A large shadow engulfed the outside of Salia's small house, and Leon, sleepily standing guard, turned his head to the sky. He nearly drew his sword when he saw the massive beast circling overhead – then he remembered it was only Aithusa, and she was a welcome sign that Merlin was near.
A minute later Merlin, Tristian and Galahad (and Arthur, who Leon could not see) appeared in a thundering storm of horse hooves and dust.
"Where is she?" Merlin asked seriously, and Leon, adopting a similarly serious air, led him inside.
Gaius and Gwen were still by Salia's side. Arthur, who followed close behind Merlin, noted that her condition had worsened – she was still pale and sweating, but had stilled so completely she seemed already gone.
More than that, Arthur could feel her spirit tugging at the veil. She was still hanging on, but the connection was so tentative it seemed a breeze could dislodge her from the mortal world.
"She hasn't much time left," said Gaius.
Merlin stooped next to the girl, intently focused. He touched her hand; cold skin. He lifted a lid; cloudy eyes.
And then, in a performance which drew the attention of Arthur and everyone else in the room, Merlin summoned all his energy and in long, low vowels drew out spell. The air in the room seemed to shutter under the weight of his power, and sure enough when he had finished Arthur could no longer sense the girl's departing spirit.
She seemed somewhat restored, though by no means cured.
"That will buy her some time," said Merlin, "But I'll need something stronger to properly cure her. Gaius, have you any elder berry in your chambers?"
Giaus nodded solemnly.
"She should be strong enough to move now. We must take her to the castle at once," Merlin ordered.
Gwen nodded, another serious gesture – they were all serious gestures now – and the knights carried Salia from the house on her straw mattress.
Everyone departed in a hurry, except Arthur, who stood for a moment in disbelief. He'd never seen Merlin like that before. Powerful, clever – and not in a gaming way, in a way that brimmed with intelligence.
Had he been that way before?
Had Merlin – clumsy, idle Merlin – chanted spells like that over Arthur to preserve his life? Had his eyes glowed golden and the air contracted in a swirl around him?
What had Arthur's servant really done for him?
Despite his hurry, Merlin had not failed to notice Arthur was not present. He bid the knights, who had appropriated a cart from a nearby farmer, to go on ahead and get Salia comfortable, and he slipped back inside.
"Something wrong?" Merlin asked Arthur.
The kingly ghost snapped out of an apparent daze and shook his head. "Why would there be?"
Merlin nodded and turned to go, leaving the door open so Arthur might follow.
Both men had the simultaneous thought that it was shaping up to be a strange day, and not in a particularly nice way, but neither found the voice to say it.
IOIOIOIOIOI
Merlin cooked up a strange concoction of herbs, chanting all the while, and bound his creation in a small leather bag. A poultice, he said, to place under the girl's pillow. She would recover, but it would take time.
She was tucked away in Merlin's old bed, with Gaius left in a chair by her bedside to watch over her for the afternoon.
Merlin had been plagued by a twinge of guilt while he worked. He'd been back at the castle for some time now, but he had scarcely gotten to know Gwen's shy handmaid..
More than that, he should have been readily accessible when she needed his skills.
Anyone who knew Merlin well enough knew he felt not only obligated to Gwen and George, but obligated to the castle, the citadel, the lower town, and to life itself.
To slight any component of that obligation felt like a failure to Merlin.
But then, as soon as Merlin sat down to wallow in his perceived shortcomings, George appeared seemingly out of thin air (actually, it was out of curtains where he'd been playing a very singular game of hide-and-find) and plopped down next to his servant.
"Merlin?" George said.
"Yes, Prince George?"
The child wrinkled his nose. "Can we play a game? I was playing with Galahad, but he's rubbish at it. He told me to hide and he'd find me, but I've been hiding for ages."
Merlin inadvertently let out a chuckle. "Certainly, George. What would you like to play?"
