0x11 – The Red and White Dragons (Part 1)
Will was crouched on the ground scribbling in the dirt in great, jerky strokes of a long twig. Merlin took a step backwards, a half-formed idea of sneaking back into the cover of the trees floating through his head, when without looking up his friend demanded.
"Where have you been?"
"Just taking a walk," Merlin tried to be nonchalant.
Will was stubbornly fixated on the random lines he was infliction on the dirt. "Again?"
"Yeah," Merlin laughed weakly.
Will dropped the stick, letting it fall on the marred ground with a small dull clatter. He looked Merlin in the eyes without blinking when he said, "You know you can tell me anything."
Guilt stabbed him, and the smile he forced onto his face felt wobbly. "Of course."
Something in Will's face twitched, and his next words simmered in barely bit back anger. "Because that's what friends do, right? They tell each other everything."
It felt like his tongue had turned to lead. He couldn't respond; he had no idea what to say. He wished his mother was there. She had this way of making everything seem natural, of sweeping uncomfortable things under the rug without drawing attention to what she was doing, that Merlin did not possess. His mother told him it was because he was an honest boy. If so, it had certainly done him no favours.
Will's face darkened when he didn't respond, and he stomped off in the opposite direction of Merlin, biting over his shoulders. "Next time, I think I'll join you on your little 'walk.'"
Merlin made his way home, feeling dejected. He told himself it had to be this way and it wasn't his fault, but it didn't make him feel any better. His mother looked up from where she was grinding herbs and frowned in concern when she saw the slump in her son's shoulders.
"Was something wrong with Aithusa?"
Merlin shook his head. "She's fine."
After living with a stir-crazy baby dragon for a year - during which Merlin's mother became increasingly wound up as she was forced to come up with excuses for the strange noises in her home and the return of the closed window shutters - even Merlin could not deny that Aithusa had become too large to hide in their small house. Gone were the days when at Merlin's command she could be silenced and stuffed out of sight whenever a knock came at the door, and their neighbour's questions were becoming increasingly difficult to answer. And so, with a heavy heart and much tears, on a moonless night Merlin and Hunith led Aithusa from their cottage to where she now dwelt, explaining everything to her as best they could and above all impressing on her the need to stay tucked away unseen.
These days, Aithusa lived in the Tunnels about half an hour outside the village, as they were the only place within walking distance sheltered and large enough to comfortably hide a horse-sized dragon. Merlin frequently went to go see her thinking it was similar to what going to visit a favourite aunt or cousin might be like if he had any. She always listened to what he had to say, and her wordless understanding of all the struggles he faced - between his "ill-omened birth" overshadowing everything he did, Ingild's nerve-wracking annual "check-ups," and the heart-stopping near misses with the villages where he was left scrambling for explanations while he prayed they hadn't seen what he thought they did - surpassed that of even his mother. Aithusa was, after all, even more familiar with having to hide who she was than Merlin.
He'd always felt a special connection with her, as the only other being he knew who was not another villager puttering about their magic-less lives. When Samhain approached and the air positively sang with the flow of life, she was as giddy as he. When he magicked shapes in the campfire he made in the winter during his longer visits, she would breathe out rings of smoke in surprisingly complex designs. The snatches of time spent with Aithusa were like letting out a breath he'd been holding in, times when he could just be himself with no pretending or lies involved.
Just thinking of the gloriously freeing morning he'd spent lazing around with his dragon friend cheered him up a bit. Unfortunately, his mother had still seen he was upset when he came in.
When Hunith tilted her head, not letting the matter drop, Merlin admitted as vaguely as possible hoping she would leave it at just this, "I had a bit of a row with Will."
He braced himself, and sure enough immediately Hunith stilled her pestle and asked worriedly, "About what?"
Merlin shrugged, "Just stuff. It's not important."
"Merlin," his mother wrapped an entire warning into just one word.
"He wasn't happy I disappeared off again without telling him where I went," Merlin admitted reluctantly. Immediately - as he knew she would - Hunith looked truly worried. Before she could start in on one of the warnings Merlin had heard over and over for years, he added, "But I didn't tell him where I went or about Aithusa or my gifts or anything. He'll get over it."
Hunith only seemed slightly appeased. Sighing, she started grinding again. "You know what will happen if you tell Will." Merlin could have recited along if he wanted to. "Even if he doesn't turn on you, Will will tell one of his friends, who'll tell one of his friends, who'll tell one of his friends, and so on until the entire village knows. And once the entire village knows, do you think we'll be able to still live here? Even if they don't turn on us directly..."
"I know," Merlin cut her off in exasperation, unable to listen any longer. "It would only take one person going to King Cenred or King Uther for me to end up like Oilell or Father."
Hunith shot him a disapproving look for interrupting, but relented right away. "I don't like it any more than you do," she said softly, pleading for understanding from her son. "And I know it's hard for you, but this is the way it has to be."
Merling mumbled a forced agreement, and Hunith suggested, "Why don't you leave off visiting Aithusa for a while, so Will doesn't have anything to be suspicious of?"
"But it's her birthday next week!" Merlin protested. "She's turning five; I promised I'd celebrate it with her!"
Aithusa, Merlin felt, enjoyed the visits even more so than him. Whenever he called her he felt pure joy through their link, washing over the melancholy that settled over her in his absences. He tried to go see her as often as possible - knowing he was the only kin she had in the world and the only company she could welcome into her abode - but it was so hard to slip away from the village unnoticed. He'd managed it for five years through a rich variety of half-baked excuses, enduring gaining a reputation of cutting corners and laziness as well as all around eccentricity - some of his excuses had been downright peculiar, even he had to admit that - but it would appear he reached the limit of what he could pass off as normal boyhood retreats into the woods.
