Destiny Veiled

by theicingandcherryontop

No young man, no matter how great, can know his destiny. When Uther just kills the last dragon as he does every single other magical threat, he unwittingly alters the course of history. Nearly two decades later a young boy arrives in Camelot. Unsure of the purpose for his gifts and with no convenient all-knowing mentor to turn to, he must find his own place in the world.

27. 1x13 - The Lady and the Lake

1x13 – The Lady and the Lake

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"Gestepe hole!"

The candle-light cast eerie shadows on Arthur's still, near lifeless face. The only sign of life still to be had in it was the sweat glistening upon his brow despite the chill winter air – despite the cold, clammy feel of his skin as Merlin checked his pulse.

"Still irregular," he announced uselessly to a grim, unsurprised Gaius, and flipped to the next page in his book.

"Merlin…" Gaius said gently – or as gently as he could when sorrow and pity had weighed down his every expression since Merlin dragged Arthur's limp body back through the gate.

Merlin grit his teeth and read out, "Licsar ge staðol nu!"

The low burning in his eyes, the powerful rush through his veins, the swelling of his heart – it was all right. The spell was powerful, and his performance flawless. But still Arthur didn't stir.

"Merlin," Gaius put a warm, gentle hand on his shoulder. "The bite of the Questing Beast is a death sentence that no magic can overturn."

It was hard to read the next spell, when his eyes were aching with a different burn than that of magic – a burn that made the words swim on the page.

"Ahlúttre þá séocnes!" he tried, to the same success as his previous attempts to save his friend – that is to say, none.

"There's nothing you can do."

Merlin slammed his book shut.

"There has to be something!"

Since meeting Arthur, Merlin had saved him more times than he could count – even in horribly public acts in front of the whole court. No matter how dangerous it was, Merlin managed to save Arthur each time.

How could it be this time – this time, with the king as far away as it was possible to be without leaving his borders entirely – this time, when Merlin could use magic to his heart's content without fear of discovery or interruption – that he failed?

Damn you, Arthur, Merlin thought furiously, hands over his eyes to try and quell the burning against his closed eyelids. What did you have to ride out for, anyways? Why couldn't you just listen, for once in your life!

But Arthur wouldn't be Arthur if he listened – if he'd sat content at home while a beast terrorized his people, even for the time it took a messenger to travel to and from Tintagel, informing his father of the strange beast Gaius claimed killed in one bite ravishing the countryside, and asking for advice on how to proceed.

And so it was that Merlin had found himself chasing after Arthur, after trying and failing to get him to heed Gaius' warnings. The chill in his heart when they were separated. The thrill of victory as he killed the monster… snatched away by the sight of a prone figure in the shadows of the thing's lair…

He opened his eyes, blinking rapidly as he croaked a simple,

"Þurhhæle."

Heal.

But he wasn't expecting anything – and indeed, there was no sign of healing on the dying prince.

"If it were that easy," Gaius sighed, "the Questing Beast would not have earned its place in legend."

Merlin rose from the chair by Arthur's sickbed, his beloved, illegal book clutched to his chest. Precious and irreplaceable as it was to him, it was only a general grimoire – containing all kinds of spells for every common or not so common occasion, every one vetted by respected sorcerers of its day, even the most complex tested and proven to work a hundred times over. Nothing experimental – nothing impossible – nothing miraculous.

Nothing that would triumph over a legend.

"I need another book," Merlin mumbled as though he were the one fevered.

Gaius gave him a worn, pitying look, but said, "On the top right shelf on the balcony is a silver-embossed sheepskin volume titled the Many Miracles of the Mother Goddess – it's where I learned of the Questing Beast, years ago. If there's anything that can help you, that's where it'll be."

Merlin nodded, "Thank you," he said quietly, and slipped out the room.

The Many Miracles of the Mother Goddess was exactly where Gaius had said. Unlike most of Gaius' library, it wasn't so much a trove of research and study as it was a collection of myths. Everything in it was fantastical and unproven and impossible – miracles, in other words. Unfortunately, the book delighted more in waxing poetry about the Goddess' unfathomable power than it did offering any kind of insight into how any of these 'miracles' might work, much less any of instructions on how to overcome one.

After reading the blurb on the Questing Beast thrice and gaining no more insight than how awesome and wise the Goddess was for creating such an instrument of fate, Merlin flipped back to the start. He was determined to read every last purported miracle – the Questing Beast had been real and deadly enough. Now he just had to find a miracle that was actually helpful…

The Lake of Avalon, one page said.

Merlin frowned. As in, the lake Sophia had nearly drowned Arthur in? Was there more to that place than its murderous inhabitants and being supposedly impossible to find? His interest caught, Merlin read:

The Lake of Avalon, also known as the Lake of Eternal Bliss, is one of the Goddess' most marvelous mysteries. No mortal may lay eyes on it except in the moments preceding death. The souls of the deceased pass through on their journey to rebirth, lingering to heal of their pains in life. For the waters of the Lake are purest in all the Earth, and gleam with the Goddess' sanctification. To bathe in them is to be cleansed of the impurities of this world, and to drink them is to be healed of even mortal wounds. Legend tells of a pure soul, that of a young witch whose body rests in the Lake, lingering for hundreds of years. This legendary figure, the Lady of the Lake, is said to grant healing to any mortal able to find her shores. For the Lady, blessed with the Mother Goddess' favour, is her proxy in this realm, and the Lake, blessed with the Mother Goddess' goodness and power, the cure for all ills.

Merlin closed the book with more hope than he'd felt for two days, and ran for his cloak and ageing potion. Bereft of any true leadership, the guards were in such disarray that he could probably spirit Arthur out the castle pretty easily, potion or no potion. But he preferred to play it safe and work his magic in a face untraceable to him, even with Uther on the other side of the kingdom.

# \ # \ # \ #

Uther charged through the Lower Town, the crowds scrambling out of the way of his stallion. It was drenched in sweat and foaming at the mouth as it earned every penny Uther had paid the dealer for it. He hadn't been able to find quite as fast breeds for Morgana and her maid, so he'd gone on ahead. He would not be kept from his son.

Uther jumped off outside the royal stables, shouting demands for news to his guards as servants scrambled to tend his shaking horse. He flew up the steps without pause, his guards having to hurry after him to explain the events of the last few days.

Uther didn't slow until he reached Arthur's chambers, where he found Gaius tending to Arthur, pale and lifeless.

"Will he be alright?" Uther demanded, pushing past a chambermaid in the entranceway so fast he nearly tripped over her broom. Recovering, he strode towards his longtime friend and physician.

Gaius started at his voice, whirling around. He gaped at Uther a moment, as though trying to reconcile his impossibly speedy arrival, but mercifully accepted it without question. He looked at his patient, posture dropping, and back to Uther. Uther's heart sank.

"Sire," the physician said in a far too quiet, sympathetic voice – the voice he'd had when Ygraine –

Uther banished the thought. "Do what you must."

"Sire, the bite of the Questing Beast has no cure."

"There must be something you can do – some way to save him."

"I'm afraid –"

But whatever Gaius was afraid of, Uther never heard. The door flew open, banging into the wall and narrowly missing the startled chambermaid. An old man with long white hair and quite an impressive beard strode in, an intricate staff topped with a blue crystal banging the stone tiles.

"Gai-" the old man reeled back, eyes locked on Uther.

Uther stared back, equally shaken. That robe – that staff – that long white hair and beard… Uther had never seen him in person, but he knew the descriptions of his own bounties.

"Dragoon!" he hissed, drawing his sword. "How dare you come here! This is your doing!"

The sorcerer snapped out of his gobsmacked stupor. "You'll find it's not, but that's immaterial," he had the audacity to deny. "Simply, I'm here for your son."

Gaius placed his head in his hands and gave a soft moan. Uther swelled, advancing on the sorcerer, sword raised.

"You'll never leave here alive."

"Oh for crying out loud," the old sorcerer grumbled, and muttered some devilish nonsense. Uther's sword jerked upwards and whacked him across the head so hard he fell to his knees, head spinning.

"Befealde hine þære scétan! Āhebbe!" an ancient, terrible voice cried. Uther fought to stand.

Arthur now hovered three feet above his bed, wrapped like a mummy in a cocoon of sheets and blankets. Uther froze, gritting his teeth. To take out Dragoon before he could take out his hostage would be difficult, but if he struck fast enough –

The chambermaid's broom was ripped from her hands and into Dragoon's. Dragoon mounted the broom like it was a horse and set the cocooned Arthur across his lap. Then, he leaped out the window. Heart jumping to his throat, Uther darted to see his son splayed across the pavement with the mad sorcerer, but instead he saw an old robed figure huddled over a broom, flying off towards the sun.

Uther turned to the guards who'd come rushing at the uproar in the prince's chambers. "Set every knight in the realm on his trail. I want that sorcerer found, and my son recovered."

Turning to Gaius, he said, "How long would you say Arthur has?"

"Another week, perhaps, assuming proper treatment and nothing worsening his condition."

Proper treatment was unlikely in a sorcerer's hands. "And otherwise?"

"A day… perhaps less."

# / # / #

Merlin's stomach rolled as he zigzagged through the sky, dodging the unrelenting hail of arrows from behind. He glanced over his shoulder at his pursuers, their sweat glistened faces narrowed in loathing as they urged their mounts on across the open plain surrounding the city, knocking back arrows every moment they could. Fortunately, Uther favored training his men on swords rather than crossbows, and having to aim from a galloping horse was doing them no favors. If he kept moving, he should be fine.

He sped over the seemingly endless plain, fixed on the woods ahead that would slow his pursuers. He just had to make it to the treeline, and he'd lose them –

Pain exploded in his left shoulder.

Merlin doubled over with a cry, gritting his teeth. He didn't have to glance back to know he'd been hit.

The flying broomstick stuttered to a halt, lurching down a dozen sickening feet before Merlin righted it. The arrows were far too close now, but it was hard to think clear enough to control the broom – he didn't know how much longer he could avoid them – his shoulder throbbed, he was losing too much blood – how was he ever going to –

Merlin abruptly realized he was being an idiot.

Am I or am I not a wizard?

So used was he to having to ignore the ostentatious solution in favour of a subtle one, that he was even ignoring it after throwing subtlety to the wind.

