1x02 – Easy Solutions
"You know, when we first met I thought your life was perfect. Now I know better; being prince means you get punctured and slashed and almost killed, come back to be patched up, and then the very next day go right back to the same woods where you were punctured and slashed and almost killed and – big surprise - get punctured and slashed and almost killed again – probably getting your head bashed as that seems to happen about every other trip, and then you come back to –"
"Just give me the damn potion, Merlin," Arthur interrupted, holding out his unbandaged arm to take it. Behind him Bert, his new manservant, took a step backwards and Arthur realized he'd been expecting to be expected to take it, because who would expect the physician's ward to hand over a potion to royalty directly? He decided to blame this on Merlin; before the big eared idiot arrived in Camelot Arthur hadn't failed to meet the expectations on him so unthinkingly since he was a small child. "And then kindly shove off to do… whatever it is you do these days."
Merlin handed over the bottle of vile coloured liquid, appearing unfazed by Arthur's best unapproachable technique. "Just wondering if I'm the only one who's noticed a bit of a pattern going on here."
"Yes, it's called patrolling, it happens on a schedule."
"And maybe if it didn't there'd be less bandits and thugs and whoever else lying in wait for you every time you step into those outlaw-infested woods." Before Arthur could retort something about the idiot's intelligence – or lack therefore – and why he wasn't the one in charge of planning the kingdom's defence, Merlin continued on with, "Besides, you didn't get eight stitches in your arm because you were out patrolling, you were out stomping through the forest shooting at fluffy animals that - unlike everything else in those woods - never did you any harm."
"I don't expect you to understand the thrill of hunting."
"Well, that's good, because I don't. What's fun about killing poor defenceless cute little woodland creatures?"
"Merlin?"
"Shove off?"
"Very good, you're learning."
Merlin obediently turned to go, but after stepping out of Arthur's chambers he turned back again. With one hand on the doorknob, he called out one last comment, "I think kicking someone out is basically the same as admitting you have no other way of winning the argument."
Merlin closed the door so quickly that the water jug Arthur threw at him hit it and bounced backwards, rolling across his floor. Without having to be asked, Bert started forwards to pick it up. He replaced it in front of Arthur on the table, and then backed away to stand behind Arthur, wordlessly waiting to be called upon while remaining out of sight.
It shouldn't annoy him that Bert was so silently competent it was like he wasn't even there; that was supposed to be the hallmark of a good servant. Neither should it annoy him that Merlin could just walk away like that and Arthur wouldn't see him again until the next time he was injured – something that was becoming alarmingly frequent as of late. He'd taken to comparing his new servants with Merlin, which was ludicrous considering the boy had been completely inexperienced and only worked three days. Despite being infinitely better at servitude than Merlin was, there was something just… lacking in them.
His life was exactly the same as it had been before he'd met Merlin, yet somehow it felt lacking. Merlin's short visits to bring him potions from Gaius stood out more than any other daily events, like flecks of vivid red in a sea of grey. Without having the decency to do it consciously so Arthur could properly blame him for it, Merlin had shown Arthur a truth about his daily life he hadn't realised on his own: from the layout of his voluminous breakfast to only knowing how to identify three-quarters of the castle inhabitants by the tops of their heads because they were bowing whenever he was in the same room, his life was utterly predictable and he was bored of it.
Arthur was bored and, whatever else could be said about Merlin's short tenure as his servant, it had certainly been leagues away from approaching boring.
# \ # \ # \ #
"Thanks, Merlin, you can leave it on the table over there."
It was amazing to Merlin that two people with the same guardian could be so different. Perhaps he was biased because the Lady Morgana was his friend's beloved mistress and the daughter of a woman who'd given him tremendous help in the past, but he thought she was phenomenal, especially in her treatment of commoners.
She and Gwen were obviously friends more than they were mistress and servant; Gwen's light load of chores and considerable time off was proof enough. Every day when he went to deliver Morgana's sleeping draught he would see Gwen straightening up the room, arranging flowers, brushing Morgana's hair, carrying baskets of laundry, or fluffing Morgana's pillow; all work that was considerably less strenuous than anything he had done in his short tenure as a servant. He'd once made an idle comment to her about mucking out Morgana's horses and she'd given him a strange sort of look, replying that that's what stablehands were for as if she didn't know why he thought she did it. Merlin was unsure whether Arthur was unusually demanding of his servants or Morgana was unusually good to hers, though he suspected it was a bit of both, but he felt the difference between his and Gwen's treatment spoke volumes of the character of their masters (ex-master, in Merlin's case).
The first time Morgana spoke to him was only a few days after the tournament. She must have already spoken with Arthur, because she complimented him on having the good sense to refuse the position of Arthur's servant. She then went on to complain that for such a prestigious oft-sought after position it was a constant headache for her – the default overseer of the castle staff as there was no queen or princess – to have to constantly be rotating servants around to fill because either Arthur or his newest servant had pushed the other too far… though she laughingly told Merlin that in all her years at Camelot, he had come to his senses the fastest.
"Do you know what Arthur did to Bert this morning?" she posed to either him or Gwen, or perhaps both of them, from her reflection in her mirror. She was sitting at her vanity table as Gwen styled her hair, trying out different necklaces with her dress and not really looking at either Merlin or Gwen so it was difficult to tell who she was talking to.
"No," Merlin said, uncomfortable conversing with an image. He hadn't seen a mirror before coming to Camelot, and it was very odd to see his own face without the distortion that occurred even in still water.
"Arthur, in his vast wisdom, decided to order Bert to make him breakfast – to make it himself, if you can imagine!" Morgana complained, as though this were unthinkable. Merlin stayed mum; that was definitely something Arthur had demanded of Merlin three out of his three day tenure as a servant. Merlin hadn't thought much of it.
Gwen looked exasperated though. "I imagine Cook took that well," she said, in a way that implied the direct opposite.
Morgana's reflection rolled her eyes. "She apparently ranted to the royal chief of staff for twenty minutes about how she had enough to get on with without random personal servants messing about in her kitchen, which meant I got an oh-so-polite request to please clarify with Prince Arthur who he should go to for what so his servants stop turning up in every which sector jamming things up trying to do tasks they have no training in. As if he ever listens! I've only explained the staff to him about a thousand times and I bet he still couldn't tell the difference between a scullery maid and a chamber maid if his life depended on it!"
Gwen made an amused little noise, like of course only a perfect idiot wouldn't immediately know which maid was which. Merlin, who would probably also die if placed in that unlikely scenario, decided to beat a hasty retreat. He quietly set down Morgana's sleeping potion and slipped out to continue his rounds before either woman, occupied as they were with beautifying the lady, noticed.
After he finished all the castle deliveries he headed back up into Gaius' chambers, collecting the potions he needed to hand out in the lower town. There was surprisingly few that day: only Gelhert Seward's regular sedative and a couple of anti-cough lotions for a scattered number of individuals who weren't quite over the summer cold that had been swept through the lower town a few weeks before. No one was home at the Seward's house, so Merlin delivered the other potions and then tried again. When still no one answered, he stood on the doorstep undecided over whether to barge in uninvited or come back later. Remembering that Gelhert's son Tyr worked in the royal stables, Merlin decided he might as well hand it over to him on his way back to Gaius' chambers.
The sight and smell of the royal stables was much less depressing when he was just visiting them instead of having to muck them out. Tyr was hard at work rubbing down a large chestnut stallion, so absorbed in his work that he jumped a foot in the air when Merlin cleared his throat to get his attention.
Clutching the hand with the brush to his chest, he smiled crookedly in relief at Merlin's familiar face. "You startled me."
"Sorry." Merlin held up the bottle of liquid pain relief in silent explanation for his visit. "I checked twice, but no one was at your house. Do you have somewhere to keep this until you go home?"