"All the same..."
"I'll be careful," Merlin promised. "No one will even notice I'm gone."
Hunith softened at the pleading look directed at her. "Oh alright. But you must be careful; if Will is noticing your absences, others will be too."
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The days leading to Aithusa's birthday were long and boring, as Will was going out of his way to ignore Merlin. With his only village friend not speaking to him, Merlin was positively miserable. After this birthday visit, he decided, he'd have to leave off going to see Aithusa for a few months, for the sake of her safety as much as keeping his secrets. If anyone in the village were to find her, he shuddered to think of what they would do to her. She could probably hold off two or three people, but if the village banded together or informed the king's men then even her fiery breath might not be sufficient to protect her.
She was a reptile, he tried to reassure himself, so she should be sleeping most of the winter anyways and therefore wouldn't be too lonely without him.
It still felt like he was abandoning her for Will. But if he chose to keep on visiting her, he would be abandoning Will for her as well as risking both their safety.
Why did his life have to have so many secrets?
Merlins tried not to think of how he would break the news to Aithusa that her only surviving kin would not be coming to see her for a long while. What a horrible birthday present. What would he do if on his birthday his mother said she was going away for a few months because she didn't want to be seen with him?
On the day itself Merlin slipped away after completing his morning chores, but his attempt to get out the village unseen were ruined when a tumble of boys a few years older than him stepped out of one of the outer cottages. They were shoving each other playfully and laughing, and then one nudged the rest and pointed to him. The laughter died off, but uncomforting smiles remained on the faces of all except for one red-headed boy who was glancing between Merlin and his friends in fright.
"Hey, where are you off to this time?" Called the tallest one, moving to block Merlin's path.
Merlin tried to dart around him, but more boys blocked his path. The red-headed boy edged away from the group, quietly retreating back into the house. "None of your business. Let me pass."
"Yeah, let him pass, Dareth," guffawed a pimply boy three year older than Merlin, "This here is a verified little old lady killer; if you get on his bad side you'll be struck by lightning!"
The boy blocking him stumbled back a step and clutched a hand to his chest with comically wide eyes. Slowly he looked up to the clear blue sky as though he saw something coming and fell to his knees in the dirt. He sank to the ground, his tongue lolling out of his mouth and his face twisted in a ridiculous expression of mock death.
Laughter rippled through the boys even though Merlin vainly retorted, "You face will get stuck like that if you..."
"What's going on here!" barked a red-headed middle-aged woman from the house the boys had exited, the red-headed boy half-hidden behind her and looking down to avoid his friends' gazes. They looked miffed that he'd told on them.
"Never mind," she snapped when one of them opened his mouth, and she turned to face Merlin. Despite appearances, he felt as though she wasn't actually looking him in the eyes when she said in the slightly quivery fake-friendly voice she only used when addressing Merlin. "Please forgive them, they're only boys. They don't know what they're doing."
"You lot!" she snapped to the others, who took a step back from the ferocity in her voice. "Apologize, this instant!"
"It's fine, Catrin," Merlin said quickly before the other village boys were given further ammunition to use against him in the future. He could hear the taunts already, you're such a wuss you need women to win your fights for you! "I'll just be on my way."
Merlin continued the rest of the way to the Tunnels put out not just by the embarrassing confrontation with its embarrassing resolution, but that his retreat from the village hadn't been nearly as quiet as he hoped. His mother was going to kill him; the whole village would be talking about that embarrassingly public display and be speculating on why he had wandered off into the forest afterwards. Will would surely hear of it and not speak to him for weeks.
"Aithusa!" he called at the mouth of the Tunnels. Inside it was so cold he could see his breath, so he preferred to meet with her outside.
Immediately he felt an excited warm greeting through their mental link, and he waited patiently. After a few minutes had passed he heard the sound of her running - the confines of the Tunnels were too narrow for her to comfortably fly through - and she stepped into the sunlight with her pure white scales shining.
Behind him came the sound of crashing in the bushes, and Merlin swung around. Lying at the edge of the trees was Will sprawled on his bottom, looking just as terrified as Merlin felt.
"It's not what it looks like," Merlin said quickly, which was a dumb thing to say because yes, it was exactly what it looked like. Will's best friend Merlin snuck out to secretly meet with a dragon was what it looked liked, and that was exactly what it was. There was no other explanation he could give for what Will was witnessing.
Not even his mother would be able to gloss this over. How was it possible to goof up this bad? Will had flat-out told him he planned on following him next time he snuck out, and his exit from the village had been anything but quiet. How did he not see this coming?
Aithusa trilled behind him in confusion. An image of Will floated through their mental link, a wordless question of friend or foe. « Friend, » he thought to her desperately. The last thing he needed in this situation was for Aithusa to raise her hackles and roar – or worse, try to incinerate Will. « Friend, definitely a friend! »
Aithusa craned her neck towards Will, who squeaked and scrambled away on all fours. Aithusa started towards him and Will looked one second away from bolting. "Wait!" Merlin cried, desperate. "Wait, she just wants to say hello! She won't hurt you, I promise!"
"SHE?!" choked Will. "What the hell, Merlin! How do you even know it's a girl!"