"Beþene ûs innan bordrand fram ligbære blæst!" Merlin cried, and white-blue light twisted around him and Arthur in a web. Arrows crashed into the large, stationary target one after another. They fell to the ground as ash. Somebody threw a spear. This too was incinerated upon impact.

Merlin, meanwhile, gritted his teeth and pulled out the arrow, dropping it to crumble into his shield. He clasped a hand over the blood gushing from the open wound even as he murmured words to knit his skin back together. Within seconds the throbbing pain vanished, but he still felt dizzy, lightheaded – weak. He'd stopped the bleeding, but he couldn't return the blood he'd already lost. He considered a blood replenishing spell and immediately discarded the notion. In this state, he'd probably overdo it and explode his heart or something.

The knights on the ground were yelling something, either emboldened by his halt or fearful at his web of light. It was hard to make out through the ringing in his ears. Whatever they were saying, it was giving him a headache.

"Swefaþ nu!" he commanded, and they all fell down asleep, even the horses. Merlin rubbed his head.

"Should have done that from the beginning," he muttered, seriously annoyed at himself. He'd lost precious time and blood by acting on instinct – and instinct excluded any attack too flashy.

He was turning the broom back to the forest and the Lake of Avalon hidden therein, when motion on the battlements caught his eyes. Merlin squinted – it was difficult to be sure from this far away, but those looked almost like …

Catapults.

Merlin watched, incredulous, as a line of no less than twenty catapults assembled. Uther certainly didn't do things in half measures, Merlin thought faintly. Just what was he planning? He couldn't launch anything that size at Merlin, not with Arthur in tow.

A ball of orange glowed from the buckets, one after another. They were going to shoot flaming missiles at him? That seemed like an even worse idea…

A horn blew from the castle, and the row of catapults launched their burdens. Merlin tensed at the volley, hurrying through powerful defensive spells… but the flaming missiles sailed far over him, into the forest ahead. The spell died on Merlin's lips, as he looked on in confusion. Surely they couldn't have all missed? And by such a margin … no, he realized, they hadn't been aiming for him at all.

A chill went down his spine – what, then, had they been aiming for? He peered into the forest, a twisting he couldn't explain in his gut, and saw it:

Black smoke rising above the trees.

Swearing, Merlin urged the broom on, ignoring the new volley of fire launched into the deadened, leafless, highly flammable forest. Ahead of him flickers of orange leapt among all the dried brown, gaining on it by the second. The fallen carpet of dead leaves was already ablaze – perfect kindling for the larger flames eating their way up the bare trees.

Acrid smoke choked him; Merlin coughed out a wind spell around him and Arthur. It worked a little, he could at least breathe again, but the air burned his throat. Screams rang out below – animals, he told himself desperately, trying to forget all the bandits, the travelers, the huntsmen, the druids he'd happened across in these woods. The tortured cries chilled him to the bone – all the more as, one by one, they died out.

Merlin had gravely underestimated the lengths Uther would go to get a sorcerer making off with his son.

He couldn't hear anything above the merciless crackling below him – was anything still alive there? Merlin's hands shook, reddening from the heat even as he rose to the clouds. He stared down at the raging inferno, black corpses of trees twisting the red. It looked like a painting of hell itself.

Something deep within him, past all flesh, past even thought, something down to his soul and its very essence, shook. In that moment, it was not nature but he himself that burned.

No words on his lips, no spell in his head, Merlin reached to the sky. The clouds swelled around him, dark and thundering. Fury surged, and drowned the devastated earth.

Long white hair plastered to his skull as Merlin slowly came back to himself. I'm wet, he thought dumbly, his fingers sliding on the broom. He glanced up at the now dark clouds, and had to shut his eyes against a sheet of water. Unaccountably shaken, he flew low, through the skeletal trees, retracing the path he'd taken once before to save Arthur's life.

# / # / #

The castle ramparts buzzed with the fearful murmurs of the guards, overlaying the furtive whispering of the townspeople below. At least, Gaius thought, there were no more screams, as there had been when fire flew overhead and crashed into the countryside. Indeed, in sharp contrast to the terror the sudden rainstorm had struck in the guards who'd started the fire, the townspeople who'd run about shouting as smoke rose over the city walls now sounded quite relieved at the sudden, inexplicable deluge.

One man, though, was silent. On the highest rampart, at the side of his old friend and physician, the king stood transfixed in horror.

"Good god," Uther finally breathed. The dark clouds were rolling close, the flagstones pattered by wet dots. Uther raised a hand, face a bloodless grey it usually took a sighting of Nimueh to induce.

"Sire," Gaius called gently, worried about his king and longtime friend. Uther didn't seem to hear, staring at the water steadily pooling in his palm.

"Who is this man," he whispered, face tightening as raindrops struck it, settling in a hard mask as the scattered drops spread into a near indistinguishable sheet.

Perhaps he was thinking back to a time, many years ago, when he would accompany the Court Sorceress to the ceremonial calling of the spring rains. Nimueh would journey to a place of power and take up one of the sacred artifacts of the Old Religion. She'd pray to her gods to bless the land with an abundant growing season, and then there would be a light drizzle. The people would applaud and the clouds would disperse, the conjured rain over almost as it began. That had been the extent of Nimueh's power.

Merlin's clouds gave a boom of thunder, the guards ducking behind their posts with a cry.

"Sire," Gaius called again, more urgently. "We need to get to lower ground."

Uther couldn't seem to peel his eyes off the dark sky, lightning illuminating his ashen face. Clearly Uther had not forgotten what Nimueh was capable of … and what she wasn't.

He turned to Gaius. "Why have I not heard of this Dragoon?" he demanded in a low, intense voice. "How could we have missed him in the Purge?"

By not combing through cradles, Gaius did not say. Ironically Uther had arrested Merlin in what could be considered the tail end of the Purge. Of course he rather doubted Uther would make the connection to a four-year-old, and Gaius was not the least inclined to draw it for him.

"Through all my years and all my dealings, I've not heard a single rumor of a sorcerer by the name of Dragoon the Great," Gaius said honestly enough. The name hadn't come up until Merlin had decided he needed an alias for his alias. "In all likelihood, he's not from this kingdom."

It was even true; Merlin wasn't from Camelot.

"And yet here is he now." Uther's eyes hardened, and Gaius' heart sank. There was a glint in those eyes all too similar to the one that had preceded the order to burn Nimueh all those years ago. "Come for revenge. First Morgana, now Arthur… he seeks to take everything I love from me."

"Things may not be as they seem," Gaius cautioned, bitter futility on his tongue. Uther certainly hadn't heeded his warnings last he'd had those eyes. "Precisely because we do not know this man it would do well to keep an open mind on who he is and what he wants, and how we should respond to him."

"How to respond to him is obvious – no matter how many storms he devils up, I'll light more fires until he burns." Uther signaled a guard. "Double – no, triple the bounty. I want this man found! Have every able bodied man combing the woods, and send notices across the kingdom – everyone with any knowledge of Dragoon the Great is to come forward, for a portion of the reward. Any who harbor him will be judged equally guilty, and sentenced to burn alongside him!"

"Yes, sire," the guard said, hurrying away to follow orders. Uther turned back to Gaius, who made sure to meet his eyes with his most inscrutable face.

He'd known since receiving Hunith's letter the risks of taking her son in. He'd known, and still decided to care for the boy like his own. Even if Uther discovered Gaius' technical treason, as long as Merlin got away, as long as Gaius burned for him but not alongside him, he would have no regrets.

Chilled by more than the pouring rain, Gaius quietly suggested they move inside. Uther nodded, striding through a door the guard opened for him. Gaius followed, giving one last backward glance at the blackened sky that had swallowed his ward.

Merlin had passed beyond his sight. Gaius could not even watch over him from afar this time. He closed his eyes, and prayed 'Dragoon' would come home safe.

# / # / #

At long last, Merlin could make out the gleam of a lake through the trees.

Merlin dismounted the broom, letting it fall to the ground with a clatter. Arthur sagged in his arms, the bottom of his blanketed cocoon dropping to the muddy grass. Merlin staggered under the sudden weight. Carefully lowering Arthur and himself to the ground, he readjusted his grip and put a hand to Arthur's forehead, biting his lip and having to lean close to make out his friend's short, ragged breaths.

Arthur's fever had worsened considerably. Apparently inhaling a bunch of smoke and flying through a torrential downpour mid-winter weren't good for him – thanks, Uther, Merlin thought bitterly. Gaius had estimated Arthur could hold up another week. Merlin had a bad feeling their escape had eaten up a disproportionate amount of that time.

He carefully spelled Arthur warm and cursed this rain. He wasn't quite sure how he'd created it, and his attempts to will it away were having exactly zero effect. He cast one last warming charm and pulled Arthur's blankets tighter, heaving him to the lakeshore.

"That was quite a show back there," a familiar and distinctly unwelcome voice said from behind.

Merlin looked over his shoulder, too exhausted to even turn to face her properly, and said in a flat, fed up voice, "Nimueh."

Nimueh frowned, as though this was not the reception she'd been looking for. Merlin couldn't bring himself to care. He was wet, he was burned, he'd lost a good amount of blood, and now he was face to face with the woman who'd poisoned him. Whatever fear or awe he should have for this priestess of the Old Religion wasn't there, just this needling impatience to get rid of her and get this over with already.

Because of course getting shot and a forest fire couldn't be the worst of his day – he just had to go up against a murderous witch as well.

"Well, was there something you wanted from me?" he asked, making no effort to hide his impatience.

She smiled widely; it was not a nice expression. "On the contrary, I believe you're the one wanting something from me," her voice was all honey, dangerously sweet. "You are seeking the Lady of the Lake, are you not?"

Merlin's stomach plunged. No, she was lying, she had to be. The Lady of the Lake was the ghost of a young witch whose body resided therein – Nimueh was clearly not a ghost, and her body clearly not in the waters of the lake.

"You expect me to believe that's you?" Merlin asked scornfully, but unable to keep a tendril of fear from his voice. According to all the legend said it couldn't be her, and yet he had a horrible feeling…

Nimueh's smile widened. "Ask anyone," she purred. "The Lady of the Lake is Nimueh, High Priestess of the Triple Goddess. Has been for the past three hundred years."