"Yeah, thanks. I can put it in my bag." Tyr held out his hand and Merlin passed him the bottle. Tyr put down the brush and stepped out of the stall, placing the bottle in a worn cloth sack. He turned back to Merlin and tilted his head slightly in puzzlement, confusion scrunching his honest face. "That's strange, though. My mother's out of town visiting her parents, but my father should be home now. Sometimes he ignores Gaius' advice and does chores around town, drawing water and the like, but normally it doesn't take him very long."
"Maybe he went to go visit a friend?" Merlin suggested, not knowing anything about Tyr's father beyond that he had a bad shoulder that hadn't healed properly after breaking, crippling him on one side and causing him chronic pain that he could only subdue with Gaius' help.
"Maybe," Tyr said noncommittally. He picked up the brush and went back to brushing the horse. "Sorry, Merlin, but this is Sir Leon's horse and he and I have a… complicated history. I'd rather get this done before he needs to get ready for patrol."
"Of course. Well, bye."
Merlin was walking across the Main Square on his way back to Gaius' chambers when he was stopped by a young voice calling out to him, tripping over the r of his name,
"Merlin!"
Turning towards the water pump, he could see a brightly dressed little girl scurrying forwards, waving to catch his attention. The tomato girl had a bucket of water in one hand and her usual basket in her other, though Merlin couldn't see any red tops poking out of it. He stopped to let her catch up, greeting her as best he could without knowing her name. He'd tried asking for it after she learned his from unknown sources, but apparently introductions were not within the small and select topics she could understand in Common – most likely because it was not pertinent to selling tomatoes.
He often saw her during his rounds in the lower town, out on the street somewhere calling out to passersby. She never did it with him, though; first impressions must die hard, because she seemed fonder of pretending to pelt him with the fruits from her basket than trying to convince him to buy them. Merlin suspected her constant work was all that kept her from joining the other children at the stocks, throwing the things for real. Merlin was apparently deemed her next best option for entertainment.
When she was near him she reached into her basket, pulling a large beige misshapen oval out of her basket. "We have a new item in, called a potato. It is very delicious cooked or boiled, on its own or in soup," she enunciated carefully like she was reading from a memorized script.
She set her basket and water pail on the ground, pulling out one of her striped squares of cloth and wrapped it around the thing she'd called a potato. She tied a deft bow out of the cloth corners.
"Here. Free. For you."
And with that, she drew back her arm and, with a devilish grin that alerted him to her intentions, threw the makeshift bag at him. Merlin's arms darted out to catch it before it hit him, and though partly successful he ended up fumbling the bag multiple times. The girl laughed, but in the end he somehow managed to trap it in a bizarre contortion of his elbow against his chest. With his free hand he picked the bag up by the knot at the top.
"Thanks," he said with a weary, lopsided grin. He was half grateful for the gift, while the other half wished she wasn't quite so taken with him.
He would swear her eyes were gleaming with future mischief as she sweetly replied, "You're welcome." She picked up her basket of potatoes and bucket of water, swinging the former as a visual explanation. "I go. New item, needs much selling."
"Oh, of course. Bye."
Merlin continued the rest of the way up to Gaius' chambers unimpeded, depositing the potato in the food cupboard and calling out for Gaius. When no one answered, Merlin went upstairs and pulled his book out of its now heavily enchanted hiding place, casting a spell to jam the door since it had no physical lock on it. He flipped it open to his latest project, rereading the short paragraph and studying the simplified diagram again with great frustration.
Instantaneous transportation magic, his spellbook cautioned, was extremely dangerous. There was a very real risk of missing one's intended destination and ending up somewhere much worse; for example, accidentally drowning oneself by ending up in the middle of the sea instead of in the middle of one's seaside home. Getting the destination right, however, was not much less risky. If there were any objects or people whatsoever where one intended to transport to then they would impale one's body, which depending on the injury may result in death. The only way to be certain one arrived safely was to mark the intended destination with a locus circle, which would ground one to the destination preventing arrival at erroneous locations and clear the surrounding area to eliminate all obstacles.
And the next sentence, at the bottom of the paragraph, was the very last sentence in the section and made Merlin want to scream in frustration: Please reference "The Three Hundred and Thirty-Three Trials of Transportation" and related works for more details.
And no matter how he scrutinised the bare-bones diagram of what a locus circle looked like and tried to recall what Mary Collins had muttered right before a violent wind carried her away, he was no closer to being able to replicate her spell than he had been the day he arrived.
From downstairs he heard the door opening, and Merlin quickly re-hid his book and unjammed the door. Getting up to open it, he called, "Gaius?"
"In here," his guardian called back from the main floor. Peeking down, Merlin could see him poking around with something on his workbench and, glancing both ways, that he was alone.
Merlin retrieved his book and came down the stairs three at a time. Gaius looked up as he arrived with a final great thud on the landing. He raised his eyebrow at the spellbook and asked dryly as though he already knew the answer, "Did you read that volume on human anatomy I set for you?"
After Merlin was out of a job, Gaius seemed to decide it would be best to keep him close by and thus out of trouble, or perhaps he simply couldn't find any work for Merlin now that he had the notoriety of being fired by the prince attached to his name. He'd decided if Merlin couldn't work, he could learn instead. In either case, Merlin, in addition to taking up most of Gaius' unskillful chores, was each day set an enormous amount of reading on the physician's craft or the scientific process in general. Merlin tried to read through each one, he really did, but they were unbelievably dry - he'd woken up drooling on the big dusty tomes more than once.
So most days Gaius came home to find Merlin had only gotten through half of what he was supposed to and was instead studying out of the vastly more interesting and applicable spellbook.
"Er, no, but I'll get to it later." It was amazing how much scepticism Gaius could convey with just a look. "I wanted to ask you about locus circles."
Gaius stiffened at the last two words, and turned away from whatever he had been doing to fully face Merlin. "Locus circles are one of the most complex and finicky pieces of magic; one smudged segment of a line will render the entire thing useless, so they require at minimum daily maintenance to be safe to use. They're also quite large and distinct looking, so there's no possible way you could make one within ten leagues of the city without someone stumbling across it and reporting it to the king. And if you made one farther away then you wouldn't be able to do the upkeep on it."
"Do you know how to make them, then?" Merlin asked hopefully. Even if they were dangerous to use when not well maintained, if it was a choice between the gallows and taking his chances that nothing happened to his locus circle since he last checked it, Merlin knew he'd what he'd choose in a heartbeat.
Gaius gave him a stern look, apparently not seeing how life-saving this spell could be. "I did, once, but it's been so long that I don't remember now."
Merlin must not have looked sufficiently dissuaded, because Gaius gave a sigh. "When I was around your age, long before magic was banned, there was a sorcerer living across the street from where I was studying. His name was Tarius, and he was a brilliant but lazy, careless man. One day he journeyed to his hometown, and after staying with his mother for the night he decided to save himself a seven hour walk by using magic to transport home, even though his locus circle hadn't had anyone to maintain it in his absence. No one ever saw him again, though his grown children moved back into his house, fixed the scuffed segment of the locus, and maintained it until the day they died in the hope that one day he'd find a way home. That was what happened after only neglecting the upkeep for one day; I guarantee you wouldn't be able to properly keep up a secret get-away locus or whatever you're planning without your daily trips to and from the middle of nowhere raising suspicions."
Disappointment was like a cold bucket of water to the face. It seemed like the spells that would be most useful to learn all had some great drawback. Time magic was a shot in the dark over the consequences, transportation magic required advanced planning and a huge time and space investment that Merlin couldn't afford, and healing spells were either so specialized they would only work for the exact type of injury they were designed for or so generalized that they weren't good for much more than flesh wounds.
They were interrupted by a knock came at the door just then, and someone called out in a panic, "Gaius? Gelhert Seward's is lying dead in the Lower Town. There's something wrong with his skin, I think it's some new kind of plague!"