Merlin didn't answer – he could hardly tell Will that when the dragon projected thoughts into his mind the "voice" was feminine. Will finally found his feet, and started warily making his way forwards. He kept a watchful eye on Aithusa but addressed Merlin when he demanded heatedly, "How long has this been going! When were you going to tell me about your pet dragon!"
He felt Aithusa's outrage at being deemed Merlin's 'pet' but he was too preoccupied with his human friend's outrage to address hers. He had no idea how to respond; somehow, he felt that Will would not be happy with the truthful answers 'five years' and 'never'.
Will seemed to guess at at least the latter of them though, because he bit out with a harsh laugh. "Oh, well I see how it is then! I thought we were friends!"
"We are!" Merlin protested, stung by the past tense.
"No," Will with the same heat, but his voice was clenched in more than just anger. Hurt bled through when he said, "Friends trust each other. They don't sneak around behind each other's backs and keep secrets."
Merlin opened his mouth to say something, anything, he didn't know what but he couldn't lose his only human friend like this –
And then the world shattered.
Merlin barely even registered that he fell to his knees, hands clutching his splitting head. The splintering world moved slowly around him so that he saw Will's eyes widen fraction by fraction and his lips curl into an M as his face oh so slowly was changing expressions to what Merlin assumed would end in concern but at the moment was just a bizarre twist of muscles. Aithusa's foot raised in the air and her neck started a motion that would eventually end in her turning her head, while at the same time Will's arm started stretching towards Merlin.
Panicking at this weirdness, Merlin reached out to both of them, grabbing hold as if that would somehow make them move at normal speed. He barely felt smooth scales and course wool under his fingers before the ground disappeared from under him. All turned to black, and every fiber of his being burned as though submerged in acid.
The world screamed in pain around him, as though nature itself had been dealt a fatal blow.
Groans filled his ears, and he felt the hard press of stone beneath him. He was lying on his back now on a smooth but uneven surface, staring up at a blackness interrupted only a white halo glowing in contrast around an equally black circle. All around him was nothing but darkness.
"What the hell?!" came Will's shocked voice from slightly below him to his right. He could hear Aithusa scrambling to his left. Will continued voicing the feelings Merlin was in too much pain to. "What the hell is this?! What just happened!?"
"Leoht," a man's voice came from further away. A floating pale light came from the right, illuminating their surroundings. What Merlin saw was not comforting in the slightest.
Gone was the forest, the Tunnels, and everything familiar save the clothes on his back and his two friends. Merlin was lying on a great rectangle slab of stone that was cracked in half, surrounded by a complex hexagonal pattern scorched into the grass. To all sides lay men in long dark cloaks which hid their entire bodies – for all Merlin knew some of them may actually be rather buff women – who were sprawled as though they'd been knocked over by some great force.
The robed man nearest the light got to his feet, his hood casting strange shadows upon the hollows of his face. The other hooded figure also straightened, but instead of getting to their feet they got to their knees, bowing to the one man standing.
It was at this point that Merlin knew whatever had happened, he was in deeper than he could handle.
"Which of you is the fatherless boy warlock Emrys?" The boss robed man demanded, sounding as though he was rather used to demanding things out of people. He looked back and forth between Will and Merlin in confusion, like the fact that there was two of them was an unexpected and unwelcome complication.
Merlin exchanged bewildered looks with Will, matters such as hidden dragons put aside for the moment in the face of… this. Whatever this was. Will gave Merlin a look as though asking him to explain, but Merlin shook his head. He had no idea, about any of this.
Will turned to the man, false bravado in his voice as he snarked the way he always did to hide his fear, "Neither of us. You got the wrong people."
"Impossible," the man said with such complete confidence that it irritated Merlin. "My spells are flawless. I thrice checked the algorithm; there's no chance for deviation or error. Now stop wasting my time and admit which of you is Emrys."
"I've never even heard of this bloke," Will said, peeved that he hadn't been believed.
"Me neither," Merlin managed, forcing himself to speak through the pain. He donned all the manners his mother had spent years trying to instill in him, even though he was in no way favourable towards the strangers. "Look, this is a mistake. We're not this Emrys person, so could you please do… whatever it is you did to get us here, to put us back?"
The man's face hardened and he raised a hand as though to strike them from afar, "Forbærne!"
A ball of fire shot towards Merlin, slowing as he panicked. The ball inched closer so slowly he had time to sit up, bewildered, and then berate himself for being more concerned with time's inconsistencies than with his slowly approaching death. So Merlin did the sensible thing, and threw himself off the stone alter.
The danger passed, time regained its normal passage and he felt the heat of the fireball pass over the back of his head, perhaps singeing a few hairs. He landed on Aithusa, who reared, roaring and breathing fire at the man who dared attack her kin.
"Stop! Stop!" Merlin cried, horrified. The man may have tried to maim him, but he was their only hope of getting back. Not only were they in an unknown place, but the bizarre nighttime setting when it had been noon not five minutes ago did nothing to inspire Merlin that it was anywhere he might have heard of before.
Aithusa reeled back, flaring her wings and raising her hackles threateningly. But she stopped her attack as asked, and a pale shimmering globe dropped from around the unscathed man. The man's eyes seized on Merlin, and he ordered the robed figures still prostrate at his feet. "Seize that one! He used magic, he's Emrys."
Hands clamped around Merlin from all directions, dragging him forwards. When he stumbled they lifted him up so he was being carried horizontally by half a dozen different people, each holding one of his limbs. They were chanting something he couldn't understand in low voices as they carried him. Staring up at the starless night sky with its one strange halo of light, he insisted over the noise of their chanting,
"No, my name's Mer–" what was he doing? Merlin thought, aghast. Why was he telling complete strangers met in very suspicious circumstances his name? "Mer… Mer… Myrddin."
