A/N: Thank you GuestM, PadrePedro, and Buckhunter for reviewing!


Chapter 2

Elyan checked Percival's bandages to make sure the wound wasn't bleeding again. He hated sitting around waiting like this and knew Percival didn't like it either. It was worse for him, being injured. If the others ran into trouble, neither of them would be able to help.

The crunch of foliage set Elyan on guard and he leaped to his feet. He knew it was too soon for Merlin, Lancelot, and Gwaine to return, and yet that was who he was half expecting. However, it was a troop of knights in Camelot's colors, led by none other than Prince Arthur.

The knights immediately fanned out, swords drawn and raised. Elyan wouldn't have a chance to get his own weapon before he was cut down, and so he raised his hands in surrender.

Arthur regarded him and Percival with a cold glare. "What happened?" he asked stiffly, nodding to Percival on the ground with a bandaged leg.

"We ran into someone unfriendly," Elyan replied with equal tension.

Arthur scanned the area before fixing his stare back on Elyan. "Are you working with Julius Borden?" he demanded.

"Who?"

Arthur stepped forward threateningly. "Don't lie to me. He stole the triskelion piece from Camelot's vaults, and we all know Merlin would be very interested in what it unlocks."

Elyan drew his shoulders back. "We had nothing to do with any robbery."

Arthur studied him shrewdly for a long moment. "Very well. You're still under arrest for aiding and abetting a sorcerer."

"What about Borden?" Leon asked quietly.

Arthur's mouth pinched. "We'll leave two here to guard the prisoners. Once we have Borden in custody, we can all return to Camelot."

Oh great, more getting left behind. Elyan glowered at the prince as two knights stepped forward to seize him. He tensed with the urge to throw a defiant punch, but there were still several blades pointed at him, so the resistance would be futile. Especially with Percival down for the count. Elyan was manhandled over to his friend and forced to sit on the forest floor beside him. One of the knights produced a coil of rope and proceeded to first bind their hands behind their backs, and then wound the rope across their chests and around the tree trunk for extra security.

"I'll stay with the prisoners," Leon volunteered.

Arthur shot him a surprised look but didn't argue. He designated another knight, Sir Bedevere, to remain as well, and then he and the rest of the troop headed off after Borden.

A part of Elyan wondered whether Leon had wanted to stay to perhaps help them escape. The two of them were old friends, after all. But the minutes ticked by and he simply stood guard, not saying anything. Elyan squirmed in his bonds. They were pretty tight. And even if he could get free, he was still faced with the challenge of overpowering two armed knights.

Leon abruptly turned and walked over, crouching down and holding up a canteen toward Percival in offering. Percival eyed him warily but leaned forward, and Leon gave him a few sips to drink. He then offered it to Elyan, who grudgingly accepted the water.

"Is it true you helped unleash the dragon on Camelot?" Leon asked quietly.

Elyan considered holding his tongue, but if there was any chance of his childhood friend helping them… "We didn't mean for it to attack Camelot," he answered honestly.

Leon's expression hardened.

"And did you not notice that the alleged sorcerer was the one who forced the dragon to retreat?" Elyan went on.

Leon shook his head and stood up. "It grieves me that you've turned down this path."

Elyan bristled. "Maybe I wouldn't have if my father hadn't been falsely accused of using magic and murdered for it."

Leon looked away at that, then moved back to his spot to stand guard.

Elyan subtly twisted and rotated his wrists until he could reach his ring, touching the stone to activate it.

"So it's back to Camelot for execution?" he asked loudly. "Or will Arthur just do it here when he gets back?"

Leon avoided his gaze, but it didn't matter. Elyan only needed what he said to be recorded by the magic ring. Rotating the outer casing, he sent the spectral hummingbird off without their captors even noticing.


With Borden leading the way, they did find the cave much more quickly than if they had continued searching on their own. The man had apparently done his research thoroughly in preparation for this moment. The cave entrance did look like an immediate dead end only a few feet in, but in fact the tunnel made a sharp right turn and the angle of the shadows made it appear as though it was a solid rock wall.