# \ # \ # \ #
"I'm sorry, Gwen."
Words seemed to fail Gwen. She took a step backwards, then turned on heel and fled, her cheeks tear-streaked and her entire face twisted in anguish. Merlin watched the billowing of her red cloak as she raced from the room without the help she'd run to them for.
He approached Gaius, who looked sombre at having had to give dreadful news to someone he knew well. "There must be something we can do."
Gelhert Seward had only been the first in a long line of victims, laid in shrouded rows out in the Main Square each night as the death toll continued to rise. Gaius was hard at work examining the bodies while Merlin hovered nearly uselessly behind him only able to help by holding test tubes, fetching things, and picking herbs. He'd barely gotten the suggestion of a magical cure past his lips before Gaius shot it down, grabbing Merlin by the arm and pulling him away from a still breathing plague victim.
The plague was magical in nature, and Uther's paranoia seemed to rise with each white silhouetted corpse that appeared in the Square. Arthur was leading hunts through the city for the sorcerer responsible and Merlin had already nearly been caught when his room was searched, having carelessly thrown the spellbook in from the door before hurrying back down the steps to accompany Gaius in retrieving Gelhert Seward's corpse. So it wasn't as if Merlin didn't understand Gaius' wariness about practicing magic now, of all times...
Gaius took the bucket of water from Merlin and turned away, carrying it towards his work bench. "Let's hope that this can provide some answers."
Only a few minutes earlier the appearance of the body of a dead female courtier after the Lower Town had been cordoned off eliminated the possibility that the plague was spread through contact, the air, or the food supply, leaving one possibility: the water supply. Merlin had run out to fetch a sample from the well, elated that there was finally a show of progress from doing things Gaius' way, only to have the thrilling moment crash down when Gwen had run past him in tears.
"But that'll be too late for Gwen's father."
Gwen had been out of breath when she arrived in Gaius' chambers, but it was the torturing of her heart, not her body, that constricted her voice when she begged Gaius to help her dying father only to be told he had no cure. Gwen's father was her only family, and Merlin could physically feel his friend's pain; he couldn't imagine what he'd do if it was his mother who was dying of an incurable plague. Even far away in Ealdor, she was the person he held dearest in the world – his one unshakable bond that even hundreds of leagues and the weeks since he'd last seen her could not break or fray. For the years they'd lived in their small cottage with just the two of them she'd been his constant source of companionship, guidance, laughter, and comfort, and it was easy to see that Tom was to Gwen as Hunith was to Merlin.
"I fear you're right," Gaius said in a heavy voice. Even as he said this, he began the long, slow, scientific process of testing the water sample. Merlin didn't doubt Gaius would get his results and find a way to cure the plague, but in the meantime people were dying. His first friend in Camelot's father was dying while they followed the safe, time-consuming non-magical route that would be too late to save all the people who would be set out in the Main Square before the great bell signalling the curfew.
Merlin was sick of waiting helplessly for science to bring the aid Camelot so desperately needed.
He slipped up to his room, and pulled his book out from its enchanted hiding place. He flipped through to the section on healing spells, and started reading avidly, trying to find one that would be of use. His conscience twinged at disobeying Gaius, but that was nothing compared to the crushing guilt at just the thought of allowing Gwen's father to die. He didn't know how he would ever be able to face Gwen again if he stood by and did nothing.
It took him several hours, but he narrowed down his options to three different antidotes for magical poisons. As the plague was spread by ingesting water, it probably acted similar to a toxin, Merlin theorised. He picked the one that had less awful complications if he made a mistake in preparing it or his theory was wrong. It was a scented poultice that cleansed the body of magic-based impurities upon inhalation. The ingredients it called for were all herbs that could be found in Gaius' store cupboard, and it only took half an hour to make.
Merlin waited until it was dark and Gwen would be asleep before he snuck through the lower town, distracting the patrolling guards easily enough. Feeling like a thief as he crept into a house at night, Merlin silently and cautiously approached Tom's bed, careful to slide the poultice under his pillow in a smooth, slow motion so as not to wake him.
Quiet as he dared without risking garbling the spell, Merlin whispered, "þu fornimst adl fram guman."
The effect was immediate: a cloud of glowing gold wafted from under the pillow. Tom inhaled it like a drowning man gasping for air and the colour returned to his skin. Merlin slipped out of Gwen's house, but lingered a moment to watch through the window. Tom stirred, and reached down to lay his hand on his daughter's head. That Gwen was woken by this light touch spoke of her distress, and Merlin smiled at her joy at her father's recovery.
Merlin slept better than he had since the first plague victim was found. In the morning, he went about his daily tasks for Gaius. When he dropped off Morgana's sleeping draught, Gwen was positively radiant.
As they always seemed to do for him, though, the good turn of events didn't last long.
Not twenty minutes later, he stopped short in horror. There were two armed guards flanking Gwen on either side, forcibly dragging her along by the elbows while she protested her innocence, looking between her unsympathetic escorts in wild terror. Seeing Merlin, she called out to him as she was shunted past him by her red and silver clad captors.
Long after she was dragged away, Gwen's pleas for help echoed in Merlin's ears.
# \ # \ # \ #
Most of the time, it was a trial for Arthur to keep his mind from wandering during sessions of his father's council. The issues brought forward on any given day tended to range in importance from sticky spots in the accommodation preparations for the next tournament, to the cost of building embankments around the settled portions of the River of Ascetir, to which day to hold the annual garland competition on. So Arthur thought his difficulties in focusing were well understandable. But then there were days when the matter of discussion grabbed his full attention, and on those days Arthur would wish that his biggest problem was sitting up straight and keeping his eyes unglazed.
Currently, it was one of those days. With his father discussing burning a maidservant and how to stop the incurable plague with his advisors, Arthur's attention wasn't in any danger of fleeing the room for the training grounds. But just when he thought matters couldn't get any more dire, they proceeded to do so as if to mock his expectations.
The doors slammed open, and his one-time manservant burst in unannounced and uninvited. Before Arthur had time to marvel at what an idiotic breach of protocol this was, the boy was shouting,
"It was me! It was me who used magic to cure Gwen's father!" When the room as a whole failed to react to these words, questioning if they'd truly heard that right, Merlin looked the king directly in the eyes as he damned himself further by repeating, "Gwen's not the sorcerer, I am!"
If Merlin hadn't looked so resolute Arthur would have thought he'd spent too long in the tavern, because there was no other explanation he could think of for why anyone would say something so idiotic. Not even sorcerers would be insane enough to confess this in the heart of Camelot before the king and all his guards. This was clearly an attempt to save Morgana's maid, which just went to show that Merlin was only displaying the foolhardy courage he'd shown when they first met; if Merlin had truly been a practitioner of the dark arts he wouldn't have cared whether the woman lived or died, certainly not to the extent of volunteering to take her place. The only thing Merlin was guilty of was stupidity and suicidal tendencies.
Gaius must have thought so too, because he tried to brush it all aside only to be cut short by Merlin himself. The order for Merlin's arrest broke Arthur out of the disbelieving stupor Merlin's mad declaration had brought on him.
"Father, I can't allow this, this is madness!" Arthur was moving towards Merlin, who was being grabbed by the guards even as he spoke, before he was aware of what he was doing. Once he realized he stopped, settling for gesturing to Merlin as he turned back to his father. "There's no way Merlin is a sorcerer!"
"He admitted it," his father said, a precise and damning truth.
No matter what good deeds Merlin had done in the past – saving Arthur's life when that witch tried to kill him, preventing him from entering the fight with Valiant unsuspecting of his treachery – they would do nothing to persuade his father, who asked the question that Arthur had no real answer for: why should he fabricate such a story?
"Because…"
Why indeed?
He was obviously trying to save Morgana's maid, but why at the cost of his own life? If anyone should care about her enough to try this stunt it should be either her father or Morgana. Merlin hadn't been in Camelot for very long, he couldn't possibly be closer to her than either of them.