No one answered him, not even to insist that he really was some person called Emrys. They continued carrying him away somewhere as if he had not even spoken, like now that they thought they knew who was Emrys nothing else mattered except taking him whenever they planned on taking him.
Behind him he could hear Will protesting angrily, and he must have come running after them because Merlin could hear his indignant demands to let go of him and put him DOWN! the whole way. There were several times when he heard grunts of pain from Will, and he tried to twist to see what had happened but only saw the dark cloaks on all sides. Aithusa flew overhead keeping pace with him, gleaming white in the conjured light against the black sky. It was comforting to know she was nearby in case he needed her.
After what felt like eternity, the men in cloaks set him on his feet. Free to see his surroundings by the lone conjured light, Merlin couldn't figure out why they had taken him all this way to what was essentially an empty field atop a hill. There were tents thrown up around the periphery, and building supplies lay scattered around, but otherwise there was nothing noteworthy about the place.
Aithusa swooped down, rubbing her head against his chest affectionately as she took her place beside him. Merlin was grateful for her support, it gave him the confidence to ask, "So, what am I here for? Is there something you need me to do, or…?"
These people wanted a fatherless boy warlock named Emrys. His name wasn't Emrys, but his father was dead, he was a boy, and he was a warlock, so maybe if he could do whatever they wanted this Emrys for they'd send him back.
The boss robed man pulled a tackily jewel crusted dagger out of a fold in his cloak. "You are here," he said solemnly, "to be sacrificed. With your blood mixed into the mortar, I shall at last be able to build my tower."
Merlin didn't react. Surely he didn't hear that right. There was no way that was what the man actually said.
"WHAT?" blustered Will, who squeezed through some of the robed men to latch onto Merlin – on the opposite side as Aithusa, Merlin noted dully – and pull him backwards away from the boss robed man. Their backs hit a wall of the lackey robed men, tightened together to bar their way, and massive strong hands seized them by the shoulders so they could not escape. "Are you mad?!"
"It's to be named Dinas Emrys, in your memory," the man said, still addressing Merlin as though Will was a non-existence not worth responding to.
He slid the dagger from its sheath, and Merlin forced himself out of denial. He tried to trip the men holding him with his mind, summon things to aid him in a fight, push the boss away, anything he knew he could do with magic and then some things he didn't. Nothing happened, and Merlin was reminded that these people had transported him from the Tunnels outside Ealdor to wherever this was. They knew how to use spells and enchantments, and he didn't. If Merlin had ever wondered how his untaught magic would fare against trained opponents, he had his answer right in front of him.
Merlin was halfway through a devising a frantic scheme where Aithusa breathed fire – even though it had been useless before – and then he and Will ran like mad with nowhere to go because he had no clue where he was while praying the murderous sorcerers' magic mysteriously failed them, when suddenly a woman's angry screams disrupted everything.
From a tent richer in colour than many surrounding tents tumbled a young woman – hardly more than a girl, really – with long, dark disheveled hair dressed in a pure white nightdress. Her eyes locked on the boss robed man and she raised her finger to point accusatively to him,
"You! What have you done? Woe to be us, for you have cast doom upon us all!"
"Vivienne, for once I don't care whether you've seen the sea swallow me up in a tide of blood," the robed man said in annoyance. "Drink a potion and go back to sleep, that's all you're good for."
"I do not need to possess the Sight to see you have incurred the wrath of gods, the evidence is clear as day, or rather as day would be if there was day!" The woman hitched up her skirts and ran towards the boss. From her tent and others men swarmed out and ran after her. "Night, when it is not yet noon! Vortigern, you imbecilic swine, what have you done?!"
"Forsuwung," the robed man, Vortigern, enchanted coldly. Though the woman's lips still opened and closed, no sound came through. "If you haven't had a vision, don't waste my time with your superstitious nattering. May I remind you that I am the King of Camelot and have better things to do than listen to a woman's prattling? It's an eclipse, nothing more."
The men chasing the disheveled young woman Vivienne caught up with her, and seized her by the shoulders when she was ten paces from Vortigern. She struggled in forced muteness against the men holding her, but couldn't break free. Vortigern turned his back on her dismissively, and with the brief distraction over focused his attention back on Merlin. He took several steps forwards, dagger raised ominously.
"Wait," Merlin said impotently, eyes focused hypnotically on the shining steel of the dagger. Will's grip on his arm tightened and Aithusa shifted closer to him, a defensive growl rumbling through her throat.
Vortigern did no such thing, and Merlin was a hair's breath away for yelling for Aithusa to incinerate him and trying his half-baked escape plan just for the slim chance it might work and get him away from this nutcase sorcerer – using the blood of children to build towers and calling himself the King of Camelot when everyone knew that it was Uther Pendragon, how did Merlin get caught up with this lunatic? – when someone else created another distraction.
"Wait!" a young man's voice cried, and everyone turned to look at a figure running pellmell towards them from just outside of where the conjured light illuminated the strange night. A huddle of men around something large shuffled after him. "Wait, there's an urgent message from the Isle of the Blessed!"
"For the gods' sakes!" Vortigern snapped, lowering his dagger and narrowing his eyes dangerously at the messenger, who held out a slip of parchment to him with shaking hands. "Surely it can wait the one minute it takes me to sacrifice this boy!"