They wound around the bend and further into the cave until they came upon an ornate relief carved into the rock. Borden turned to Merlin and held his hand out expectantly. Merlin handed over the triskelion and watched Borden's every move carefully as he fitted the key into the lock and unsealed the tomb. A puff of stale air and must issued from the crack as the stone door grated open. There was a palpable sense of foreboding inside the darkness within.

Merlin summoned up an orb of glowing blue light to illuminate the tunnel. Grinning ecstatically, Borden strode in first. Merlin, Lancelot, and Gwaine followed. The tunnel widened from a natural passage to one intricately carven into the rocks. Merlin noted the grooves between stones seemed rather deep, but he didn't think much of it. Not until someone's foot depressed a stone in the floor, and suddenly several bladed pendulums came swinging out of the notches. They all jumped back before one of them could get sliced.

"Booby traps, of course," Gwaine muttered.

"Yes," Borden said slowly. "I should have anticipated this."

"In all your years of searching, you didn't learn about any traps?" Lancelot asked.

"The ones who sealed the tomb intended for it to never be opened again," Borden replied. "And so they left no record of how to get past them."

Of course they didn't, Merlin thought.

"But surely you can use magic," Borden went on, looking his way.

Merlin pursed his mouth in thought, then stretched out his hand and uttered a spell to slow the pendulums to the point they'd be almost frozen in time. Their momentum began to decrease, but then there was a pop, and they resumed their weighted swinging. Merlin staggered back and gave himself a small shake.

"What happened?" Lancelot asked.

"They're warded against magic."

Which made sense but definitely made things harder.

Gwaine was mumbling something under his breath that sounded like a random string of numbers over and over as he watched the pendulums.

"Gwaine?" Merlin prompted.

He held up a finger for them to wait and continued counting. "I think I've got the timing between swings," he finally said.

"Are you sure?" Borden asked dubiously.

"One way to find out."

Merlin tensed as Gwaine walked up to the edge of the booby-trapped corridor. Counting under his breath to himself, Gwaine took a step forward, narrowly avoiding the first blade. He hopped past the next one, then paused for a few beats, then hopped forward again. Merlin cringed as he almost lost his balance and pitched face first into one of the pendulums. He didn't want to watch and yet couldn't look away as Gwaine slowly and carefully made his way across. When he finally cleared the last pendulum, Merlin exhaled heavily in relief.

"Right," Borden said, breaking the tension. "Who's next?"

"Give me a minute!" Gwaine called back as he examined the rock walls. He then grabbed a stone and turned it like a knob. The pendulums swung back into their crevices and remained there.

Merlin's brows rose sharply. "Nice job."

"We're sure there's no more trip stones to trigger it?" Lancelot asked.

Gwaine shrugged. "One way to find out."

Lancelot rolled his eyes. "Your answer to everything," he rejoined but gamely stepped forward. He started slow and tentative but then decided to hurry across lest there was a secondary trigger. Merlin and Borden hurried after him, and they all made it to the other side safely.

"Excellent," Borden declared. "Onward!" He faltered then and gave a nervous chuckle as he gestured for someone else to take the lead.

Merlin exchanged a dry look with Lancelot and Gwaine and moved ahead, his glowing blue orb floating alongside him. They came upon another corridor that looked innocuous but no doubt held more traps to deter them. Lancelot stepped forward and carefully reached the toe of his boot out to test the first row of stones in the floor. When he touched one on the second row, an arrow came zinging out from the wall, whizzing mere inches in front of his face. Merlin instinctively yanked him backward. The corridor fell still once more.

"Okay," Lancelot breathed. "Slow and steady."

Merlin kept a preemptive grip on his arm as he resumed stretching his foot out to test the stones to see which ones were safe, leaning back as far as he could without upending his balance to avoid getting shot with a triggered arrow. It was still nerve-wracking each time he stepped on a live one, even though the arrows sailed past to clink against the opposite wall.