Despite the confidence in her claim Merlin refused to believe it, not the least because she was claiming to be three hundred. Although she had lived through the Purge, when by all appearance she didn't look much older than Merlin…

No, Merlin wouldn't believe it. "The legends say the Lady of the Lake is a spirit," he refuted.

"That's how it used to be," Nimueh shrugged carelessly. "Kill a young priestess on Samhain, when the next world draws near to our own, and send her body by burning boat to Avalon. Of course, the problem with this was that no one living could contact the Lady –"

"- that's the problem?"

"- so it was very difficult to get her help. The ancients performed many experiments, and discovered that it didn't have to be the Lady's whole body that resided in the Lake for her to harness its power. So the sacred ritual was modified, and by the time I was chosen there'd been a living Lady for two hundred years."

"Only one for two hundred years?" Merlin repeated, a puzzle slotting together in his mind as he looked on this far too young woman.

Nimueh's smile turned rather smug. "A living Lady resists the wears of Time, the Lake sustaining her body. I am as young as I was twenty years ago when Uther betrayed me, and as young then as three hundred years ago when I became one with the Lake. As young as my predecessor, who met her end with youth and beauty intact."

Her smile sharpened. "That's the power of the Lake," she said. "It can heal anything, even the wears of Time. I felt its extraordinary power for myself twenty years ago, when through great treachery I feared my magic had been ripped from me forever. But by the Lake's power, as you can see, I am as powerful again as a High Priestess ought to be."

"If the Lake's power is so great, and then how did the last Lady die?"

"Killed herself," Nimueh said in contempt. "She was so weak, always going on and on about how it hurt, watching everybody leave her, how lonely she was, alone undying among her friends. Mind you, it took her about a ten tries to work out how to do it. Had to blow herself up all at once before the Lake's power was insufficient to restore her body. That's what you get when you choose a Lady based on kindness and compassion rather than power – luckily, the priestesses learned that lesson before my selection took place."

Which answered why anyone would choose someone like Nimueh as their last hope for salvation. Although, maybe she hadn't been so bad three hundred years ago. Merlin couldn't imagine living that long – outliving all his friends no matter how many times he made more. Perhaps that's why she was so cold and callous; she had no one left who meant anything to her, and even the natural fear of one's own death had left as her as her time stretched on without an end to be seen.

Merlin shivered, and banished thought of such a bleak existence from his mind. He had to focus on what was important here.

"So you can heal Arthur?" he asked, barely daring to believe it would be that easy.

"I can," she confirmed easily, and said no more, smiling into the silence as she waited for him to make the next move. For him to beg for what she did not offer freely.

And he would, for Arthur he would – if he thought it would save him.

"Why should I trust you?" he demanded. "Last time we met you tried to kill me!"

"That was before I realised your importance," she said breezily, as though attempted murder were a small matter that could be set aside as water under the bridge. "Interesting name you're going by these days, Emrys – tell me, do you know what it means?"

Everything he'd wondered, every mystery and secret he'd never been given all the pieces to, was contained in her smile, just waiting for him to ask.

Unfortunately he didn't trust a word off her forked tongue. "You tried to kill Arthur," he held his friend tight as though she were about to fling him to the mercy of giant spiders again.

Nimueh just shrugged. "Arthur was never destined to die at my hand, and now it seems I will be his salvation."

"Uh-huh," Merlin said, conveying just how much he believed her change of heart. "And what do you get out of it?"

"I only wish to see a good and just king on the throne," Nimueh spread her arms innocently. "One who will restore magic to the land and lead us out of hiding, into a better life," she gestured as though to illuminate this bright shining land of tomorrow.

"How noble of you," Merlin snorted. "And just what are you going to do about the man already occupying the throne, and how do you intend to make Arthur welcome magic once he's there?"

Nimueh gave him a smile like one would to an adorably naïve child. "Why don't you leave the whats and the hows to me," she said patronizingly. "All you need to know is that I'm willing and able to heal your precious prince. You only need let me approach him."

Merlin tightened his grip on Arthur. "And if I refuse?"

"Come now," her smile turned predatory. "We're too useful to each other to be enemies. All I want to do is dip him in the lake and wash his hurts away – is that really so terrible?"

Merlin's grip on Arthur was now painfully tight. He didn't fail to notice she'd dodged his question.

"Or would you rather let him die?" she asked, still smiling. "That little jaunt of yours ate up what little life he has left. If you dither much longer, he'll be beyond even my power to bring back."

Merlin looked wretchedly at Arthur. He looked so small, a deathly white face lost among white blankets. It took a heart-stopping moment to confirm he was still breathing, however weakly. Merlin swallowed; the Lady of the Lake had been his only hope after two days of searching for a miracle cure. Arthur didn't have another two days for him to find another, if any even existed.

Trying not to feel like he was making a grave mistake, he took a step forward. Nimueh's eyes shone with victory.

"One wrong move and I'll end you," he warned. Nimueh just gave a light hum of acknowledgement, eyes dancing and smile smug as he followed her into her lake.

"Lay him in the water," she instructed, and Merlin obliged, wading in deep enough to set Arthur down. He stuck to him like a burr. If Nimueh struck, he'd be ready for her.

Yet Nimueh merely knelt beside them in the water, hands to the sky as she implored the Triple Goddess in the Old Tongue to have mercy on this poor wretched soul, to heal him and wash away all afflictions of his body, spirit, and mind. Ancient power flowed from the lake to Arthur. His face gained color, his breathing evened. Merlin held his breath as Arthur's eyes fluttered open, barely daring to believe it.

"Arthur?" he called, hope painful in his chest. Arthur's eyes flickered to him, awake and focused and alive, and Merlin couldn't help it, he laughed in relief. "Come on, let's get you up," he babbled, helping Arthur out of the blankets restricting his attempts to get up. "This water's freezing, let's get back to–"

Merlin cut himself off, remembering all at once that he was an old man right now, that Arthur would think him Emrys, and he really didn't want to imply that Emrys lived in Camelot. He bit his lip and glanced at Arthur to see if he'd noticed his mistake… but Arthur was curiously blank looking. He was just standing knee deep in lake water, with a man he knew to be a sorcerer and a witch who'd tried to kill him, staring in Merlin's vague direction with no particular interest.

Merlin waved a hand in front of Arthur's face. His eyes followed it, but he didn't swat it away or better yet try to reach for his sword and demand what Emrys and the witch from the Caves of Balor were doing here and why they were standing around in the middle of a lake.

"Arthur?" Merlin called again, more insistent.

"Yes, my lord?" Arthur replied sedately, and that was just all wrong on so many levels.

Merlin whirled on Nimueh. "What did you do to him!"

# / # / #

Arthur looked on his lady in confusion. He didn't understand why his lord was upset with her.

Tears glistened in her lovely eyes. "I don't know what you mean," she trembled, delicate and precious as a mayflower. Arthur took a step closer, to comfort her.

His lord pulled him back, turning on Arthur with narrowed eyes. "Bark like a dog," he commanded tersely. Arthur obediently yipped, howled, and woofed until his lord told him to shut up. His lord turned back to his lady, eyes blazing. "Well?"

"So he's a little more malleable than before," she sniffed. It pained Arthur to see her in such distress, but there was another feeling stirring in his chest… one he didn't know how to describe.

What did his lady mean by before? There was no before, there was only the lake.

His lady wept into her hands. Arthur's heart broke on seeing her, who'd been there since he opened his eyes, in such distress. "I only washed away his hurts – the afflictions of his body, spirit, and mind."

"You can't just wash away his personality!" his lord thundered. His lady shied away, weeping piteously.

"All I've done is give him a clean slate," she choked between sobs. "All his fears and prejudices – gone! Just think of the possibilities. We're all he has," she looked up from her hands, tears caught in her eyelashes as she smiled beautifully at Arthur. "So let's all create a bright shining future, together, with you as our king."

"Yes, my lady," Arthur nodded, eager to please her. He would craft the glorious future she envisioned, for her.

His lord snarled. "I will make Arthur king, but you will never see that day! Ástríce!"

Arthur cried as light shot at his lady – but she caught it with a smile, unharmed. He sighed in relief.

"Your childish tricks are nothing to a High Priestess of the Old Religion," she swirled the captured light playfully. "Forbærne," she called, and the light shot at his lord!

Arthur's mouth dropped open in a wordless scream. His lord tried to dodge, but she was too close. The light hit him square in the chest. He fell, sinking into the water, red trailing behind him.

Arthur stared, shaking. What … what had just …

"Pity," his lady looked into the spreading red with a small smirk. Arthur shivered; how could she, everything good and pure, be possessed of such cold eyes? "Together we could have ruled the world."

She turned to the shore, abandoning his lord to the water and reeds. "Come, Arthur," she beckoned, wading to the lakeshore. When he didn't follow, she turned back with a frown. "Come," she repeated sharply.

"You killed him," Arthur said, unable to fathom what he'd just seen. How could she, the first to look him in the eye, turn on his lord, the first to call his name?

"He would have held us back." She held out her hand. "Come, Arthur, the future is ours for the taking."

Arthur stepped back, and suddenly what he had to do was clear.

"Arthur!" she yelled, furious, as he dove beneath the waves.

The lake was murky, the reeds obscuring what little he could see. He reached out blindly, hand knocking into something solid. He curled his finger around it, and he kicked upwards.

He broke the surface, tugging a fistful of white with him. He pulled and his lord's face emerged. His lord coughed, doubling over and throwing up water. Arthur pounded him on the back, fear like he'd never felt gripping his heart.

"You," his lady hissed from the shoreline. Her face was an angry red. "You would defy me, who has only ever been gracious to you? I gave you life!"

"You tried to kill him!" Arthur repeated, his own face heating with anger as he gestured to his lord.

"He struck first!" his lady shouted. Arthur paused; his lord had struck first, and yet… why was it that it felt different?

His lord had been angry almost from the beginning, displaying a frightening countenance but… it was different, somehow, to the lady's anger. There was something more to it – something behind the anger, in the complicated, tortured look in his eyes when they'd met Arthur's, right before he'd started shouting…

Arthur didn't know how his lord's anger was different to his lady's, only that it was.

Suddenly his lady calmed, shrinking once more into a fragile beauty to cherish. "Arthur, I was only defending myself," she said, shy - frightened. "It was me or him – it still is. You cannot have us both, you must choose."