"Begging your pardon, Your Majesty, Sire," the man stuttered out as barely more than a squeak. "But the written note is only an explanation for the true message, Sire. You see, Sire, well, um… I don't quite know how to say this, Your Majesty, but, um… there's been a ragaid."
For the first time, Vortigern's face lost its assurance. He blanched. "Say that again," he said, as though daring the younger man.
The huddle of men had arrived, and they deposited what they were carrying on the ground. It was a body dressed in the same robes all the men wore, and Merlin drew back in terrified disgust at its face – or rather, lack of one. The body's face looked as though it had been a clay model of one that someone had come along and – while the clay was still wet – smeared their hands over so that the entire thing blurred without recognition of what its feature had originally been. He couldn't even tell whether the face belonged to a man or a woman.
"You're Majesty… it's a ragaid. The High Priestesses have declared war, Sire."
Towers and child sacrifices were forgotten with this bleak statement. Merlin didn't know how long it would last, but he blessed his lucky stars the High Priestesses had such excellent timing in their declarations of war, even if their methods of doing so were repulsive and cruel.
Quite unexpectedly, Vortigern lunged forwards like a snake and stabbed the garish dagger into the chest of the man who brought him this news. It squelched when he pulled it out and the gasping man dropped to the ground, where he quickly fell still. Merlin felt bile rise in his throat. How could anybody kill someone just for delivering an unwelcome message? His chances that Vortigern would see reason and let him go looked smaller and smaller the more he saw of him.
Vortigern stared down at the note in the dead man's hands like he wanted to incinerate it from existence with his eyes. "Well, do you expect your king to stoop down himself? Somebody pick it up and read it!"
No one stepped forwards; quite wisely, in Merlin's opinion, given the fate of the man who brought it thus far.
Vivienne at last wrenched herself free – or perhaps was let go – by her guards, and picked it up, raising her eyebrows at Vortigern who muttered what Merlin assumed was a counter-silencing spell. She began reading with a condemning disdain that was easy to imagine as the voice of the war-ready priestess who wrote the note.
"Your audacious lust for power has betrayed you. You care nothing for the balance of the world. You have ignored the ancient prohibitions and meddled in matters beyond your comprehension, desecrating the commands of the Gods and arising Their anger against you and all with you. Heed the portents, but do not count on any support from us in the coming battles, for you will receive none. From this day forth, your allies be our enemies and your foes our friends.
Nimueh, High Priestess of the Triple Goddess, Spokeswoman of the Isle of the Blessed."
"Typical sanctimonious gibberish," Vortigern groused. "I don't see what I've done to offend the gods – and more to the point Nimueh, that she would declare war on me."
"Heed the portents," Vivienne repeated. "She is quite clearly speaking of this eclipse."
"That's impossible." Vortigern said with the same unshakable confidence he used when Will dared suggest he hadn't managed to summon this Emrys person after all. "It started when I summoned Emrys, and it can't have taken much more than an hour to carry him here from Cell-y-Dewiniaid. The only way she could have gotten this here so quickly would be if she had spies maintaining a link planted within this camp, and I've checked it repeatedly myself for such vulnerabilities."
"You must have missed the locus circle," retorted Vivienne. "Of what other portents do you think she speaks?" Then her face paled as if she had just processed something in Vortigern's words, "Emrys? Of what do you speak, when you say you summoned Emrys? Emrys has not yet been born!"
If he was trying to summon someone who hadn't been born yet, Merlin thought privately, then it was no wonder he messed up and got the wrong person.
Vivienne's head turned to Merlin, the first time she had looked at him. He wasn't entirely sure she had noticed him before now, but her eyes widened in horror as if he was the physical incarnation of all the woe and doom she had prophesied.
Vortigern puffed like a pleased tomcat, "It was difficult to find the right elements to combine in the ritual," he bragged. "The temporal fabric of the world doesn't like to be torn, but once I isolated –"
"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!" Vivienne shrieked. This appeared to the only coherent thought left in her, for she repeated it a good number of times before she came unstuck from the loop to conclude her shrieks with, "PUT HIM BACK!"
"I need him to build this tower. You've seen how the blood of normal fatherless boys is useless against the curse on this place. Day after day my men try to build, and day after day the walls continue to fall down around us. I need more powerful blood."
"Awful things happen to those foolish enough to break the ancient prohibitions and disturb the balance of the world, and you've just violated one of the greatest of taboos! If it was not sacrilege enough to spit in the face of Time itself, you had to steal one of the key agents of Fate before his destiny comes to fruition. No wonder the gods are angry! What were you thinking? What use is a tower if you damn us all to build it?"
"Excuse me," Merlin tried. When no one seemed to have heard, he raised his voice. "I said, EXCUSE ME!"
The strangers looked to Merlin as though they had forgotten he was still there, despite the subject of their argument being his kidnapping. He licked his lips, nervous at being these strangers' centre of attention, and tried to compose his thoughts.
Merlin could not understand half of what was going on here. Who these people were, if the gods were actually angry, what all this stuff about ancient taboos was about, or why everyone was so convinced he was this Emrys person were mysteries to him. What he did pick out from Vivienne's and Vortigern's argument was that Vortigern wanted to build a tower and was failing, so he was convinced he needed to sacrifice fatherless boys to end some curse and that Merlin – or rather, this Emrys person they thought was Merlin – would be the perfect fatherless boy to do so.