They painstakingly made their way across and once past it, quickened their pace in eagerness to put some distance between them and live projectiles. But that led them to nearly falling right into a pit of upturned spikes right smack dab in the middle of the floor around the next bend.

"Oh, come on," Gwaine groused as he surveyed the giant hole that extended wall to wall. There was barely an edge of flooring remaining along the base, probably only five inches wide.

Merlin grimaced as he surveyed their options. "I think we'll have to try to cross there," he said, nodding to the wall.

Lancelot and Gwaine shared unenthused looks at that.

"Right," Borden piped in. "Who's going first?"

"You haven't yet," Gwaine retorted.

Borden sputtered soundlessly as he seemed to fumble for a reason why he shouldn't, but then they were interrupted by a spectral hummingbird zinging through the air.

"What the," the man uttered in surprise.

The bird wrote out its message in glowing letters, signing Elyan's rune.

"What is that supposed to mean?" Gwaine said.

"That he and probably Percival with him have been captured by knights of Camelot," Lancelot said grimly.

"And Arthur's on our trail," Merlin concluded. "We have to hurry." They needed to retrieve the dragon egg, then get out of there and rescue their friends, hopefully without running into the prince.

Merlin strode over to the edge of the passage and cautiously stepped onto the narrow ledge. He definitely didn't feel secure shuffling his shoes along the stone as he clung to the rock wall.

Lancelot filed in behind him, followed by Gwaine, and then Borden. In single file, they inched along the edge of the pit. Merlin flicked a look over his shoulder and wished he hadn't. Being immortal didn't mean he couldn't be killed, and impalement wasn't a nice way to go.

The stone beneath Merlin's boot suddenly gave way and his foot slipped with it. He didn't even have a chance to yelp in surprise before Lancelot was grabbing the back of his coat and pulling him back against the wall roughly. Merlin's fingers scrabbled over coarse rock until he found a purchase with which to hold himself up. Heart pounding, he managed to get his foot on a cleft.

"You all right, mate?" Gwaine asked.

"Mm-hmm." He took a breath and forced himself to extend his leg and touch the next piece of ledge, bracing for it to crumble as well. Which would be really bad…

But it held, and he finally made it to solid ground where he doubled over with his hands on his knees. He quickly snapped himself out of it and reached for Lancelot to help him make that last step, just in case he fell. Gwaine and Borden followed, and they were all safe.

"If there is one more…" Gwaine idly threatened.

Fortunately, the next archway they came to entered into a massive cavern. Merlin's blue orb couldn't pierce the vast blackness, but he noticed a trough carved into a sloping stairway. Black powder glittered inside, and so he summoned up a fireball and alighted it at the top of the trough. It whooshed up as flames streamed down the stairs and out to the sides, following the trench all the way around the large chamber and filling it with orange incandescence.

"I thought there was supposed to be treasure here," Gwaine commented.

The chamber was barren, save for an altar set in the middle of the floor, and the one priceless item they were searching for was sitting on a pedestal on top. A dragon egg.

Merlin started down the steps toward it, but then Borden was uttering guttural words in the Old Religion, and a spell of invisible force threw Merlin, Lancelot, and Gwaine through the air. They landed at the bottom of the stairs with a jarring impact that left them dazed.

Merlin struggled to get up as Borden jogged past him toward the altar. He thrust his hand out with a burst of instinctive magic that slammed into the thief and tossed him away from the egg before he could reach it.

Lancelot and Gwaine scrabbled to their feet to go after him, but a resounding click in the floor heralded another trap. The floor opened up beneath them in a wide hole and they both dropped.

"Lancelot! Gwaine!" Merlin shouted and scrambled over to the edge.

Lancelot had one hand clinging to jagged rock, his other stretched taut down his side as he grasped Gwaine's wrist. A bottomless abyss gaped open below them.

"Hold on!" Merlin yelled. He whirled back toward Borden, who was getting up again.

The man chuckled. "Well, now. It seems you're faced with a dilemma. What's more important to you, Merlin? Getting the egg, or saving your friends?"