Well, if he wasn't going to guess the motivation for Merlin's stupidity any time soon, he'd just have to make one up. Gaius, seated across from where Arthur was standing now, caught his eye and he got an idea. "…it's as Gaius said. He's got a grave… mental disease."
His father leaned forwards, his interest peaked, and Arthur knew his tactics were working. It was just a shame he didn't know any grave mental diseases. Throwing medical causes aside, Arthur wracked his brains for something that his father could accredit for Merlin's actions, and he hit upon his answer right away.
"He's in love." While Arthur was mentally applauding his own brilliance, Merlin was unhelpfully being the most surprised person in the room at hearing this. To clear any vagueness away and override Merlin's objections, Arthur loudly specified, "With Gwen."
Merlin's spluttered out protestations threatened Arthur's valiant efforts to clear his name, and Arthur had to resist the urge to smack him across the head. Instead he put an arm around Merlin's shoulder in a display of friendliness, half for the benefit of his father and half as a warning to Merlin to shut up, inwardly swearing he'd find a way of making the idiot pay for putting him in this position later. "It's all right. You can admit it."
Arthur could sense from the mood in the council room just then that he'd won, and anything Merlin said in further protestation would be taken as boyish embarrassment at admitting his crush. When Uther made a joke at Merlin's expense and ordered his release Arthur relinquished his cautionary hold on him with gratitude.
The look Merlin gave him before turning away was loaded with a complex mash of emotions that Arthur didn't know how to untangle. The only thing he could tell was that Merlin was not in the least thankful for his intervention, the ungrateful little beanpole.
# \ # \ # \ #
With a deeply entrenched feeling of powerlessness, Merlin flipped through the thick yellow parchment of his spellbook, opening the page to combat magic. He hadn't been able to find anything specific on Afancs in the other sections, so he would have to hope one of the spells in the combat section would be marked use to defeat monsters created by powerful sorcerers. Downstairs Gaius was poring over his many books trying to find the monster's weakness, and Merlin couldn't help but wish that he had a secondary source to consult, someone who was even more knowledgeable than Gaius in matters of magic who could offer him help when Gaius was just as uninformed as he about how to proceed.
After Arthur had oh-so-thoughtfully ruined Merlin's first attempt to take responsibility for the plight he'd caused Gwen, he went with Gaius to examine the underground water reservoir in the hope that something there would be useful to prove his friend innocent. Although they didn't find a calling card left from the sorcerer who'd started everything, they found the source of the disease: a monster called an Afanc contaminating the water supply at its heart.
Unfortunately, knowing what the heart of the problem was and finding a solution were two separate matters. Merlin had visited the dungeons for a second time, and sworn to Gwen once again that he'd get her out. The first time he'd gone, just before his first attempt at freeing her, she'd been trying so desperately to be strong in the face of death, voicing her concerns for the people she was leaving behind rather than for herself, but although her courageous kindness was heartbreaking to witness the second visit was worse.
She'd been lying unresponsive on the floor with her back to the iron gated cell door. At first glance it looked as though she was sleeping, but the rhythm of her breathing was wrong for it. Despite this, she didn't respond to any of Merlin's promises to free her, as though she'd already given up all hope. Merlin couldn't even offer anything more reassuring than his word she would be, because unlike the time before he had no solid plan to get her out. With nowhere else to turn he'd returned to Gaius' chambers and pulled out his spellbook, hoping to stumble across the answer sooner rather than later, while wishing desperately he had some quicker way of finding the monster's weak point.
Merlin had scarcely gone through three pages when a knock came at the door downstairs, and he had to stash his book away in case it was another raid sent from Uther. He got off his bed and pressed his ears against his door.
"Gaius, I need to speak with you. In private." The visitor had the low quivery voice of an old man and his words carried a distinct inflection, fainter than the tomato girl's accent but reminiscent of it. Merlin remembered Gaius saying that the tomato girl lived with her grandfather, who'd come to Camelot thirty years ago. He'd never met the man, but he was willing to bet that was who was downstairs.
"Of course, Tenoch, why don't you step inside?"
There was the sound of the door closing, and then the visitor was speaking again. "It's about my granddaughter, Miyahuatl." He was silent for a minute, as though the man was hesitating about what to say, or how to say it. "I need whatever it was that you gave the blacksmith."
"I'm afraid I didn't give Tom anything, I don't know anything about how he got better." Merlin personally was amazed at how even Gaius' voice was, but Tenoch must not have been because he scoffed,
"Some people's memories may be short, but mine goes back longer than twenty years. Let us stop this pretence; I know and you know that before the Purge your remedies were more, shall we say 'varied', than they are now."
"Well, if you're memory is that good," Gaius' voice was sharp and pointed, as if trying to cut off this direction of conversation as quickly as he could. "Then you must remember that I swore a solemn oath before the entire court to never practice sorcery again."
"Yes, and I'm sure the blacksmith's daughter got a magical cure from some other former sorcerer who lives here whom she was seen visiting yesterday. Who in this city other than you could have made that poultice?"
"I have no idea, but I'm afraid I'm telling the truth when I say that I have no cure. However, I have found the cause of the contamination and am looking for a way to eliminate it right now."
"That won't help Miya." Tenoch bit out in anger. After a long silence, he began again, soft and pleading. "Please, Gaius, she's only ten years old. It's my fault she's sick; I didn't warn her about the water, and she doesn't speak Common well – she wouldn't have understood the general announcement. She didn't know not to get the water from the pump."
That last sentence nagged at the more acute portion of Merlin's brain. After Uther issued a proclamation about how the disease was spread the courtiers drew their daily supply from the emergency reserves, but the people in the lower town didn't have access to a source of water other than the pump. Most were going without water for as long as possible; those who could afford it drank alcohol instead, and the rest just hoped that Gaius would find a cure before they had to give in or die of thirst. But it sounded as though Tenoch thought the tomato girl could have gotten her water from another supply if only she'd known she should.
Tenoch continued on pleading as though he hadn't said anything strange. "I made sure no one saw her, no one knows she's sick – I've been telling people she went home to visit her mother. And even if the king finds out… he didn't punish the blacksmith, only his daughter. I'm old; I'd gladly take my granddaughter's place."
"I'm sorry, but I truly had nothing to do with Tom's recovery. I can't help you."
There was a long moment of silence, as if the two downstairs were having a silent battle of wills, until Tenoch broke it with a bitter, "Can't? Or won't?"
The sound of the door slamming reverberated up to Merlin's room, alerting him that it was safe to take out his book again. The trouble was he didn't know which page he should turn to in it: the one with the cure or the one on combat magic.
Gwen's execution loomed on the horizon, at dawn the very next day. It was all his fault she'd been accused of witchcraft and he had no idea how to defeat the monster that would clear her name.
On the other hand, there were people dying in of the plague in the lower town; those who'd contracted the illness before the proclamation and – if he couldn't defeat the monster soon – then those who'd give in to dehydration and drink it anyway. He couldn't help them all – most of the plague victims he only found out about after they were carried out of their homes to the Main Square by family members. The others were kinless street folk, who if they were found cured would cause untold havoc, there being no convenient housemate to blame. Given Uther's paranoia and reaction to Tom's healing, Merlin wouldn't put it past him to execute anyone who so much as walked past them in the street. For the nameless, faceless general population it was easy to rationalize his inaction, with Gwen being a sterling example of what would happen if he acted rashly.
But with the tomato girl – Miya, he amended mentally, finding it bitter that he only now had a name to attach to her young face – it was much harder because she was someone he knew.