He needed to find a way of saying were you drunk when you came up with this solution? in words that weren't liable to earn him the fate of the poor messenger lying still on the ground. "Has anyone thought to check whether there's any natural reason this tower can't be built? Like, say, I dunno… maybe there's a pool of water or something underneath it? And anyways, I don't see how mixing my blood in with the mortar is supposed to help keep it upright – if anything, that would just dilute the mix and make the building weaker!"
"I'm sure you have no ulterior motive for saying this." Vortigern scorned. "You can't buy your life with such cheap words."
"Does this mean you haven't?" Will snarked bravely, surprising all the adults who seemed to have forgotten him even more than Merlin. "Are you telling me you've been going around kidnapping and killing people to build some tower, and you haven't even checked the ground?"
"It doesn't matter to me whether or not the ground is full of water or an ancient curse, the problem remains that the tower cannot be built."
"Surely a man of your prowess can find a way of filling in a mere pool of water in a way that does not raise the ire of the gods?" spat Vivienne. Merlin was under the impression she hadn't known Vortigern didn't bother surveying the site before embarking on murderous schemes. "You cannot deny what is right before your nose, even if you dismiss the timing of this eclipse you know as well as I that it has gone on too long to be a natural occurrence."
Vortigern opened his mouth and Vivienne cut him off as though she knew whatever it was that he planned to say. "Do not attempt to blame this on the High Priestesses; who among them has the power to change day into night? Such feats have not been seen since the days of Cornelius Sigan."
"Well then what do you suggest I do?" Vortigern said. "Please enlighten me, oh high and mighty Vivienne, how you would know better than your king."
"Your mages could determine the structure of the earth in a handful of hours." Vivienne stared into Vortigern's eyes as though she was weighing his very soul. "This tower has sat unbuilt for weeks, another few hours will not be its undoing. However, if you kill this boy then the High Priestesses – even if you will not believe you have angered the gods, Nimueh made her position on this matter very clear – will assuredly be yours. You do not have the support of the people and you are already fighting two wars against enemies greater in number than you, if you do not placate the High Priestesses we are all doomed."
Vortigern was silent for a long moment in which Merlin hardly dared to breath. Whether or not the priestesses had truly declared war because of whatever taboo Vortigern had broken to kidnap Merlin, Vivienne certainly thought it was so. His stars must be very lucky, if an impending war might just save his life. At length, Vortigern must have listened to some of what Vivienne had said because he gave orders to begin digging into the ground. He and Vivienne went off to go oversee this, leaving Merlin under the guard of the nameless lackeys to wait and hope that it really was a structural problem instead of a curse that was behind Vortigern's construction woes. His life was resting on being right.
What a ridiculous thing to have to bet his life on. Merlin never thought he'd live to see the day he was glad Uther Pendradon was the real king of Camelot, but Vortigern made him look positively benevolent. At least Uther wanted to kill Merlin because he thought he was incurably evil. Vortigern wanted to kill Merlin because he couldn't be bothered to check the ground before starting construction. Thank the heavens he wasn't really a king. If he was, Merlin would hate to think what the lives of his subjects would be like.
"Well, this stinks," Will sank to the ground and started tearing out grass and ripping it apart with his fingers. Merlin joined him tentatively, remembering their fight just before their kidnapping. Aithusa lay down as well, resting her head in his lap. Will cast a wary eye on her, not as comfortable with her proximity as Merlin was beginning to hope. "I half-think I never woke up this morning. The other half of me says that not even dreams are this mad."
"Tell me about it," Merlin agreed, encouraged that Will was talking to him without yelling. Then something occurred to him. "You could probably leave, if things look bad when Vortigern comes back. I don't think he even really remembers that he kidnapped two boys."
"Kidnapped by mistake and then forgotten," Will mused in an attempt at humour. "That's kind of a lame way to go." Merlin laughed even though Will had quite succinctly summed about their situation with the words this stinks.
Will continued, "But seeing as I don't really fancy wandering around in the dark trying to find some sign of civilization that doesn't think blood is an excellent construction tool and then trying to ask directions back to Ealdor when for all I know we're on the other side of the Five Kingdoms, thanks but I'll pass. Let's just hope that lady keeps hounding that nutcase about this eek-lips thing… by the way, do you know what that is?"
Merlin shrugged and offered, "I think it's whatever's wrong with the sky."
"Yeah, thanks, couldn't work that out for myself." A moment of silence stretched between them as they looked up at the ominous halo of light in the black expanse above them, Vivienne's dire warnings about angry gods ringing through both of their minds. Will broke the silence with a far too casual, "So, anything else I should know about you?"
Maybe Merlin was too hopeful to think Will had forgotten his anger in the face of being kidnapped. With deceptive calm, Will continued, "Are you secretly a long-lost prince? Have you been crossdressing all this time and I've just never noticed you're secretly a girl? Am I going to find out your name is actually Emrys, whose blood is so precious it's an essential ingredient in making indestructible buildings?"
"No!" Merlin gave a meaningful look at the robed men standing watch behind him, then said carefully, "My name is Myrddin, the same as it's always been." Will thankfully didn't challenge the fake name, which Merlin thought was a good sign. "And no to the being a prince and a girl. I'm still me. I haven't hidden anything important from you."
"No, nothing important," Will's anger was resurfacing. "Let's see… you have a pet dragon you can boss around like a dog, you have magic –" Merlin's heart stuttered for a moment as he realized that Will had been right there when Vortigern tried to burn a hole through him and declared as such "– and let's not forget that for some reason you're so important that whenever you get kidnapped an island of priestesses declares war and the gods blot out the sun!"