She held out her arms beseechingly, a lady in need of a knight to save her, to take down her attacker for her, sweet and helpless…

Only she wasn't. She'd already proved that.

Arthur stepped closer to his lord, who straightened to face his lady, fury on his face. The clouds thundered around them. "Arthur," he said far too calmly, eyes intent on the lady. "Get out of the lake. Go hide somewhere safe."

"No," Arthur said. He didn't know how or what was happening, but he would not run and cower.

"Arthur," his lord growled, but Arthur no longer feared his anger – not when he could hear the gut-wrenching worry beneath.

"Well isn't this touching!" his lady sneered. "Don't worry, I'll send you to Avalon together – Beswelge!"

The lake shot up around them, closing over them like the maw of a great beast. Arthur kicked towards the light, lungs burning, but he couldn't seem to get any closer…

An excruciating heat surged, the water bubbling violently around him. Arthur choked out what little air he had left, gasping out in pain, and collapsed onto… sand?

He coughed, choking on air that burned his throat, far too hot and heavy… he blinked around at the clouds of vapour pouring off the patch of sand he and Emrys stood in. As the vapour rose he saw they were surrounded by a ring of fire. Great waves crashed into it and dissipated in futile hisses, but the fire flickered dangerously with each assault. From above, the pouring rain was just as great a threat. Arthur felt a stab of fear; how long could his lord maintain this shield under such conditions?

"Heofonfýr, ācwince!" his lord cried, and the sky boomed, lightning flashing down straight through his lady's head. She teetered, face burnt beyond recognition, and fell into the shallows with a small splash -

The water glowed around her and she got right back up, skin whole and unblemished.

"You're a fool," his lady sneered, wiping away blood from a wound she no longer had. "Not even you, Emrys, can go against the Lady in her own Lake!"

She held out an arm to said lake in clear command.

"Lagu, bēo þone fuglas!" she cried, and the lake rose up from its bed, twisting in the air into innumerable floating balls of water.

These balls flattened, sprouting two wings and slim bodies, until Arthur was looking up at an army of water birds with beaks sharpened into wicked, icy points. With a melodic cry, they dived for his lord, heading straight through the opening above his ring of fire.

His lord dropped it with a shout, the fire rushing into a solid wall above him. The water birds dove into it, extinguishing large patches in violent hisses. His lord coughed, choking on the resulting vapour trapped beneath the wall. Arthur glanced around wildly, looking for anything that could help. If only he had a sword...

In the great swaths of reeds in the empty lakebed, something glinted.

Arthur broke into a run, dodging a few water birds as he got out from under the fiery shield. But after a few feet his lady seemed to give up on him, the birds reeling back to try and attack his lord from below. A line of large rocks picked themselves up and threw themselves at the birds and the lady.

Arthur fought his way through the tangled reeds to the charred remnants of a boat. It was simple, perhaps a fishing vessel that had met an unfortunate fiery end. In its tiny hull, visible through the great crumbled patches, was the thing glinting with each rogue fiery flare.

He pulled it out and was disappointed to discover it was not a sword, but a chest made of pure crystal. Through the clear prisms something red was visible. Arthur fumbled with the clasp and carefully opened it… and recoiled.

In the middle of the chest, on a silk cushion embossed with a dizzying array of strange symbols, was a still beating human heart.

A terrible shriek came from the shore, and the water birds abruptly changed course and dove for him -

Arthur grabbed the heart, and squeezed.

The birds screeched, falling in a sea of puddles that one by one started refilling the lakebed. Water rose rapidly around him and Arthur kicked, desperate to keep above the surface. When the lake settled, he turned to the shore.

His lady lay crumpled in the shallows, a bloody smear under a large smoking rock. The water lapped at her, its only glow the reflection of fire upon the waves. Her wounds did not heal, and she did not get up again.

His lord approached her warily, as though expecting a trap. He knelt down beside her, placing two fingers to her wrist. Then he straightened, and held out a hand to Arthur, eyes glinting gold. Arthur found himself pushed forward as though by a great wind, landing inelegantly beside his lord, staggering and falling with a splash.

"What did you do?" his lord asked wonderingly, and Arthur explained about the burnt boat and heart in the crystal chest. His lord looked revolted.

"So that's what she meant about not needing her whole body to be in the lake," he muttered, eying the pulp Arthur had dropped in the water nauseously. Which, Arthur rather wanted a bar of soap to wash that disgusting feeling off himself, thanks. "Ripping out your heart, though? Why would anyone agree to that? That's just -" he shook his head, apparently too disgusted for words.

"To think my lady was hiding such a foul heart behind such a fair face," Arthur grimaced.

His lord turned to him. "Right, we've got to do something about that."

"About what, my lord?"

His lord grimaced. "That."

"I don't understand."

"While I'm relieved you're not actually being controlled by Nimueh or had your entire personality erased, you're still…" his lord grimaced again. "Look, what gave you the sudden desire to start calling me your lord?"

Arthur frowned. "I've always addressed you thusly, my lord."

"No, you really haven't."

"I have," Arthur insisted, annoyed. "From the moment I opened my eyes!"

His lord latched on to that. "The moment you opened your eyes?"

"Yes, the start of everything!"

His lord looked at him a long moment, then said slowly, "You mean to tell me that you think you just sprang into being, already fully grown and self-aware, a few minutes ago?"

Arthur frowned. When he put it like that…

"You do realise you're twenty-one, right? Do you remember any of those years?"

Arthur's frown deepened. "I remember waking up in the lake," he said, feeling empty. If his lord was saying was true, then the total of his memories was just a speck in his overall life.

Something else struck him. If he'd lived for twenty-one years then he must have been born a normal baby, and it stood to reason that… "I… have parents, don't I?" he questioned, trying to remember them. People who'd been with him from his real beginning, his true lord and lady.

Why were Emrys and Nimueh all that came to mind?

"Um, yes," his lord said. "Do you remember them at all?"

He shook his head.

"So… amnesia?" his lord tilted his head uncertainly. "Damn, I should have brought my book."

"I could go get it for you," Arthur offered, eager to have this gaping hole in him filled as soon as possible.

His lord laughed. "Oh no, you're not going anywhere until we set your head on straight again. Do you have any idea what your father would think if I returned you like this?"

Arthur didn't have any idea; he took it that it would be very bad.

His lord frowned at the lake. "If the lake washed away your memories it stands to reason they're still here, in the water somewhere. And amnesia I would think counts as an affliction to be healed."

He was hesitating, though, something holding him back.

"But?" Arthur prompted.

"But," his lord sighed, "the only spell I know to harness the healing power in this lake is the one that made you like this in the first place."

"Oh," said Arthur, who did not particularly want to forget everything that he knew … again, apparently …

"Intention is key in magic," his lord hastily explained. "And the spell vague enough I can twist it to my own interpretation of 'heal' – I'm pretty sure that's what Nimueh did in the first place," he added bitterly. "It should work, but … do you trust me?"

"Yes," Arthur said at once.

His lord looked oddly hesitant. "It could make you worse," he warned, as though Arthur were too thick to work that out for himself.

"But it won't," he said simply. "Not if it's you, it won't."

His lord's face turned a rather hilarious shade of pink. Arthur suppressed a laugh as he lowered himself into the water, closing his eyes against the rain. The last thing he heard was his lord, chanting softly beside him.

# / # / #

It was a bit like waking from a particularly vivid dream.

Suddenly things that had been perfectly natural seemed surreal, what had been calmly and unquestioningly accepted became the incredulous. A world that had been fuzzy but bright gained sharp edges layered by degrees of shadow. He almost felt he'd lost something, even as he regained himself.

Arthur opened his eyes, feeling the pouring rain hit his face he peered up into Emrys' old face twisted in worry. Arthur straightened, face warm at the strange, almost incomprehensible memory of his own behavior under the witch's curse.

"If you ever tell anyone about today," Arthur threatened, "I'll throw you in a sack and dump you in Morgana's room in the middle of one of her make-over sprees."

He stomped back to dry land… well, dry-ish. It was still bucketing rain and, oh wonderful, he didn't even have his cloak.

In fact, Arthur realized, cheeks getting even hotter, he only seemed to be wearing that old nightshirt Gaius would bully him into whenever he was under orders for bedrest. He hated the thing, and never wore it any other time.

So what the devil was he doing out here, with Emrys, only half dressed?! He turned to snap at Emrys, but as he got his first good look at his surroundings while in his right mind, what came out was,

"Where are we?!"

"It's complicated," Emrys said wearily. "But technically we're in the Forest of Bruta."

Arthur frowned. He routinely patrolled and hunted in the Forest of Bruta, and had never, not once, come upon a lake of this size. But the trees were the right type and age for it, and he couldn't see why Emrys would lie about something so easy to verify.

"I'll take you back to the main trail," Emrys said, hobbling ahead of Arthur surprisingly fast given how slow he'd taken it every other time they'd met. "I trust you can find your own way home from there."

Arthur hurried after him. Emrys had another thing coming if he thought he was getting out of answering Arthur's questions just by hurrying him.

"What happened to the Questing Beast?" Arthur demanded.

"You killed it," Emrys said shortly. "Got yourself bitten like a perfect idiot and nearly died, but don't worry, your people are safe."

"Gaius said the bite of the Questing Beast was a death sentence." He and Merlin had been quite emphatic on the point, as though Arthur could just pick and choose what dangers he had to face to save his people. "One bite, you die, and there's no cure."

"There's not a cure, unless you count the lake that heals every kind of affliction…" Emrys trailed off, perhaps thinking how the lake had "healed" Arthur of the memories "afflicting" him.

That was certainly what Arthur was thinking of, at any rate.

"Who was the witch?"

He'd been wondering ever since the Caves of Balor. She'd had him cornered there and then just left him, saying some tripe about how it wasn't his destiny to die at her hands, even as she made a pretty good indirect go about it with the giant flesh eating spiders.

"Nimueh," Emrys said, extremely unhelpfully.

"A friend of yours?" Arthur asked archly, because while she and Emrys had seemed acquainted, that certainly hadn't stopped them from trying to kill each other.

Arthur had never seen a sorcerer fight another sorcerer before. It was perhaps the most surreal bit of his dreamlike memories; Emrys fighting one of his own for Arthur's sake.

"Definitely not," Emrys scowled. "I accepted her help against my better judgement, and was rather unsurprisingly betrayed." And that was apparently all he was willing to say on that.