It had only taken him half an hour to painstakingly follow the instructions to make the cure for Gwen's father, and he would wager he could do it in half that time having already made it once. A quarter of an hour would be all it took to save the little girl's life, but it wasn't that simple. How could he know for sure that Tenoch was right when he said no one had seen her sick, and even if he did with all the raids going on how could he know that no one would find the poultice under her pillow during the time the spell needed to take effect? It wasn't just his life he'd be risking, but the old man's as well, and possibly the girl he meant to save. And Gaius'; Tenoch had already connected Gaius with the magical cures, what if others came to that conclusion and what he'd done to Gwen happened to Gaius as well? He couldn't predict who Uther would name guilty by association when the king was growing more and more paranoid the longer the plague lasted. Gaius had taken Merlin in without reservation, despite the penalty for harbouring a sorcerer, and offered him guidance that no one else could. He had quickly become like a father to Merlin; Merlin didn't think he could bear it if anything happened to him.
Merlin would be risking a lot to help one little girl he hadn't even known the name of until just a few minutes ago.
Can't, or won't, Tenoch's parting resounded in his head, an accusation that hadn't been directed at him. But it should have been; he was the one Tenoch was looking for, not Gaius who had been unjustly blamed, so he was the one who should have had to face the desperate grandfather. If he had walked downstairs and admitted it, the old man would have looked him in the eye when he said those words, and what would Merlin have responded with? He could cure the girl, there was no question of that, but would he? Should he?
Gwen's face as she frantically called out for help flashed through his mind twice: once when she was begging Gaius for a cure, once when she was begging Merlin to stop her from being taken her away. It physically hurt him to think of her when with the sentence hanging in the air like the executioner's torch that was just waiting for Uther's signal to light her pyre, but he forced himself to. If he hadn't cured her father she would be safe, but Tom would be dead. And if it had been the other way around, if Gwen had been the one dying and Tom the one arrested, Merlin knew that though he'd regret accidentally implicating someone in his crime, he'd regret it less than letting a friend die.
Merlin let out a deep breath and pulled open his door. Slipping downstairs past where Gaius was avidly reading through thick volumes, he grabbed some basic herbs from the supply cupboard and a small perfuming bag. He crept back up to his room and down again scarcely a quarter hour later, a shoulder bag clutched guiltily to his side. His steps as he snuck out were between a walk and a jog, a pace that was too quick while trying not to be.
He passed numerous guards on his way to the lower town, his muscles tensing and heart racing each time. He wasn't stopped, but the strap of his bag burned against his shoulder and he couldn't imagine how they didn't see him and just know what he was carrying barely concealed within an ordinary bag.
He came to a small house backing onto a very distinct vegetable stand and stole around back, feeling again like a thief. The door mercifully didn't creak as it opened, and Merlin slipped inside, glancing up and down the street to be sure that no one was looking out any windows or walking by who'd see him enter.
The house was so cluttered he was having difficulties seeing where the sleeping room was. Tenoch's house seemed to double as his storeroom, for the entire thing with filled with assorted barrels of fruits and vegetables. Overhead shelves filled with small baskets lining all the walls, and in one corner under a great crack in the wall sat a brightly painted stool with a wobbly M marked on the top. The shelves must have been too high for Miya to reach on her own, and Merlin was stuck anew how small she was.
He cast about until he found the screen dividing a side room from the main one. After approaching it, he peered over and could see an old man stroking the pale, blue veined face of a girl who if he didn't know was the tomato girl he wouldn't have recognized. With two whispered Old words the man slumped over in deep sleep, and Merlin stepped out from behind the screen, reaching into his bag for the scented magical poultice.
The effects were just as instantaneous as they were with Tom, and Merlin was quick to grab the poultice out from under her pillow after she'd breathed in the cure. His book said to leave it there for at least six hours for full effect, but he didn't dare risk that again. The sickness was gone; it was up to her body now to restore itself to peak health.
Merlin quickly made his way out of the room as the girl's eyelids began to flutter open, but he paused in the main room. If he left things the way they were, then Tenoch would assume Gaius had cured Miya. The tongue lashing Merlin would get from Gaius for curing another person after the last disaster aside, that could only be dangerous for Gaius in the future, if Tenoch let something slip to the wrong person.
Merlin grabbed a scrap piece of parchment from his bag, found a quill and ink bottle on one of the shelves, and with his left hand wrote out a shaky, but sort of legible note.
I was just passing by and thought you could use some aid. For all our sakes, it's better to pretend this never happened.
He should sign it, so they knew for sure it didn't come from Gaius, but he could hardly use his own name. The last time he'd been put on the spot for a fake name he'd gone with Myrddin, but that wouldn't take a genius to trace back to him. Inspiration hit, though, as he remembered Vortigern and Vivienne calling him something else. He couldn't quite remember what it was, so he just made his signature into one shakily flourished,
E.
He placed the note atop their table, and made his way home. There, he pulled out the spellbook and continued reading on combat magic, exactly as he'd been doing before the interruption just over an hour before.
He wondered at himself for taking the time to save Miya when he only had until sunrise the next day to save Gwen, but perhaps that distraction and reorientation of his thoughts was just what he'd needed. Recently, living in such close quarters with Gaius as his only confidant and advisor, without realizing it he'd been sucked into his way of thinking. There was no doubt to Merlin that Gaius was a good and wise man, and that he'd survived through circumstances that would have been the death of anyone else.
But living in Camelot through the Purge as an ex-sorcerer, impressive as it was, might have taught Gaius to be too careful, if such a thing existed. Gaius warned him and warned him against letting anyone find out about him, and Merlin's common sense and his mother's teachings fell in line with that way of thinking so he hadn't questioned it. But if, in the end, he had to flee Camelot, then so what? He'd only been here just over a month and most of the magic he was learning was straight out of a book. There were people he'd miss if he left, but there were people in Ealdor he missed now. Somehow, in the month he'd been here he'd forgotten that the only reason he'd come to Camelot was to learn magic; if he took his book with him then that was all he needed to keep up his studies, it didn't have to be under Uther's nose.
If he couldn't find a monster-defeating spell before sunrise it would not be the end of the world. He had magic and he'd broken out of those dungeons when he was four, he could certainly get Gwen out if it came to it. They might not be able to get past the guards or out of the country safely, and he didn't know what they'd do next if they did, but he'd made her a promise. He intended to keep it, or die trying.
It would be best, for them both as well as the whole city, if instead Merlin could find a way before sunrise to kill the Afanc. But it was heartening to know that Uther was not the only one with massive power at his fingertips, and that if the best path forward closed then there were other paths he could take.
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Morgana took a step backwards, shaking her head in a wordless refusal to believe what she'd been told. The guard who'd given her the unwelcome tidings reached out to her, presumably to comfort her, but she knocked the hand away. His lips were moving but she couldn't hear his words over the roar of her thoughts. She turned on heel and fled, without any destination in mind, for no reason other than that she couldn't bear to be in the presence of one of Uther's men.
The cold stone hallways she ran through seemed mocking in their white splendor. They should be red; red for the fire that would be lit that night, red for the blood spilled by those living within these walls. She didn't know who to turn to: Gwen was imprisoned, Uther wouldn't listen, and Arthur's pitifully weak attempts to help had only made things worse. Gwen's new friend Merlin also hadn't managed to make anything better, though he'd done a heaping share more than anyone else - to her shame, herself included - had to free Gwen. Morgana hadn't realized her list of friends was so short until now, when she needed someone to call on for aid and there was no one.
With no one else to turn to, she strode into the physician's chambers, hoping the knowledgeable old man who helped her with her nightmares might have some solutions to her more corporeal problems.
"They're bringing forward the execution. We have to prove Gwen's innocence."
From up the small flight of stairs at the back of the room she heard a door open, and Merlin hurried down them two at a time. Gaius looked up from a thick volume he was reading through, and wearily said without much hope,
"We're trying."
That wasn't good enough for Morgana, but it was a sight more than what anyone else was doing. "Please, just tell me what I can do to help."