"It's not because I was kidnapped, it's because whatever Vortigern did to kidnap us violated some taboo." The very idea that he was the cause of the frankly alarming state of the sky was made shivers go down his spine. "The last time I was kidnapped, nothing like this happened."
This was the wrong thing to say. "Last time?" Will repeated. "Yeah, thanks for telling me about that. What are best friends for, if not to confide your problems in? Like when Dareth is being an ass again, when the food runs low, when you sprain your ankle, and, oh – when you're kidnapped!"
"I was four. We hardly even knew each other then."
"And at no time in the five years since have you thought to yourself that maybe I deserve to know stuff like this?" Will didn't bother waiting for him to answer; that he was only now finding out was answer enough. "You know everything about me! Excuse me for thinking the belief that we could be trusted to keep each other's secrets was mutual!"
"It's not the same!" Merlin was starting to get angry himself. "If I told someone you were the one who did you-know-what to Old Man Simmons last Beltane you'd get the belt! If you tell anyone I have magic, they'll drown me in the well!"
"You really think I'd turn you in?" Will's voice wasn't raised anymore; it was barely more than a whisper, with no heat in it. He sounded hurt, not angry.
Merlin felt tears prickle at the corners of his eyes. It seemed unfair that everything was going wrong all at once; not only did Will find out about Aithusa, but they were then mistaken for someone else and kidnapped by a murderous lunatic who'd angered the gods in doing so. What were the chances of that happening at all, let alone on the same day? Now Will knew about Merlin's magic, and it wasn't the magic or dragon that was driving him away – he wasn't even watching Aithusa for sudden movement anymore. He was looking into Merlin's eyes with his hurt soul shining through, because what the implications of Merlin keeping secrets said about the foundations of their friendship was more important to him than any possibility of Merlin being the little old lady killing hell spawn Old Man Simmons stubbornly insisted he was.
Merlin looked away, staring downwards so he didn't have to look at Will as he admitted, "I didn't want to take the chance. I'm sorry."
In his lap, Aithusa opened her half-lidded eyes and sent him a wordless expression of concern for him, sensing his downcast mood through their link. He didn't answer her, just stroked her scales in a comfortingly repetitive motion. Beside him, he heard Will tear up grass, ripping it out the ground and shredding it into tiny pieces in overly aggressive motions. Neither of them said anything, and there was nothing to distract Merlin from the pain, both physical from the remnants of whatever the kidnapping ritual had done to his body and emotional from all that had happened to him since he woke up that morning.
Merlin thought he might scream just to break the unbearable silence, but in the end he didn't need to; it was broken for him. Overhead, the sky boomed with the loudness of thunder despite the lack of clouds and the earth shook. Merlin and Will startled, looking tremulously at the black sky, which was silent again.
"What was that?" Will asked, voice wavering.
Something awful occurred to Merlin. "Heed the portents. Not portent, portents. As in, more than one."
Aithusa nudged his mind, asking what was wrong and what the loud noise was. Merlin tried to sooth her while he exchanged a wordless look of horror with Will, both of them thinking the same thing: what other portents were coming?
The ground shook and the sky sounded in cloudless thunder several more times while they waited. It seemed like an eternity before a nameless robed man came back from where the digging party had vanished off to. Merlin's heart beat echoed in his ears, and the tension in his body alerted both Will and Aithusa to the newcomer's arrival. The three sat together like the accused waiting for the verdict. Life or death, free or charged. Was there or was there not a pool of water.
"It is just as you foretold, oh great one," Merlin's skin crawled at the awed tone the man was using towards him. He wasn't great, and it had been a shot in the dark brought on by desperation, not any kind of omniscient knowledge he had of what lay under the grass he was sitting on. "Deep in the ground lies a cave, filled with a pool. To our amazement, within the water lies a mosaic –"
"A what?" interrupted Will. Merlin blinked up in incomprehension as well.
"A kind of picture made out of many pieces of stone." The man's eyes flashed in brief irritation as he clarified the word. He continued addressing Merlin with a touch less awe than before, "A mosaic of two dragons, one white and one red. His Majesty King Vortigern offers his apologies to the great Myrddin Emrys and sends his assurances that you will be returned unharmed to your home."
Merlin felt the tension melt off him, and a wide grin broke across his face in stark relief. Will let out a little relieved laugh beside him and Aithusa picked up on the happy mood, croaking out a little series of contented clicks.
Their celebration was cut short by the messenger who continued with, "Before the pool is filled in, the king wishes you to provide the interpretation of the mosaic."
"Um…" Merlin said, not quite sure how to put this when these people seemed convinced he was the great Emrys but there was no way around the fact that... "I have no idea. I don't get visions or god-given flashes of knowledge. Sorry."
The man frowned. "I think you are misunderstanding something; the king's wishes are not requests. Let me rephrase what I said: the king commands you to interpret the meaning of the two dragons. Until you do, the pool will not be filled in and you will not be sent back whence you came."
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Vortigern's conjured light illuminated the rough walls of the cave, glistening on the still surfaced of the water. The pool filled the entire cave, leaving only a few islands of rock for the two people there to stand on. In the center of the pool rose a tall golden pillar with runes etched into it. On either side of the pillar were a multitude of coloured thin and short rods of rock rising from the unseen depths of the pool up to just below the surface of the water. To the left the rods were coloured red, to the right they were white. Both mosaics formed mirror images of the same dragon, with wings flared out behind and one forefoot raised with the claws pointing outwards, mouths gaping open in a roar.