They were already approaching the main trail and nowhere near through Arthur's questions. Still he stopped, frowning at the many blackened trees visible through the blazed tracks. "Was there a forest fire?" he wondered aloud. He didn't remember anything like that in the official reports.

A dark look crossed Emrys' face. "Ask your father."

Arthur started to ask what that meant, but was drowned out by shouts from the trail. Emrys swore, pushing Arthur forward and sprinting in the opposite direction. Arthur stumbled, regaining his balance. A dozen townsmen swarmed him, a dozen more chasing after Emrys with – sticks?

"My lord, you're alive!" a bald man with a crooked front tooth cried, eyes tearing up in joy.

"Yes?" said Arthur, because why wouldn't he be – and promptly remembered what Emrys had said about being bitten by the Questing Beast. He looked down at his Gaius-mandated nightshirt, a few questions answered even as many more popped up in their place.

"It's a miracle!" a man Arthur was fairly certain regularly cheated on his taxes exclaimed.

Arthur wondered if it would hurt his reputation as crown prince and defender of the kingdom to ask random townsfolk what the hell was going on. Screw it, he thought, he was soaking wet in the middle of the woods in nothing but his nightshirt, he might as well go for it.

"Why are you all out here?" he asked, trying to sound like he wasn't missing as much information as he was.

"Your father ordered a kingdom-wide manhunt for the sorcerer responsible for your kidnapping," a man with a high wheezy voice volunteered. "No man is to rest until you're found."

Kidnapping? Arthur questioned, wondering if he'd heard right. Hold on, back up a moment, he told himself sternly. Let's go slow and start from the beginning…

He remembered fighting the Questing Beast and a terrible pain in his arm. Emrys said he'd been bitten, and judging from how impressed everyone was at his continued existence, that was true. So he must have fain – lost consciousness from the poison. His men would have brought him to Gaius, whereupon he'd been forced into the horrid piece of clothing he was currently stuck in. Gaius had been quite clear he had no cure, so Arthur had languished in bed long enough for the people to hear he was dying. Apparently Emrys showed up and spirited him away, presumably to the lake of Nimueh the crazy murderous witch, who they'd both implied had healed him but who'd also very obviously did something to his head. From there, his own addled memories kicked in.

He supposed, looking in from the outside, when Emrys took him away it would look like he'd been kidnapped to his people and …

Another odd thing in the man's words finally clicked. "My father?" Arthur repeated, incredulous.

The journey to Tintagel was a five days' ride. He'd sent a messenger as soon as he'd gotten word of a magical beast terrorizing the countryside, but found its lair himself only two days later. His father shouldn't have even gotten his message yet, unless… how long had he been out?!

"He's sparing nothing to save you," the wheezy voice assured him. "He'll be overjoyed to hear of your recovery."

Arthur looked at these men, apparently out looking for him in the middle of a rainstorm, willingly to go up against a sorcerer to get him back. And he felt a warmth for his people suffuse his chest.

There was the sound of people carelessly crashing through undergrowth that made the hunter in Arthur wince, low dispirited voices accompanying them. A moment later the men who'd chased after Emrys re-emerged, a slump both defeated and yet quite relieved to their shoulders.

"Where's the sorcerer?" the man who probably cheated on his taxes demanded.

"Vanished into thin air," a man with a nose that looked to have been broken at least twice grunted, throwing his stick to the ground.

"You were going to fight him with sticks?" Arthur asked, amazed at the sheer guts that took. First Lancelot, then the people of Ealdor, now his own people … he vowed to never underestimate the courage of the common man again.

The men who'd gone after Emrys colored. They rubbed awkwardly at the backs of their necks or were suddenly very interested in the ground. "We ran out of pitchforks to go 'round," one mumbled, embarrassed by the praise.

Arthur realized he was gaping, and shut his mouth. "Your valor is admirable," he began, not wanting to disparage their resolve but also not wanting them chasing off after other, non-druid sorcerers armed with nothing but sticks or pitchforks, which honestly weren't much better considering what Arthur had seen in Ealdor of how people untrained with weapons wielded them. "However, it my duty as your prince to keep you safe, not the other way around. I don't want any of you putting yourself in harm's way for me."

Everyone was now staring at him. "What?" Arthur asked self-consciously, forgetting all his lessons in diplomacy and how to properly address one's subjects.

"Most nobles expect their people to die for them," the bald man gaped.

"I'm not most nobles," Arthur said. "And you haven't sworn me any pledge. Your lives are too precious to throw away in a fight you can't win. I implore you to leave it to the knights next time – that's what they're trained for."

Maybe it was the rain, but Arthur could have sworn he saw more than one misty eye. The ground was once more apparently very interesting. Arthur started to feel uncomfortable himself – surely this wasn't that unusual a sentiment for a prince?

An older man with hair streaked more white than black cleared his throat. "We appreciate your concern, Your Highness, we really do," he said earnestly. "But you must understand, the king orderedevery man capable of bearing arms out hunting down this sorcerer. If in the future he does the same, we'll have to take up the call, whatever your feelings on it."

Arthur frowned; he couldn't believe his father would be so careless with the lives of his own citizens. "I'll speak to the king," he assured them. "I'm sure in his desperation at my disappearance, he didn't stop to consider what would happen to you if you came face to face with a sorcerer."

The men all looked at each other. "With all due respect," the old man said, "this isn't the first time the king has made such a proclamation. Such calls to arms were quite common in the days of the Purge. And many people did die. The king praised their bravery and gave them heroes' funerals. He presided over them himself to honor their sacrifice in the war against magic."

Arthur didn't want to believe such a thing, but the man looked too sincere to doubt. Uther never spoke of the Purge, not in any true detail. He would speak of their triumph over evil and chaos, of how they could never again let the hearts of so many be poisoned as they had been twenty years ago by the black arts, but he never spoke of the things he had done to bring about victory over such powerful opposition.

Arthur wasn't naïve; he knew that his father had had hundreds of sorcerers killed, that the ones who'd escaped had good reason to want him dead. What he didn't know was that his father had ordered his own people into unprepared mobs to back very dangerous, very desperate foes into corners. Arthur paled; the losses to their side couldn't have been light. And they'd been of the people Arthur had sworn to defend – that Uther had sworn to defend.

"That was a long time ago," he tried to convince himself more than them. "My father has learned much since them. I'll speak with him, make him see reason. There's no need to resort to such things against Dragoon."

"My lord, he kidnapped you," someone pointed out incredulously.

"Only to heal me," Arthur said, uncomfortably aware of many disbelieving stares. "He was just showing me back to the trail when we ran into you."

The men all looked at each other again. "Well, he can control the weather," the bald man allowed. "I don't think he'd be scared off by us."

"Wait, he can do what!" Arthur exclaimed, glaring at the sky. "Then why is it still raining!"

If Arthur could control the weather, he'd have ended this rain if not the moment he stepped outside, then at the very least before having a death match with a witch who was practically a water goddess.

"He made it rain," the bald man told him.

"Why?" Arthur would like to know. He would like to know very much. He hadn't particularly thought about the rain beyond general annoyance at it, but now that he knew Emrys had purposefully created it he had to question what they were all – Emrys included! – trudging around soaking wet for.

The men all looked to each other again. What now?

"You'd best ask your father, sire," the old man said evasively. Arthur frowned. Emrys had said the same thing when he'd asked about the burnt trees…

Arthur's eyes snapped to the clear evidence of a forest fire. Well, now, that would be a fantastic reason to make it rain. He looked back to the townsmen. They were all carefully not meeting his eyes. Well, tough on them, he wasn't going to be put off by mere awkwardness, not for a question this dire.

"What happened to the –"

"Besides!" exclaimed one man very loudly, as though deaf to the fact the prince had been speaking. "Just because he healed you, doesn't mean he did it out of the kindness of his heart. He also kidnapped the Lady Morgana – we can't trust him."

"And yet the Lady Morgana was back within two days," Arthur pointed out.

The men smiled at him. "You rescued her," one said admiringly, as though he thought Arthur was being modest in not mentioning his involvement.

Arthur felt very uncomfortable. He did not like to get credit he hadn't earned. "Hardly. Emr - Dragoon flew up, booted Morgana off his carpet, and flew away again. I didn't do a thing."

The men frowned. "Why would he do that?" said the man who definitely cheated on his taxes, there was that scar from the time he'd tried to run past Arthur with a broken chair as a shield and tripped!

"Well, he came to break the people who'd consorted with sorcerers out of gaol," the bald man said. "Maybe he realized she'd done no such thing and wanted to be rid of her."

"Or he realized he bit off a bigger bite than he could chew," the man with the broken nose put in. "The king was leaving no stone unturned then too."

"Then why kidnap the prince right after?" rebutted the bald man, apparently offended to have his theory challenged. "You'd think he'd learn his lesson, if that were the case!"

"Sorcerers," the old man shook his head with an air of one who had seen much of the world. "Never try to apply logic to them. It's an exercise in frustration."

The men around gave a murmur of agreement. As though satisfied with that as an explanation, they turned to go back to the city. Arthur followed, not sure he was willing to brush everything aside with just that.

# / # / #

The gate guards sent word ahead of him, so when Arthur drew near the palace his father was waiting just inside the overhang for him, Morgana standing a step behind him to the left. At the sight of Arthur's approach, Uther ran out to meet him, right into the pouring rain.

"Arthur!" he called, putting his hands on Arthur's shoulders and staring into his eyes as though terrified to find there'd been some mistake, this was someone else and his son still dying far from him.

Arthur froze as his father pulled him into a tight embrace. "I thought I'd lost you," Uther breathed into his hair. Arthur felt a suspicious prickling in his eyes.

After a moment Uther pulled away, putting an arm around Arthur's shoulder as he led him back into the castle. "Come, let's get you warmed up."

A servant passed him a towel and full-length cloak in the entranceway. Arthur got the worst of the rain off himself and immediately donned the cloak, grateful not to have to walk through the whole castle in just his nightshirt. The men who'd found him had offered him one of their cloaks, but he hadn't wanted to expose them to the cold and rain like that and made up some rubbish about enduring the elements being part of his knight training to gracefully refuse. He was more than happy to fasten his own cloak around himself though, reveling in its fur lined warmth.