To her surprise it was Merlin who responded. "There's a monster, an Afanc, in the water supply. That's what's causing the plague."
Hope sprung through her, and the answer was so obvious to her she couldn't believe neither Gaius nor Merlin had done it already. "Well, we must tell Uther."
"The Afanc's a creature forged by magic." Gaius said, shattering her hopes before they'd truly taken root. "Telling Uther wouldn't save Gwen. He'd just blame her for conjuring it."
Merlin stepped forward, looking searchingly at Morgana. It struck her then that she wasn't the only one who'd been desperate for someone to come alongside and help save a friend. "We need to destroy it. Then the plague will stop and Uther may see sense. Only… we don't know how."
"Does that matter?!" Morgana cried, unable to believe her ears. They'd figured out so much, but were now just standing at the edge of a crevice wondering how to get to the other side. To her, the answer was simple: they had to take a leap, and trust they'd make it. "Gwen's execution's tonight; we don't time to be flipping through books hoping for a miracle solution! We have swords, we have crossbows, do we not?! If those don't work, then we have maces, axes, lances, torches, tar and oil, catapults! Even if it's conjured by magic, it's a living and breathing beast; if it's alive, then we can kill it! We have to at least try!"
"You're right," Merlin said quietly. Gaius let out a cry of admonishment, protesting that they didn't know the monster's weakness. Merlin turned to Gaius, only one side of his face now visible to Morgana. As he semmed to be choosing his words specifically to exclude her from the conversation. "Remember what you told me about the responsibilities of being… your apprentice? Well, you know that Gwen is my responsibility. If I don't save her, then I have no business… learning anything else from you. Morgana's right; I have to at least try."
Merlin and Gaius looked to be on the verge of a large argument, which Morgana could sense she was unwelcome to witness. "I'm going to go recruit some help; if you're coming, we'll meet you in the Main Square in an hour's time."
It was clear from Merlin's face that he intended to be there, and nothing Gaius could do short of tying him up would stop him. Morgana turned and left, the sounds of indistinct loud voices echoing down the corridor after she'd shut the door.
Ideally she'd send in a squad of knights to take down the monster, but to do that she'd need Uther's permission. To get Uther's permission she'd need to explain about the monster, and it would all be for nothing then as he would immediately blame Gwen. So it looked like her squad was going to have to be cut back to one knight; the one with whom she had nearly a decade worth of sibling-like rivalry as leverage to manipulate him to her will.
It would be a sad hero's expedition: a wounded knight, a court lady, and an untrained commoner. But with the deadline drawing closer and Gwen's life on the line, they'd just have to risk it.
Morgana thought back to Merlin's foolishly brave attempt to take Gwen's place, his immediate desire to risk life and limb fighting this monster for her, and his strange words about her being his responsibility. She had to repress a smile as she put the pieces he'd so desperately tried to hide together. This was a true silver lining on the clouds darkening the city, the first bright thing she'd seen since this awful plague began.
It looked like if they managed to save Gwen, she had a brave dashing hero and happily ever after waiting just around the corner for her.
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If Arthur had his personal pick of two companions to go fight a magical plague-causing monster with, he wouldn't have even considered picking Morgana and Merlin. Morgana because his father would kill him if the monster harmed a single hair on her head, and Merlin because, well… he couldn't even catch a mace, let alone fight with any amount of skill. Yet it was those two who'd singled him out and invited him along on their quest, so he was hardly in a position to argue at their inclusion – not that that stopped him from trying to dissuade Morgana from coming, for all the good that had done.
In the dark of the tunnels, with only the torchlight to warn them of the monster's approach, having Morgana and Merlin at his back felt more of a liability than an asset. Yet somehow he felt better at having someone, anyone, there than he had only minutes before when he'd heard low ominous growling coming from behind him despite being alone.
They peered around the corner, drawing near to the low rattling growl. Movement in the shadows around the bend brought the noise closer, and for the first time Arthur got a clear look at the monster. It was like a nightmare made flesh, with teeth like ivory daggers and its body a misshaped, hulking mass. He and the beast moved toward each other simultaneously, both preparing to strike. Dodging a blow from its long, clawed arms, Arthur thrust forward and stabbed the monster in its abdomen. It growled and swiped at him again. His sword felt like it was stuck in quickly congealing mortar and, unable to wrench it out, Arthur let go, his feet peddling backwards to avoid its blow. The monster seemed as affected by the sword protruding from deep in its gut as it would a splinter.
His retreat appeared to make the beast lose interest in him, as it instead focused on Morgana. She took a step forward, swiping at it with her torch. It reached a massive shadowed limb out to swipe at her. Arthur's heart jumped into his throat, but it didn't touch her, only knocking away her torch. Arthur jumped forwards again as Morgana backed away, weapon-less.
He waved his own torch in its face, and the monster took a step forwards. Emboldened, Arthur pursued, lunging at it with the torch as it was prepared to strike. Its right side flared a blinding yellow-orange for a moment as the fire spread. The monster's piercing scream mixed with a loud hissing noise, like a fire doused in water.
Arthur stumbled backwards and the creature swiped at him, missing by a large margin as though its vision had gone hazy, still crying in pain and rage. It reeled back a few steps, hunching inward on the side he'd burned it on. The monster was still coming on strong, though its attacks now were lacking in aim. Arthur dodged the blows, trying to weave his way forwards to strike the monster again with the torch, but one unlucky swipe of the creature's arm slammed into the wound on his arm. A hiss of pain escaped through his lips, and his fingers slackened in reflex. The torch slipped in his palm, and when a second later Arthur had to leap backwards to avoid another swipe it slid clean out, clattering uselessly to the floor.
Arthur froze, eying the torch burning invitingly a few mere feet from the monster and trying to work out how he could get in and grab it without getting his head taken off by the afanc's flailing limbs.
Fingers closed around his shoulders, yanking him backwards. There was a sound like a rock being struck and then creaking from above, and suddenly the ceiling was crashing down in front of Arthur. Clouds of dust billowed from above and Arthur squeezed his tearing eyes shut. The sound of rock raining down and the monster's roar as it was hit by the large falling debris was all he was aware of.
Once everything had settled he opened his eyes and peered forwards, unable to believe his luck. Though the ceiling hadn't shown any signs of being unstable, it had collapsed directly onto where the monster was and spread no further, leaving the three humans untouched. Merlin released his hold on Arthur's shoulder, letting out a long breath as he took a step forwards. Morgana, on his other side, stepped forwards as well.
Arthur noted she had the torch again, presumably retrieved sometime during his fight, and she held it out to the pile of still rumble. "Is it dead?"
"I'd say…" a growl emanated from within the pile of rubble. "… not."
Loose small rocks toppled down the sides of the debris heap, and something stirred it from the center. Arthur snatched the torch out of Morgana's hand, his pulse raging in his ears as he watched the trembling heap. If the monster couldn't be harmed by a cascade of the large rocks or the weight of the earth, then how was he supposed to destroy this thing?
"Fire," Merlin breathed out, as if he'd come across some important realization.
When Arthur and Morgana looked at him, he elaborated hurriedly, glancing back and forth between the debris and them while he spoke. "I'm the only one without a torch and it hasn't so much as roared in my direction, only going after you two. When it was attacking Morgana it didn't swipe directly at her until after it had knocked away her torch. When Arthur stabbed it with a sword it didn't falter, but burning it hurt it badly. All this time it's stayed in the shadows – away from the areas of the walls with torches. It lives in the water, fire is its weakness."
A claw shot out from the rubble, and then another. They swiped away the rocks and the creature's face was becoming visible, dagger-like teeth bared in a roar, as it dug itself out.
Arthur took a step forward, holding the torch out like he would a sword, and called over his shoulder, "Morgana, we need more flammable stuff. Go up the city and get more torches, or flaming arrows, or…"
"I know just the thing." The sound of her resounding footsteps echoed away as she ran back out the way they came in. Her voice echoed faintly through the tunnels when she called back, "Lead it towards the entrance, I won't be able to carry it far."