"Not hide and find," he said definitively. "Can we play knight and sorcerer, except you be the knight and I'll be the sorcerer?"
Merlin nodded, and with that the young prince dragged him out to the court yard, armed him with a long stick, and declared there was a monster threatening the castle.
"Aithusa can be the monster," George said, gesturing to the sleeping dragon. "She's not very scary, but she'll do better than the horses."
From there a very complex tale unfolded – a beast was stealing sheep and threatening the outer villages, and only one knight was brave enough to face the monster.
"Sir Merlin," George explained, "Went to attack the monster, and…and…and he almost had it, but it was a big bugger and the monster just about squished the knight!"
Merlin pantomimed this, while an unenthusiastic Aithusa plodded around the square.
The knight was wounded, George said, and almost died, but for a friendly sorcerer who happened by ("That's me, okay?" said George) and saved him.
Then they fought the monster together. When George, as the sorcerer, cast a spell, little sparks flew across the space, tickling Aithusa's nose. The young prince leapt with delight, and Merlin let out a hearty laugh, repeating the magic when George said the same made-up spell.
Eventually, the beast was defeated, and the play devolved into George pleading for Merlin to do more magic. The sorcerer, feeling a bit more light-hearted, complied.
IOIOIOIOIOI
Arthur had hoovered in the court yard, watching Merlin and George play. The charming scene had at first brought him joy, but more and more it occurred to Arthur that he should have been the one playing with George. Somewhere the happiness morphed in to something like sadness, and Arthur could watch no more.
He set out instead to wander the grounds, with half a mind to check on the ill girl.
Nearly to Gaius's door, he was floored by the sight of a tired Gwen puttering away. Leon hoovered by her side.
"My lady, you should take some rest. Gaius is watching her."
"I fear I cannot rest well while she is ill," Gwen said. "You go, Leon. The afternoon patrol should be back soon and they will be ready to make a report."
Leon looked hesitant, but Gwen continued to wave him away. "I'll be fine," she urged.
With a solemn nod, Leon left. Gwen, believing she was alone, let out a forlorn sigh, her queenly walls coming down for a deserved moment.
Arthur studied her: she was older now, but no less beautiful. The lines webbing around her eyes only added to her subtle grace, reading as wisdom on her kind face. Her hair was beginning to gray, Arthur noted, and he wondered if his would be too if he were still alive.
"Gwen?" he ventured.
She didn't stir from her thoughtful state.
"Gwen, I wish you could hear me. There are so many things I've wanted to tell you. And I hate to see you sad."
The spectral king took a few steps forward, and Gwen seemed to give a little shiver. She looked around, and then she looked right through Arthur.
"What I wanted to say, Gwen – what I never had the chance to say, is that I didn't mean to leave you alone. I didn't mean for the burden of the thrown to fall so swiftly on you. I know you never needed me to protect you, you do a fine job of that yourself, but I hate thinking – knowing – you had to do so much of this alone. I should have fought harder to stay with you."
Gwen turned, as if she might go back into Gaius's chamber. Arthur, suddenly desperate, put a hand on her shoulder, and that seemed to stay her. She turned back around and tried very hard to focus on the nothing in front of her. Arthur almost believed she might be listening.
"What I'm trying to say is, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry I didn't come home to you. And I'm glad that you have our son to keep you company, and Leon and Gaius to support you, and I'm glad you found Merlin and you have him too. But I would give anything to come back to you."
Gwen blinked, her lips parting like she might make a response. But when she spoke, it was not to Arthur.
"Merlin," she said. Arthur turned to see the sorcerer there, looking more than a little haunted.
"I," Merlin mumbled, "I just came to check on Salia."
"Yes," said Gwen, "I was just going back in myself."
Merlin nodded. "You go ahead, I'll be right there. I just need to check something first."
Gwen pulled the door open a crack. "Something wrong, Merlin?" she asked.
"No," Merlin said. "Everything is fine."