"I've sent for a quick meal," Uther said, beginning towards the private banquet hall, Arthur following beside him. "Only simple fare, but Gaius says that's what's best for you right now. We can save the feasts for when we've all had time to recover from today."

Uther smiled at him as though in awe of Arthur's sheer existence. Arthur smiled back, feeling very self-conscious under his father's unrelenting attention. It almost seemed like Uther didn't dare take his eyes off Arthur, in case he vanished the moment he stopped looking.

"I can't believe you're alive," Uther marveled. "You must tell me how you escaped."

Arthur's smile faded as he considered the difficulty of getting his father to believe him.

"I didn't," he admitted awkwardly. Uther frowned, clearly unable to envision any other way Arthur and 'Dragoon' could have parted ways. "Father – Dragoon didn't kidnap me. He only wanted to heal me. He took me to a lake, to a witch named Nimueh –"

"Nimueh!" Uther uttered the name with a horror Arthur hadn't known him capable of. Startled, Arthur realized that his father was legitimately frightened. Arthur had never seen his father afraid of anything before.

Uther pulled him to a halt, staring deep into Arthur's eyes with a wild, almost crazed look in his own. "What did she do? What did she say to you?" he demanded in a rush.

"That –" Arthur suddenly didn't want to have to explain he'd been enchanted out of his mind when he had no way to prove he was back in it now. "She healed me, but then tried to kill me and Dragoon, saying something about ruling the world."

Alright, maybe Arthur was leaving out enough that he was lying by omission to his king, but this was going to be a difficult enough conversation without getting into the brainwashing or the intricacies of whatever Emrys and Nimueh's relationship was that Arthur still didn't understand.

He continued his attempt to explain a situation he hadn't been in his right mind when he'd undergone. "Then we teamed up and killed her, and Dragoon led me back to the trail." He considered his father's white, horrified face. "Do you know her?" he couldn't help but wonder.

Uther seemed to struggle for a moment. At last he spat out, "It was she who killed your mother."

Arthur's insides felt like ice. He'd always been told that a witch had killed his mother, opening his father's eyes to the evils of sorcery. He'd always assumed his mother's murderer had been the first casualty of the Purge, though. It had never occurred to him she was still alive.

"Well, we killed her." He'd avenged his mother, even if he hadn't realized it at the time.

Uther squeezed his shoulder. "I'm proud of you." Arthur's insides warmed. It was so rare for him to hear that.

Uther resumed his brisk stride. "So, this Dragoon was in league with Nimueh," he said, a dark promise for what this meant for him next Uther saw him.

Arthur felt a jolt of fear for the old druid; frustrating as he was, Arthur owed him.

"I – really didn't get that impression," he hastened to explain, despite his own bafflement at just what had been going on between the two sorcerers. "I think it was a temporary alliance that went badly. If it hadn't been for Dragoon's help against her, I wouldn't be here."

Arthur was under no illusion he could have taken Nimueh in a direct fight. Particularly as he'd been madly besotted with her and unarmed.

Uther slowed. He was peering at Arthur closely. "Why are you defending him?"

Arthur paused; to be sure from the outside looking in it would appear very strange, and yet… how couldn't Arthur defend him, when Emrys had done more for him for less reason? Arthur was well aware Emrys had nothing to gain by breaking into Uther Pendragon's stronghold to take his son to be healed. Why should he risk himself for a prince who'd last tried to arrest him, and before that pseudo-banished him from Ealdor…

Arthur felt a stab of guilt at the thought that he might very well have forced Emrys to flee his home. He hadn't wanted that, he'd just wanted him gone. Out of sight, out of mind. If he didn't have to think of him, he didn't have to think of all the questions he brought up or the fact that Arthur just plain didn't understand him.

But not thinking on him hadn't made him go away.

And Arthur still didn't understand him – actually, he now understood him less than before. True, Emrys had rather definitively proven he wasn't trying to manipulate Arthur in some convoluted nefarious plan – there could be no better opportunity for that than when Arthur was already bewitched to listen to him at the lake. But Emrys hadn't taken it – had gone up against a High Priestess to undo the bewitchment, in fact. And while technically Emrys could still have some elaborate master plan in mind, Arthur couldn't even fathom what it would be or what goal it could possibly have. But that was only what Emrys wasn't trying to do, and what he didn't want. Arthur still didn't understand what he wanted or why he'd go to such lengths to save Arthur from death and enslavement.

And if he didn't understand it himself, he definitely wouldn't be able to make his father understand.

"He saved my life," Arthur simply said instead.

"By turning on Nimueh – for his own reasons, you must realize," Uther frowned.

"No, it's not just that," Arthur insisted, struggling to articulate why he felt so strongly about this in a way his father would understand. Why he couldn't let Uther put Emrys in the same category as his mother's murderer. "He healed me."

His father looked nonplussed. "You said Nimueh healed you."

"They both healed me," Arthur amended. It was technically correct, even if it hadn't happened simultaneously as he was implying. "Father, please, without him I'd be dead several times over. Couldn't you just let him go, this once?"

Uther stopped again, leaning in uncomfortably close to stare into Arthur's eyes. He was frowning, and looking quite dangerous. He couldn't seem to find what he was looking for, for he backed away and looked over his shoulder.

"Morgana," he called, and Arthur noticed with a start that she was behind them. She must have been trailing along since the outer courtyard. What the - ? Since when was she so silent! Normally she'd be the first one arguing for mercy for Emrys. "Is Arthur under any mind-altering enchantments?"

A million started, alarmed thoughts warred in Arthur's head. What came out was, "How would she know?"

"No," Morgana said, looking a bizarre mix of terrified and confused, with her usual heap of righteous anger.

Which, now that Arthur had time to think on it, he was rather angry himself at having his heartfelt appeal dismissed as the result of an enchantment. He was glad he hadn't brought up whatever Nimueh did to him. Clearly, it had been the right decision.

Uther nodded as though satisfied. At Arthur and even Morgana's questioning look, he gestured to her, "Heaven has smiled on us in our fight against the evils of sorcery. Morgana has been gifted with the ability to predict our enemies' next moves. She was given a vision from god of your upcoming fate which allowed me to return in time to counteract this Dragoon." Uther shook his head regretfully. "If only I had believed from the beginning, I could have prevented everything."

Arthur looked at Morgana askance. "You had a vision?" he asked skeptically. He would believe it when she said it herself.

"I had a dream," she refuted vehemently. "I panicked and confused it with reality. It was only a dream!"

"Nonsense, Morgana, you demanded we ride back to Camelot at one in the morning," Uther smiled encouragingly at her. "You wouldn't do that if you didn't believe what you saw."

"It was only a dream!" she insisted. Not that Arthur could blame her. Visions sounded rather, well, rather magical. He wouldn't want to be accused of having them either, even if his father was being surprisingly accepting of it.

"And you're alright with this?" he asked his father cautiously, not wanting him to turn against Morgana but wanting very much to understand.

Uther was smiling at Morgana like she was his own daughter who'd displayed a particularly impressive gift. "There are many powers in this world greater than magic," he turned to Arthur with an air of wisdom. "Why, one saved you today!"

It was magic that saved him, but his father was clearly not going to accept that. Arthur let the topic drop in defeat; if his father was convinced Morgana was having visions of the future, it was best to let him keep believing them divine rather than magical in nature.

Uther led them into the private banquet hall. The table was set for one of their family dinners, fire roaring bright in the hearth. Servants waited with full platters of food and drink. Arthur frowned as he took his seat; Merlin was missing.

Not again, Arthur thought in annoyance. And just when Merlin had gotten back from being 'sick' too!

Uther gestured for the servants to bring wine, and raised his glass. "A toast, to Arthur's recovery and Morgana's gift, and god's favour upon the Pendragon dynasty!"

Arthur and Morgana raised their glasses and drank. The wine tasted very bitter.

Uther led most of the conversation, Arthur and Morgana only chipping in when specifically called on. Arthur didn't know about Morgana, but he was still far too wound up by the events of the day for polite small talk.

Suddenly, he remembered a question that multiple people had deferred to Uther to answer. "Father, I was wondering…" he began hesitantly, wondering how to phrase this.

"Yes?" Uther said absently, focused on carving up the last of his honey glazed grouse.

"What happened to the forest?"

Uther set down his knife, looking up to meet Arthur's eyes. "A king," he began with the solemnity he used for state affairs, "must sometimes do things he rather wouldn't, make sacrifices he doesn't want to, for the greater good."

Arthur felt a chill that had little to do with his still wet clothes. "What has this to do with the forest?"

"Today, I was faced with one such impossible choice," Uther continued gravely. "I could spare my land terrible destruction today, or I could let an even more terrible threat escape to bring greater destruction on her tomorrow. I knew, however tempting it may seem, I couldn't choose the latter. I must be strong, and do the former."

Arthur's knife fell to his plate with a clatter. It couldn't be…

"When Dragoon escaped through the sky, my options were limited," the stranger in his father's face was saying. "We confirmed before, with Morgana, that pursuit on foot is in vain. Arrows proved similarly ineffective today. However, there is one thing that not even flying above the earth one can escape: the very air itself."

"What are you saying?" Arthur breathed, willing this man to explain away Arthur's mad thoughts, to turn back to someone recognizable as the father Arthur had always admired again.

"I had our catapults fire flaming missiles in a strategic spread into the forest. Smoke rose high above the trees almost immediately. If all had gone to plan, the sorcerer would have been cut off. He would have had to turn back, and when he did we would be ready for him." Uther's face grew dark. "Never did I dream such a monster still existed."

Arthur stared at his father a few moments. "You started a forest fire," he repeated, tasting the words on his own lips. He waited to be contradicted, told he'd misunderstood something.

Uther breathed out heavily. "It was regrettable, but I was left without choice."

Arthur shook. "You just said it; you had another choice."

"I couldn't let him take you!"

Arthur pushed back his chair. "I told you, he saved my life!" he shouted, slamming his hands down on the table. "If you'd just listened to him, you wouldn't have had to do anything!"

Uther stared at him in devastation. He turned again to Morgana. "Are you positive he's not been enchanted?" he asked quietly, as though in the presence of a gravely ill person.

"He says nothing that is not his own words," she said, not looking up from her hardly touched plate, which she was abnormally engrossed by.

Uther seemed less inclined to take her words for it this time. "Perhaps this Dragoon's power is beyond even your god-given sight to perceive." He narrowed his eyes at Arthur. "My son would not say such a thing."