The monster's hind legs came free of the rubble just then, and it focused its sightless face on Arthur. He heard Merlin scrambling backward and the sound of a torch bracket being removed from the wall. As the beast stalked forwards, Merlin rejoined Arthur, flailing his torch about wildly.
"So… how are we supposed to lead it to the entrance?"
"Simple." Arthur grabbed Merlin by the arm, dragging him along, "We run, and it'll follow."
Like a madman's version of a children's game, they ran and dodged and parried and then ran some more. Chasing them was It, a being that fit that moniker like a hand in a glove, and to be tagged would bring the game to a grisly end. They could only cover ground in short spurts, slowing luring the afanc closer to the surface as they set themselves out as bait.
Arthur hadn't realized how far they'd truly gotten until they rounded a corner and were greeted by the white light of the sun. He could see the opening for the tunnel, and Morgana through it.
"Arthur!" she screamed, eyes going wide. "Behind you!"
Arthur felt the wind of the blow before the blow itself. A searing pain ripped diagonally across his chest, and Arthur cursed himself for not wearing his chainmail. The blow sent him flying backwards, and his head crashed against the rocky floor of the caves.
The world felt as though it had gone off kilter, like a wheel that had fallen from its spoke and was turning and turning with no purpose or logic to it. He could hear a woman screaming, but it took him an embarrassing amount of time to work out it was Morgana, and even more to sluggishly process she was yelling his name. There was a low hissing nearby, and he knew that was bad but struggled to pull the reason why from his memory.
Beside him there was some noise he couldn't identify, a voice he didn't recognize. It was deep and commanding, a voice that was powerful. The syllables it spoke passed through his head like water through a sieve, and he retained nothing but the faintest traces of their existence. Light flared at the edges of his vision, glowing a bright yellow, and he heard an inhuman shriek of anguish.
Then he felt warm, sooty hands on his head. The wheel was replaced on the spoke, and the world returned to coherence. Merlin's face hovering above him broke into a relieved grin, and he hauled Arthur to his feet. Arthur overbalanced, the world spinning slightly as he wobbled. Merlin grabbed one of his arms and slung it over his shoulder, clutching the torch awkwardly between them. He started to run forwards and Arthur had to as well to keep up.
They crossed through the entranceway and Merlin handed the torch over to Morgana, leading Arthur away from the entrance and depositing him on the ground. The soft impact jarred Arthur's chest, and he clutched a hand to it stifling a cry of pain.
From within the entrance he could hear a low growl, and his head snapped up. "The city… the people… we can't let it get out!"
"That won't be a problem," Morgana said. It was only then that he noticed the entrance was covered in piles of kindling and long, wooden poles that glistened with some kind of liquid. The afanc stepped into the entrance, the wood snapping like twigs beneath its feet. Morgana simply took a step backwards and threw the torch at the ground.
The effect was instantaneous. The fire spread through the wood with unnatural speed; obviously Morgana had doused it in oil to make it catch better. The entire entrance area went up in flames that licked half-way up the monster's body. It screamed in pain, its limbs thrashing helplessly as it burned. A smell like burning tar filled the air.
But the top half of the monster was untouched, and it didn't look like it would be keeling over soon. "This isn't going to kill it. We need a bigger fire."
"How do you suggest we make it bigger?" Morgana said, pinch faced. "I've already fed it with the most flammable things around."
She backed away, reaching into a pile of unlit torches at her feet. She began fiddling with a flint, trying to get one to light, glancing up at the burning monster every few seconds.
Merlin was staring forwards, fixated on the monster as though unable to look away. His lips were moving quickly, as though in prayer, but he was speaking too softly for Arthur to hear his words.
Arthur got to his feet, taking one of the torches from Morgana's pile. He was wondering how many times he'd have to bludgeon the thing on its head with fire for it to finally die when something miraculous happened. Like a godsend gift, an intense gust of wind blew through the Main Square, feeding the flames which fanned upwards to engulf the monster whole.
There was an unearthly cry of pain, and then silence. The fire continued to burn, with a large black lump in the center.
Morgana was the first to break her gaze from the sight. "Come on, we need to tell Uther before Gwen's execution."
Arthur turned and took a step forwards, then doubled over clutching his chest and biting back a noise trying to push through its way out his throat. Merlin and Morgana rushed forward, and Merlin pulled up Arthur's tunic to examine the wound.
His face tightened at what he saw. "You need to get to Gaius."
"No," Arthur pushed them aside, straightening up despite the intense pain this caused. "Guinevere is too close to Morgana; my father won't believe Morgana's report is objective. I need to be the one to tell him about the afanc."
Morgana roped one of Arthur's arms around her shoulders, and said to Merlin, "Uther will be in his council chambers. I'll take Arthur there; you fetch Gaius and bring him as quickly as you can."
Merlin reluctantly stepped away, torn, eying Arthur's tunic which felt clung, blood-dampened, to his torso. He looked worriedly at Arthur, then turned on heel and sprinted off in the direction of Gaius' chambers as if the hounds of hell were dogging his footsteps.
Morgana and Arthur started walking, not able to go very fast without making Arthur's vision go black. As they torturously made their way up the stairs and through the corridors, Arthur wished for the first time that his home was smaller.
More to distract himself from the pain than anything, Arthur asked, "Where did you find so much oil?"
Morgana smirked. "It just seemed a shame to waste it on burning an innocent girl to death, so I thought I'd put it to better use."
It took Arthur a second to work out what she meant by that. When he did, he didn't know whether to be impressed at her daring or disapproving of her flagrant disregard for the law. "You stole it from the royal executioner's storehouse?" Something else clicked in his mind just then, something that had been missing on their way through Main Square. He continued sardonically, "And let me guess, you requisitioned the wood from the stake?"
"It looked so tacky piled up in the courtyard."
"What about the guards?" Arthur asked, another thing missing from the scene popping into his head.
Morgana looked at him innocently, her voice dripping with faux sweetness. "Fortunately, you happened to want a word with them and so they had to go report to your chambers. I assured them there was nothing to worry about; I'd watch over the stake for them until they got back."
Arthur couldn't believe that had worked. Admittedly, guard duty was the most mind numbing task Arthur could think of, but surely his guards weren't thick enough to fall for such an obvious ploy to get them to leave their posts.
"Oh, don't be so put out, Arthur." Morgana seemed to be enjoying herself far too much. "It was child's play, admittedly, but just remember that the thickness of your men was crucial in me saving the day."
"Wha- save the day? You?"
"Naturally," Morgana preened, jerking him around a corner with not enough force to hurt him, but just enough to make a statement about who was in control here. "Merlin did his fair share in deductive work on what was causing the plague, but you were more of a big tough distraction to buy me time than anything else. I set the trap, I killed the monster, so I saved the day."
Arthur was rendered speechless, wanting to protest this but finding no good counter. Morgana seemed be drinking the moment in and finding it very much to her taste. "Don't make that face, Arthur." With a definite smirk and gloat in her tone, she repeated her words from a month ago with embellishment. "After all, it's not every day a girl gets to save her knight in shining armour and, furthermore, rescue the damsel in distress, freeing the whole land from an evil curse in the process."
"Is this about Valiant? Have you still not gotten over that?"
"I saved your life then, and I saved the day now. Admit it."
"I did not need saving."
The two continued to bicker all the way up to the council chambers, until they couldn't remember how the argument had even started.
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"This fish didn't come from the water, did it?" Merlin asked, eying the chunk of meat on his fork dubiously.
"Well, where else is it going to come from? The water's fine now. That's not your worry. This is the work of a very powerful sorcerer. I only hope you didn't come to her attention."
"Doubt it." Gaius looked nonplussed with Merlin's instant dismissal of his concern, so he added as justification, "Even Morgana didn't notice anything."