Merlin knelt on a small rocky outcrop before the mosaic, peering desperately at the mirroring dragons as though there was a meaning laying waiting for him below the surface of the water. Vortigern tapped his fingers against his crossed arms impatiently to the side. "Well? What does it mean?"
"Why does it have to mean anything?" Merlin said, frustrated. Mouthing off to the crazy man who earlier had been planning to kill him and drain his body of its blood may not have been a good idea, but he could no longer bite back his tongue in face of the ridiculous, impossible task forced on him. "Maybe it means whoever made it liked art!"
Overhead, the ground rumbled and there came a loud boom of a thunderclap, audible even this far under the earth. The tremors continued periodically, and it might have been Merlin's imagination but he thought they were increasing in frequency. It was difficult to tell, though, as without the sun or moon in the sky it was impossible to tell how much time was passing.
Vortigern's face tightened. "Then what am I to make of the warning on the pillar?"
"Well if you can read it," for Vortigern must have been able to to know it was a warning, "then that's more than I can. Why don't you interpret it!"
He looked surprised, as if nine-year-old peasants from backwater villages should know how to read archaic writing systems or at least that the boy he still addressed as Emrys should, and translated for Merlin, "It says, 'let not the wisdom of our days fall into the recesses of Time. Look upon the dragons, the inseparable opposites who are each other, whose essence is in their colour, and remember this: each is a vanguard in the fight begun with the advent of Time. Tread forth with care, for the day of the sleeping dragons' awakening approaches.' Now, tell me what it means."
What an utterly useless message, Merlin thought in annoyance. If the people of old went to all the trouble of setting up a pillar with an inscription on it, they could have left a straightforward note explaining the mosaic and saved Merlin the bother!
"Why should I know! I have no idea!"
"Do not feign ignorance, it's unbecoming in one of your power and doesn't fool me for a second. You are Emrys, you must know," Vortigern insisted in his arrogant confidence that made Merlin's teeth gnash together in frustration. Why must he know? Why was it so inconceivable that Vortigern had messed up his spells and gotten Merlin instead of the unborn as of yet Emrys, and Merlin did not possess the ability to instantly know the meaning of cryptic words and the pictures that accompanied them? "You have the night to think over your choice. In the morning I will ask you once more. I highly recommend you do not refuse me again."
Vortigern tugged twice on the rope leading up from the underground cave, and of its own accord it rose, carrying him to the surface. He left behind the light for Merlin to see by, conjuring another in his hands. Merlin continued staring into the pool, which still yielded no secret answers to him.
Maybe if he went in the pool something would happen? He might find something written on the part of the pillar under the surface of the water, or that the dragons made some shape when viewed at a different angle that better spelled out some deeper meaning.
It was a long shot, but Merlin was desperate.
He had only put one foot in the water when the pool began to churn as though being stirred, the surface frothing white. Merlin held his breath, scarcely daring to believe his desperate idea had been spot on, while the water around the pillar bubbled as though boiling. The water rose and rose around it, and something shot up to the surface. The pool calmed, and Merlin could see it was a gold chest, bobbing in place and miraculously not sinking despite the heavy material it was made out of.
Merlin called it towards him excitedly, lifting it out of the water with great care and setting it down on the rock beside him. When he lifted the lid, however, what lay within was not another message or anything to better explain what Merlin was expected to explain, but a teardrop shaped egg. Its hue was as red as blood, and it lay protectively cushioned by the velvet padded interior of the chest. Any other time Merlin would have been thrilled by the discovery of a dragon's egg. Now he felt only crushing disappointment that it was not a note.
He put his foot back in the water, but nothing happened. Even when he fully immersed himself and swam up and down the mosaic, looking at it and the pillar from every which angle, he found nothing of use. At last, exhausted, he dragged himself back on the rock. He crouched defeated, dripping wet and shivering, beside the gold chest. He picked it up, and tugged on the rope twice, rising to the surface.
Will and the woman who had convinced Vortigern not to kill him earlier, Vivienne, sat beside the hole in the ground leading to the cave with the pool. The sky was still in its ominous darkened state so Merlin had no accurate way of measuring time, but he thought by their bored faces they must have been sitting there for quite some time, waiting for him while he was in the cave. Will looked hopefully towards Merlin, but his face fell at Merlin's unhappy expression – neither of them were going home anytime soon.
Beside him, Vivienne sighed and glanced worriedly at the ominous sky before rising. "I've convinced Vortigern to let you stay in my tent for the night. I've already taken your dragon to wait there." Merlin wondered how she could tell it was night, or if she was just calling it night because she was planning to sleep. "Come, we have much to discuss."
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* Don't look directly at the sun during a solar eclipse. Just because two fictional peasant boys in the Middle Ages did does not mean it won't give you eye damage.
* Is it clear enough that Merlin time-traveled? It's difficult to withhold the information from the narrator but include enough clues for the audience to piece together what happened. Go too far on one side and Merlin looks as oblivious as Arthur, too far on the other and the whole chapter is a confusing mess.
* Whenever I read time-travel stories there's some warning of "but we can't use this again or something terrible will happen." Well, I don't deal in vagueness for why we will never again see something that would be a really convenient solution to problems that otherwise make a good story. So if you mess up time, here's what you get: a declaration of war from scandalized priestesses, a never ending eclipse, thunder and tremors, and more fun stuff to come.
* If anyone knows how long it takes to walk between Cell-y-Dewiniaid and Dinas Emrys, I'd appreciate it if you'd send me a PM. I just picked an hour, but all the internet says is it's "nearby."
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