"Yes, I would!" retorted Arthur. "And my father would not harm his own kingdom! He has told me all my life how a king is to protect his kingdom to his dying breath, how he has a duty to the people – how could you have thrown that all away over some sorcerer!"

"If you cannot answer that, then perhaps you are not fit to be king!" Uther also rose to his feet. He gestured to the guards, who strode forwards. "You're not in your right mind, Arthur. I'm afraid I can't let you go free."

Arthur felt the guards' hands close over his arms, drawing them behind his back. His eyes burned against his father. "You can't do this to me!"

Uther looked on Arthur in tortured regret. "Gaius will know what afflicts you but for now, this is all we can do. I'm sorry, my son. You'll understand when we break this spell on you. It's for your own good. Dragoon is the enemy of the people; we cannot let him use you as a pawn in his schemes."

Morgana suddenly stood up.

"I See – !" she proclaimed, staring upwards as though through the roof and into the very heavens. "I See Dragoon, in a cave of glowing stones. He is alone, laughing above a mirror showing our faces. 'My scheme has worked,' he cries. 'Without even needing to use my magic, I have divided the Pendragons! I have sown confusion in the prince's heart, turning his own honor against him by tricking him into believing himself indebted to me – tricked him into thinking that I'd saved him. I, save him, from the poison of the very monster I had Nimueh create before usurping her! With the witch out of the way, I shall rule the world! For the Pendragons will soon be no more, Uther locking away his own son as my final, crippling blow against them! Camelot shall be the first to fall, divided from within! I have set son against father and father against son, as Uther once did to my people twenty years ago… At long last, I shall have my revenge!'"

Arthur looked at Morgana incredulously. There was no way anyone would just proclaim every detail of their secret plot so conveniently to an empty cave. How she expected anyone to buy this rubbish, he didn't know.

Uther leaned in. "Where is this cave?"

"In a kingdom far, far from here," Morgana made a great sweeping gesture to the distance. Despite her solemn face, Arthur would eat his goblet if she wasn't secretly enjoying herself.

"Which kingdom?" Uther demanded urgently, hand drifting to his sword as though readying himself to personally lead an assault against it.

Morgana put a hand to her head. "The strain of channeling the Divine has left me weak and enfeebled. I can See no further. I must retire to my chambers, and recover my strength."

Uther nodded. "It's been a long day, we should all retire. Have whatever you wish sent up to your rooms." He turned to Arthur. "Guards, release him!"

The hands on his arms fell away. Uther approached him, laying a hand on his shoulders. "Arthur, I apologize for my words. My anger got the better of me." He squeezed Arthur's shoulders. "Truly, I am glad you are safe."

Arthur was not so ready to forgive. "And yet you give no credit to the one who saved me."

"Dragoon merely pretended he held the key to your salvation and tricked you, as all of his kind do," Uther looked at him with sad wisdom. "It's difficult to accept you could have been so blind at first, but soon it will start to sink in. I'll leave you alone for now. When you are ready, come find me, and I will help you bear this burden. We shall teach this 'Dragoon the Great' of what happens to those who strike against our kingdom – he shall be flogged, then burnt at the stake. He'll never get you again."

Giving Arthur one last sad, knowing look, Uther turned to go.

Arthur brushed past him with bad grace, fleeing the table where nothing made sense. It was like someone had taken his family and twisted it ever so slightly, so on the surface they appeared the same but underneath were all wrong. His father a paranoid tyrant, Morgana a false prophet … and him, the only sane man left in a madhouse.

He trudged back to his chambers through the cold stone corridors still only in his damp nightshirt and cloak and in a foul temper. He threw open the door to his chambers, startling the tall skinny figure mopping his floors. He opened his mouth to lay into his servant, demanding where he'd been at that disaster of a dinner… and closed it as he got a closer look at the figure mopping.

It wasn't Merlin.

"Who are you?" Arthur asked the tall skinny woman mopping his floors.

"Mary, my lord." When he kept staring, trying to place her, she added, "A chambermaid."

"What are you doing here?" he demanded.

"Um," she glanced down at the mop in her hands and back up at him. "Mopping?" she said like one worried about his eyesight.

"I can see that. Why?"

She looked baffled. "It's Thursday."

"What?"

"We clean the chambers of the West Tower on Thursday, when the king holds council and we're not in anyone's way. But today the king threw me out of your chambers after your disappearance and barred anyone from entering until news of your return, so I'm afraid I'm behind schedule. My deepest apologies for the inconvenience."

Considering Arthur hadn't expected his chambers cleaned any sooner than the next time Merlin could be bothered to, he wasn't really in any way inconvenienced. More, he was confused by this strange woman in his chambers acting like she'd always been there when he'd never seen her before.

He had no desire to deal with any more confusion on top of an already more than confusing day. "You can go, Mary," he said rubbing his head. "Merlin will do the mopping."

She looked as though she thought she'd heard him wrong, but still hesitantly, obediently, picked up her mop and pail. She made for the door, glancing at Arthur over her shoulder as though he were about to yell, kidding, and tell her to get back to work. With one more uncertain glance, she closed the door.

From the other side, Arthur could have sworn he heard a confused mutter of but that's my job over the receding footsteps. He stood frowning at the door, thrown off by this latest bizarre thing in his very bizarre day. It was at least not a painful puzzle, unlike the others.

A few minutes later the door opened and Merlin slipped through. "Who's Mary?" Arthur asked immediately.

Merlin looked equally perplexed. "Who?"

"Mary."

"Who's Mary?"

"That's what I'm asking you!"

"Arthur, I know like twenty people called Mary. You're going to have to be more specific."

"She was in here a minute ago, cleaning because it's Thursday… you know what, never mind, it doesn't matter." Merlin stared at him in confusion, dripping shamelessly onto the just-mopped floor. Arthur frowned. "Why are you so wet?"

"You're one to talk," Merlin shot back, nodded at Arthur's still drying hair and nightshirt.

"I was dunked repeatedly in a lake and had to walk back in bucketing rain. What's your excuse?"

Merlin pursed his lips, and didn't answer.

A horrible thought occurred to Arthur – every man was to hunt down Emrys, the townsmen in the woods had said. Had Merlin been out hunting for Emrys? Arthur shivered. True, he was fairly sure by now that Emrys had no ill intent, and Merlin had seemed to get on with him well enough that time with Mordred and then again in his home village, but the thought of Merlin having to go up against a powerful sorcerer…

Merlin started towards the fireplace, but his wet boots slid on the wet floor. He whirled his arms to try and catch himself, and failed pathetically. A second later he was sprawled on his bottom groaning, having somehow managed to not just trip himself but also whack himself in the face with his own arm in his failure to regain the sad mess that passed for his balance.

"Owww…" Merlin groaned, clutching his head. Normally Arthur would be making a snide comment right about now, but this time it didn't seem funny.

God, Arthur was glad Merlin hadn't gone up against any sorcerer today.

"Just get the fire going, Merlin," said Arthur, deciding to generously let him skive off the cleaning Arthur had told Mary he'd do (it's not like Arthur wasn't used to uncleaned chambers). "And bring me something dry to wear."

Merlin got to his feet with one last groan, shuffling carefully over to the fireplace. He skidded a few times but managed to get there without tripping again. Arthur brought his chair closer and settled into it as Merlin poked at the little yellow bursts licking at the kindling, trying to get the logs to catch. He coughed – which, how, there was barely any smoke! – and then had to leap back, as the whole log was suddenly enveloped in roaring flames. Must have been a burst of wind, Arthur thought, closing his eyes in bliss. Ah, sweet warmth.

Arthur just sat like that, allowing himself to dry and listening contentedly to the sounds of Merlin puttering about his chambers, keen for a distraction from everything. Soon enough they ceased, though. He heard the sound of a chair being pushed over to the fireplace.

"Share some of that heat with me," Merlin joked, setting the chair across from Arthur's.

"Shouldn't you be working?" Arthur asked. Not that he really cared, but with Merlin you could never be too lenient. If Arthur gave him an inch, he'd skive off for entire days and show up looking criminally offended at any question of where he'd been and why he hadn't come to work since Tuesday.

They'd even gone through one such song-and dance last week, when Arthur had had to trudge all the way to Gaius' quarters demanding to know where his servant was and Gaius had fed him some cock-and-bull story about Merlin coming down with the horrible, rare, highly contagious Rumpflack Fever. Apparently it was spread through the very air the invalid breathed so, no, Arthur couldn't open his door to check, and no, Gaius couldn't say when Merlin would be better, these things take time, sire, best just let him sleep it off. Arthur had his suspicions, but they weren't quite strong enough to risk some unknown plague that Gaius claimed had no remedy but time. Arthur had let them have it, that time, though sure enough Merlin had eventually showed up back at work practically glowing with health and no indication that he had ever been sick, looking quite offended as Arthur loaded him with everything he'd skived off on at once.

Merlin was giving him that same offended look right now, as though Arthur was so ungrateful for everything Merlin did for him. This despite the fact that Merlin had showed up after his master, not having prepared Arthur's chambers for his arrival at all, and did maybe ten minutes of work before deciding to take a break.

Honestly, he was lucky Arthur liked him. For some reason.

"Any work that's waiting for me will have to just wait until I'm dry," Merlin rebuffed, warming his hands by the fire.

"You're drying well enough," Arthur pointed out. Better than Arthur, even. He supposed all that activity must have evaporated the water. Perhaps Arthur should jog in place, to speed up his own return to dryness.

Merlin spared him a look, but let it go. He leaned back in his chair, eying Arthur up and down like one assessing, well, someone who until a few hours ago had been dying. "How are you feeling?"

Arthur frowned, everything he'd momentarily been able to forget coming back to him. The problem was he was feeling too many things to name just one.

But if he went about it purely physically, then, "Like I was never ill."

Anyone else would have been satisfied by that as a proper response, and let the topic change. But Merlin leaned in, clearly hearing evasion in those words. He didn't say anything, just waited for Arthur to continue.

"My father had the people out looking for Emrys," Arthur sighed. He hadn't had the opportunity to bring the issue up with his father what with everything else, and he was no longer so confident Uther would see his side of it. It felt like his father had turned into a stranger, one Arthur wasn't sure he liked.