Gwen disappeared behind the old oak door, letting it fall shut with a definitive sound.
"How much did you hear?" Arthur asked.
"I didn't hear anything," Merlin said, which of course meant he'd heard all of it. "Arthur, you know it's not your fault. You didn't choose to die. It just happened. Gwen never blamed you. No one did."
Arthur bowed his head a moment. He said, "A sick girl needs your help, Merlin. Get to it."
IOIOIOIOIOI
Salia's condition had been steady throughout the afternoon, but when Merlin entered the room, it seemed to suddenly worsen.
"What's wrong?" Arthur asked, though Merlin made no response. He rushed to the girl's side, as Gwen hurried to press a wet cloth to the girl's forehead.
"Something has changed," Merlin said.
"She was fine until just a moment ago," Gaius said. He stood unsteadily and puttered with as much speed as he could muster towards his shelf of herbs.
"Have you got witch bane?" Merlin asked. A chorus of small vials clinked together behind him.
"Gaius?"
"I'm looking."
Changing plans, Merlin began to whisper a spell, repeating it quickly over and over. The girl's condition only worsened.
"What is happening?" Gwen asked.
"I don't know," Merlin said, trying a different spell. Salia began to convulse and sweat and so Merlin tried something else, but it did not good. Suddenly she went still.
Gaius stopped searching through the vials.
"No," Merlin growled. "I'm not losing anyone else."
He spat out another spell, one that in his anger sounded more like a curse. The girl did not stir. Merlin glowered and began again, but Arthur put a hand on his shoulder.
"Stop it, Merlin, she's gone," Arthur said. "You did your best."
Merlin feel silent, and suddenly something dawned on him: he'd seen this before. He slid his hand under the pillow and produced the poultice he'd placed there. Deliberately, he unwrapped it.
Ash fell from bag where herbs and medicine had once been.
"What does it mean?" Gwen asked through a cloud of fresh tears.
"Someone poisoned my poultice," Merlin said, an anger bubbling just beneath the surface. "Gaius, who was in this room besides you?"
Gaius blinked. "Gwen, Asha, Leon, a few of the other knights, and yourself. Oh, and there was a woman."
"A woman?"
"She claimed to be a relative of Salia's. She sat beside the bed for a little while, said she wanted to check on her cousin."
"Did she touch the poultice?" Merlin asked.
Gaius thought. "No, but she stroked Salia's hair. She touched the pillow."
Merlin, on the verge of pure rage, stormed out of the room, leaving a grieving Gwen and flustered Gaius to come to terms with what had happened.
Merlin marched down the hallway until he was a safe distance from Gaius's chambers and then let out a yowl like wounded animal. Chunks of the wall the size of loaves of bread exploded into dust on either side of him before he managed to swallow his anger.
"Don't take it out on the castle," Arthur said. "Or me for that matter." He tried to indicate that several sizeable pieces of rock had gone straight through his ethereal form, but Merlin was not paying attention.
"I've seen this kind of magic before," Merlin said. "It was the same kind of magic that killed your father."
"My father?"
"When he was sick and I tried to heal him, Morgana used a spell like that one to reverse my efforts. The spell meant to save his life killed him instead. And now it's happened again. I've been made a murderer twice."
Arthur's mind, or whatever he had that was like a mind, stumbled over the idea in his head. "My father?" he said again. "Of course that was you. I tried to kill you."
"You tried to kill me lots of times. That's not the point."
"And what is?"
Merlin flopped crossed-legged to the ground and bent his head low. "I've spent my life trying to prove that magic isn't evil. I've risked my life over that one idea more times than I can count. But no matter what good I do, or try to do, people keep using magic for awful things. Maybe it is as evil as you once believed it."
Arthur nodded. "Maybe," he said. He lowered himself next to Merlin, back against the uneven castle wall. "But I don't think so. Because you're not evil, Merlin. You're probably the best person I know, except maybe Gwen. And if magic is in you, then it can't be bad."
