shadow moving contrary to its nature, down the opposite end of the corridor.
"Over there, what was that?"
"What was what?"
"Didn't you see that? Like someone moved past-"
"I didn't see anything."
"Well, I did. I think. Better check it – safe than sorry, and all…"
Merlin slipped around the corner and began to mount the steps to the physician's tower, ears alert for anyone approaching from either direction around the curving stair-hall of the tower.
The citadel was very quiet, this night. Nearly asleep, save for those keeping vigil…
Merlin paused to catch his breath outside the door of the physician's chamber, straining his ears to catch proof of Gaius' presence and solitude – whimsically trying to guess the old man's occupation-
And lifted the latch to swing the door inward, oddly reminded of the very first time he'd done so. Startling the old man – saving his life even before he knew, this was Gaius who would save his life in return, over and over protecting each other, sharing and keeping secrets.
I'm Merlin… Hunith's son. And it is Wednesday. The thought that he might have to convince the old physician of his identity and credibility again made him feel slightly breathless with nostalgia and necessity and hope.
Gaius was nearly hidden behind his desk and the enormous leather-bound tome open upon it. He lifted his head – white hair brushing the shoulders of the old familiar faded blue robe, the stem of his reading glass in hand – and silently stared, one eyebrow raised.
Merlin leaned against the door to close it, and then held still, containing the emotions that warred and had him close to tearful laughter.
Hi. It's me. I'm home… but not really… I can explain the velvet coat. And the beard…
"Merlin," Gaius said, his voice lilting delightfully with question and warning, and Merlin had never been so happy to be made to feel like an irresponsible adolescent. "What have you done now?"
A/N: I'm anticipating somewhere around 10 chapters altogether, some shorter and some longer since I'm (spoilers) trying to hint at parallels between the two times. There may be more chapters if they grow way too long, though…