"I noticed," Merlin said dryly. Arthur felt another stab of fear at the thought of Merlin as one of those people, armed with a stick against Emrys – or worse, Nimueh. He could see it now, Merlin tripping over his stick and staring up from the ground in wide-eyed fear, helpless against Nimueh and her cruel powers.

The thought of Nimueh and Emrys only depressed Arthur further.

"He flat out refused to believe what I'd seen with my own eyes. He has some weird theory about Morgana seeing the future."

"Wait, he has what?" Merlin looked suddenly terrified.

"Surely you don't believe that tripe," Arthur scoffed.

Anyone could see that there was nothing mystic about Morgana's regular nightmares – or, indeed, the melodramatic performances she apparently had decided to start engaging in. But then, Merlin could be rather superstitious at times.

Such as now, apparently. Every muscle was tensed as though he was one word around from springing from his chair and out the room. "What did he do to her," Merlin asked as though afraid of the answer.

"Aside from come about two seconds away from appointing her Court Prophetess? Nothing."

"Nothing?" Merlin repeated with the air of one who couldn't bring himself to believe such impossibly good news.

"Well, he toasted her gifts," Arthur rolled his eyes at the word.

Merlin sank back in his chair, "So he's not going to burn Morgana at the stake?"

"What? No! Why would he burn her, she's not a witch!"

Merlin just looked at Arthur for a moment. "And if it hadn't been Morgana, but Gwen who claimed to have supernatural visions?"

Arthur paused. That… he didn't want to think on that. Guinevere had come dangerously closed to burning for something she hadn't even done, and her father had been killed for a crime he might not have meant to commit. Not to mention all those shopkeepers that (thankfully) Emrys had made off with just before their mass execution…

He didn't want to think of all the innocent who'd been sentenced to death.

Just like Emrys, a treacherous voice in his head whispered. And he was right back to where he started.

"My father has declared Emrys an enemy of the people," he told Merlin, getting up out of his chair to pace, too agitated to remain still.

"Hm," Merlin replied noncommittally, curiously cagey all of a sudden.

"He's ordered him flogged and then burnt at the stake."

"Hm."

"He called him a monster."

"Hm."

"Even though I told him Emrys saved my life!"

"Hm."

Arthur stopped in front of Merlin. "It's not fair!"

Merlin got out of his chair and put a hand on Arthur's shoulder. "Welcome to reality," he said with faux solemnity.

Arthur placed his hands over his eyes. He felt like he would cry. "Everything's such a mess."

"Some people have to live their entire lives in this mess," Merlin pointed out unsympathetically.

That… just the thought of having to deal with these injustices, of being this torn up inside every day -! Arthur couldn't truly imagine. And yet Merlin was right, some people did have to live with it. The druids… Emrys…

"It's not fair," he repeated. It's not just, he meant. And that stung, because justice was one of Camelot's pillars, one of the core beliefs his father had always taught him to uphold. He didn't want to believe Uther had failed at it so badly himself.

Arthur felt Merlin's arm shrug. "It's life."

Arthur opened his eyes. "Why are you being so –" Arthur failed to think of the right word.

"Because you need it," Merlin replied as though he'd grasped the thoughts Arthur couldn't put to words. He asked again. "So how are you feeling?"

Arthur knew he did not mean physically.

"Terrible," Arthur admitted quietly. "Like I don't know what to believe."

To his surprise, Merlin smiled. "You'll get there, someday."

He seemed unnaturally cheered all of a sudden. Mind this was Merlin, who was often smiling idiotically, but even so, this was a particularly incongruous reaction.

"What're you so happy about?" Arthur snapped.

Merlin shook his head, wiping that smile off his face. Something of it lingered in his eyes, though. "Nothing," he denied, eyes still very bright and … proud? … as he looked at a baffled Arthur. "Just… have you ever had one of those moments, where you know you made the right decisions in life?"

Arthur wished. "My own father was just questioning if I'm out of my mind," he said. Despite his current anger towards Uther, his father's disappointment still stung.

"Arthur, no offense, but your father lit his own land on fire." Merlin seemed personally affronted by this, like this was some kind of direct attack against him. "I don't think I'm the only one questioning if he's out of his mind."

Arthur shifted uncomfortably at another reminder of the lengths his father had gone in his personal crusade against magic.

"Lucky Emrys could put it out." Even as he said it, though, Arthur frowned in annoyance at his still shriveled fingertips. It seemed petty after everything Emrys had done for him today, but, "I just wish he'd put out the rain after it served its purpose."

Merlin fidgeted. "Maybe he doesn't know how?" he suggested stupidly.

Arthur rolled his eyes. "If he can make it rain, I'm sure he can stop the rain," Arthur explained in exasperation. Honestly, the things Merlin said! "I bet he's one of those people who likes stomping around in puddles – that, or he cares more about annoying my father than running about the woods soaking wet."

Arthur deflated at this reminder of his father. He just kept coming back to him.

"He told me I'm unfit to be king." Arthur confessed, terrified that perhaps he was right.

Not about Emrys, obviously, but if it had been a non-druid sorcerer making off with the heir to the throne … Arthur didn't think he had the unflinching nerve to order his own lands sacrificed, even to save more of them in the future. The very thought made him sick to his stomach.

And yet… the people in the woods hadn't complained about it. Nor about being sent out against a powerful sorcerer. They had seemed to expect no less from their king. Arthur shivered. Was that how a king was supposed to be? Would they expect the same of him, when the day came for him to take up his father's throne?

Arthur hunched inwards; he felt more terrified of that day than ever before.

Merlin laid a hand on his shoulder again, gentler this time. Arthur looked up to see Merlin looking at him with concern. As their eyes met, Merlin gave him a faint, encouraging smile.

"Your father has his own ideas of what a king should be," said Merlin with an air of wisdom that shouldn't have fit him yet – somehow – did. "One day, you'll have to decide if you want to be his kind of king, or your own kind."

Arthur didn't like that. He'd always aspired to be like his father: strong, decisive, just. Loved by his subjects and feared by his enemies. Setting a sound, steady rule of law to prosper and protect the kingdom, under which his people could thrive. His father had been his greatest role-model.

Yet today alone there were many things that Arthur couldn't agree with him on. And it hadn't just been today; recently, Arthur seemed to find himself disagreeing with his father more and more. So many instances came to mind. If Arthur had been the king…

He couldn't have let Merlin drink Nimueh's poison, or refused to send men for the cure. He couldn't have exiled Lancelot. He couldn't have refused Ealdor aid. He couldn't have ordered Mordred's execution, or Tom the blacksmith's, or those shopkeepers', or Guinevere's. He couldn't have set the forest on fire. He couldn't have ordered his people to attack a man who had proved he had enough power to control the weather, armed with nothing more than force of numbers and sticks.

"I … don't think I can be like my father," Arthur said the awful, damning words aloud.

"Well, good," Merlin said with startling vehemence. "You shouldn't have to be. Frankly, I don't want you to be."

"Everyone else does."

"Everyone else wants to live under the rule of a man who sends them against sorcerers and burns down his own forest?"

Arthur paused. He certainly wouldn't want to live under such a man. But the fact remained… "The people love my father." He'd seen it with his own eyes. Never questioned why, until today.

"That doesn't mean they love everything he does."

Arthur considered this. He thought suddenly of how touched the men in the woods had been, on being told not to endanger themselves for him. The acknowledgement that their lives matter. The way they'd believed him just like that when he told them what had happened, even if they'd had trouble fitting it into their worldviews.

Again, warmth towards his people stirred in his chest.

"Do you think the people would follow me, even if I'm not like my father?" he dared ask. "Do you think they'd still believe in me?"

"I believe in you." Merlin said simply, and gave Arthur's shoulder a comforting squeeze. "You'll be a great king, Arthur. I know you will." He let go and turned away, picking up a pair of woolen socks. "Now, are you going to actually put on all these clothes I got out for you?"

Arthur couldn't help it; that last bit was so unexpected, he laughed. A great warmth, like the fire Merlin had built for him or the soft woolen clothes he helped Arthur into, filled him, chasing away the last of the cold.

This was why he put up with Merlin despite the insolence and skiving. Everyone, Arthur thought with a fond smile, needed a Merlin in their life.

---

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Fun fact: in the legends, the Lady in the Lake is Nimueh. Also there's two of them.

Poor Merlin. He's gotten so used to doing whatever he wants as an old man that he's gotten careless. Just because no one knows to apply the consequences of his actions to him doesn't mean there aren't consequences. I mean, sweetie, Uther started the Purge because his wife was taken from him, maybe don't make him think you've kidnapped his son and daughter?

Uther, you and your inability to recognise blatantly magical things.

I noticed the show seems to switch back and forth between such expressions as "thank god!" and "thank the gods" on a pretty even basis. I figure that Camelot used to have a huge foot in the Old Religion back before it was, you know, illegal. And then Uther made a few half-hearted attempts to fill the massive religious vacuum the Purge created with that new(ish)fangled Christianity from the old empire (Rome). But ultimately not being all that religious (except in terms of things like Divine Right or anything that will back up the beliefs he already has) he never really went all the way with a religious revolution, and now Camelot is a hodge-podge of religious beliefs thrown into a melting pot and churned out into something neither religion would recognise as their own.

In other news, this is the end of Season 1, thanks for reading! I'll be going on hiatus again while I write Season 2. Don't worry, I doubt it will be as long as my previous hiatus, which featured such real-life time- and energy-consuming things as working, graduating university, a specialist certification program, job-hunting, job interviews, moving to a new country, learning how to do my new job, and learning how to live on my own for the first time in a country where I don't know anyone and am only so-so at the language. Figuring out life, in other words. But life is now figured(ish) out and now I'm past the boring rehash chapters I've gotten my motivation back, so you won't have to wait three-and-a-half years for the next update.

I'll upload a short interlude tying up a few loose ends from Season 1 soon-ish, and another interlude chapter just before I'm ready to post Season 2. In the meantime, if you ever want to make sure I haven't abandoned this or died, I update my profile every time I finish-ish a chapter (though I don't really write in a linear fashion, so even though I say I'm "finished" I'm usually still changing things – for instance, my original first two chapters were quite different from the version you got, being, well, two chapters instead of one.)

Thanks again for reading this far, and I'll see you next time with the season-one-loose-ends interlude!

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