Gaius looked alarmed. "What do you mean 'even Morgana'?" Merlin mentally cursed his choice of words and something of that must have shown on his face, because Gaius looked like all his fears were confirmed. "Merlin, you told me that no one heard you cast the wind spell!"
"And they didn't," Merlin hurried to assure him. "Just, ah, earlier Arthur sort of went down and I sort of, um, used a fire spell to stop the afanc from mauling him. And Morgana was… sort of watching."
"Merlin!"
"What, you're saying I should have just left him for dead! Arthur hit his head when he went down. He was barely conscious, he didn't see a thing. And Morgana didn't notice – she thinks she must have spilled some of the oil further in than she thought."
Sort of. When she brought up 'that strange ring of fire that saved Arthur' Merlin suggested it was caused by oil his torch got too close to. She seemed stuck between being half-convinced and half-unconvinced, so he'd quickly changed the topic by applauding her quick thinking in using the nearby flammable materials set up for Gwen's execution. Morgana's pride in her victory and her irritation at Arthur for refusing to give her the credit she was due proved to be sufficient distraction, and he could only hope with time she'd forget the other parts of defeating the afanc.
No point in telling any of this to Gaius, though, when it had already happened and the only thing he could do was yell at Merlin over it.
Instead Merlin put forth what he felt was the clinching argument, something Morgana said to him right after Gwen was released. "Trust me; the only deep dark secret Morgana thinks I'm harbouring is a hidden crush on Gwen."
Gaius finally looked appeased, going back to eating his supper. "Still, you need to be more careful." Gaius had taken several more bites of supper before he paused mid-chew as though something had just occurred to him. Once he'd swallowed, he asked as though unsure he wanted to know the answer, "Arthur was concussed, you said? I didn't see any sign of a head injury when I examined him."
"I, uh," Merlin fixed on his plate as he spoke, unsure how Gaius would react to this, "may have had something to do with that." Adding in as a feeble attempt at distraction, "By the way, does it seem to you that Arthur hits his head a lot?"
Gaius didn't take the poor bait, and Merlin cut his dinner into small pieces so he wouldn't have to look up. He himself was quite pleased with the results of healing Arthur - that being his first attempt with the healing spell for mild head injuries – but Gaius would probably view it as another reckless, unnecessary use of magic the way he usually did.
However, when Gaius' verdict finally came it was a strangely intoned, "Only you, Merlin. Only you."
"Only me what?"
"Only you could behave like an idiot and still have it all turn out well."
Merlin gave small huff of laughter, unsure whether he should feel insulted or complimented. Taking a bite of his supper and looking up, he could see Gaius giving a grumpy grudging smile. He hadn't known such smiles existed before he met the old physician, but he was growing well versed now. Those were the smiles Gaius gave when he thought Merlin did something stupid, but he was proud of him for doing it anyway.
Gaius pressed, "I trust you've learned your lesson in easy solutions?"
Merlin took his time chewing, mulling over everything that had happened since Gelhert Seward was found dead. Gaius' words came back to him: An easy solution is like a light in the storm, Merlin. Rush for it at your peril, for it may not always lead you to a safe harbour.
He'd said this right after Gwen's arrest, and with his entire being riddled with guilt and regret at the time Merlin had agreed wholeheartedly, and perhaps a little blindly, with him. He still thought Gaius had a good point, one he would do well to remember, but his experiences since then had given him a new perspective. His mistake hadn't been in pursuing an easy solution; it had been in rushing for it with tunnel vision.
If he'd taken the time to stop and think about the consequences first, maybe he could have found a better way. If he'd just removed the poultice from under Tom's pillow, the lack of concrete evidence might have prevented Gwen's arrest. He could have cured all the sick street people so that it looked more like the disease was not always fatal, rather than the suspicious curing of one man, again removing the evidence as soon as the cure had taken effect.
If despite these precautions Uther still cried sorcery and found a scapegoat to pin it on, then Merlin could have disguised himself and admitted to it. He could say things Uther would expect from an evil sorcerer, such as setting the scapegoat up but in the end being unable to stand others getting the credit for his nefarious deeds. If Arthur still tried to defend him despite not knowing him, he could perform magic before their very eyes as proof. Using magic he could escape, taking the innocent person with him if Uther merely named them as his accomplice instead of clearing their name, and when he'd gotten far enough away undo his disguise.
At the time he'd been too close to the situation to think further than one or two steps at a time, and it had nearly cost him his friend. It had cost many their lives.
For each day the plague had lasted, people had died by the dozens while he did nothing. If using magic to cure them was an easy solution, then his guilt lay in ignoring that light in the storm and then thoughtlessly rushing towards it. The small family of tomato sellers was all the proof he needed that the easy solution didn't always lead to disaster; he'd heard no word of either grandfather or granddaughter's arrest, nor so much as a whisper that the little girl was ever ill. The use of magic in defeating the afanc also came without repercussion, so it was not as though using his powers to save lives invariably placed others in peril.
What he needed was find better ways of using his magic, so that it would go unnoticed as much as possible. And on the occasions it couldn't go unnoticed, such as large numbers of people mysteriously recovering from a deadly plague, then he needed to find a way to take the blame upon himself before Uther got it into his head that some poor hapless person was to blame.
Merlin needed to find a disguise, one he could reuse every time he needed someone to take the credit for magical deeds that couldn't slide by unnoticed. It would be his next project when he was finished supper and could go read through his spellbook.
Gaius was still waiting for his answer, so Merlin said simply, "Yes, I think I've learned my lesson.
/**
The moral? Just because he's an old learned man does not mean Gaius is always 100% right. Shocker.
In all seriousness, I do like the original moral of this episode that ill thought through plans to help may only worsen things. It's the "ill thought through" part that is the clincher, though; just because something might go wrong doesn't mean you shouldn't try at all! I also think the writers overused this episode as justification for all their future choices, so they could point to it and say: "Look, Merlin couldn't have done such-and-such because look at what trying to help led to with Gwen!"
On another note… yay for Morgana doing something to contribute to winning the fight!
Poor Arthur – without his babysitter he gets a lot of ouchies.
Tyr Seward is Arthur's stablehand from 5x07 who evil!Gwen frames for trying to kill Arthur.
The word "potato" comes from a different language than what Tenoch and Miya speak, and looks and sounds nothing like the original word besides. Merlin said 'potatoes' on the show so I can't use a different word for them, and even if I could no one would know what I was talking about. Just don't ask me why they're introducing them to Camelot as potatoes.
If you're wondering where Tenoch was in the original episode, (besides non-existent, because no one at the BBC could be bothered to take two minutes to google tomato and skim read) his talk with Gaius took place while Merlin was visiting Kilgharrah. So what Merlin lost in being prepared for fighting the afanc, he gained in a revised moral.
Merlin seems to have forgotten that most people are illiterate and thus leaving a note is a bit of an iffy solution. Luckily for him, I'm declaring that, for plot convenience, Tenoch can read.
I am aware that Gwen's father is not, in fact, her "only family" as she has a living brother. Merlin, however, was not aware of this.
Bizarrely, Gwen did not end up making much of an appearance despite the episode revolving around her. I'm as surprised as you. I noticed in the last one that nothing much with Gwen was influenced by Kilgharrah, which is one of the arguments in the Kilgharrah Conspiracy Theory. Honestly, I have to question Kilgharrah's future knowledge sometimes: if we are to take it that Gwen was actually the one who ended up lifting the ban on magic, then why did he say nothing about her to Merlin?! Nothing like: Merlin, you must defeat the Afanc and save Gwen, or the Golden Age will never come about. Or: Merlin, you must make sure Arthur marries Gwen, trust me it's pivotal to freeing magic. But he didn't, so he had next to no effect on her relationship with Merlin, so it'll be a while before I can give her a bigger role.
**/