Chapter XIV: A Day in the Life of the Court Mage

Merlin started his morning by scrying his usual list of names. As usual, none of the lords had gone too far from the wards, so he had no luck in finding them. Alined had finally arrived back home, but he was enjoying his breakfast rather than monologuing his evil plans. Cenred was sulking in his cell in the Orkneys, glaring at his own breakfast of chunky gruel.

The warlock silently called to Morgana, asking if she'd like to break her fast with him. She would, so Merlin went to the kitchen to pick up their food. The staff were a little more comfortable with him, he was pleased to see, a little less quiet, their stares not quite so intense. It wasn't the easy camaraderie they'd shared when he was Arthur's definitely-not-a-warlock manservant, but it was approaching something that the new Court Mage could live with.

Morgana was waiting when he returned to his chambers. "You know," she said dryly, "you can ask someone to bring you meals."

"It's good for me to get a little break," Merlin answered.

Their conversation remained mostly light until the end of the meal, when Merlin told his lady about Gwen's visit. The witch's scowl deepened with every word, save when she winced at the idea of a fake bastard. When Merlin explained his plan to look for hidden places, however, the angry lines in her face disappeared. "That's a good plan."

"Thank you. I thought so myself."

"Do you have any maps in here?"

"There's two maps in the library, one of Camelot and one of Albion. I'll go get them."

They unrolled the map of Camelot first. Morgana traced the parchment with her fingertips, leaving behind a translucent green film whenever she touched a rebel's territory. When she was finished, Merlin replicated the modified map. Morgana's modifications on the original disappeared, but on the new parchment, the unfriendly territories remained green.

"Start here," she advised, pointing to the center of the largest green blotch. "Maybe work your way out in a spiral, or you could sweep around the streams and rivers. They won't be too far from a water source."

"Good thinking. Maybe a lake or a pond, though, someplace where they don't have to worry about trade traffic." Merlin gestured to a small oblong body of water. "I'll start here."

"Or," suggested Morgana, "you could have other people start there."

Merlin flushed. "Right. I… keep forgetting I can do that sort of thing."

Morgana covered his hand with hers. "I imagine it takes some getting used to. Next time Gwen comes to visit, you two should talk about it."

"As usual, love, you're full of brilliant ideas."

"Was there ever any doubt?"

"None whatsoever. Though I do wonder how many people will be able to dedicate much time to scrying, what with so many folk preparing to move and all that."

"So? They don't have to scry every minute of every day. You aren't. You've been scrying between your other duties. Speaking of which, you could start scouting out villages for your pilot program with the druids today. I know you've been wanting to do that."

"Just full of good ideas," Merlin repeated fondly.

"Obviously."

"I'll pop over to Corbenic with the maps, then, and I'll go directly from there to a couple of likely villages."

"Make sure to stop by Tintagel. You could maybe have supper with Cador. Just make sure you're back before sundown. I want to go over our plans for the walls one last time tonight."

Merlin bowed with an absurd little flourish. Morgana rolled her eyes, but a smile tugged at her lips.

"As my lady commands."

Perhaps direct outreach hadn't been Gwen's best idea.

She still maintained—and probably always would—that one-on-one conversation was a powerful tool for making people see sense. The problem was that so many people didn't want to see sense, or change, or good things happening to an Other; and that this desire could manifest as an attempt to silence anyone speaking on behalf of sense and change and Others.

Gwen would have liked to ponder this further, but she was distracted by another man attempting to stab her. Yelling, she twisted to the side. The blade sliced through her sleeve, but it didn't draw blood. She used the momentum of her turn to slam her mug, still half-full of water, into her attacker's temple. He went down.

Tristan, Isolde, and Gilli formed a living wall in front of Gwen and Sefa. They had no shields, but their swords blurred in the air. The men—gods, how many were there?—couldn't pass through the metallic whirlwind, but they still tried, stabbing clumsily with crude knives. Those knives were intimidating enough, but for Gwen, the real terror was the hatred that contorted their faces.

She seized her fallen attacker's knife. Should she join her defenders, or would she just get in the way? Gwen knew a bit of swordplay, but she'd only ever been mediocre, nothing like the remarkable display keeping her and Sefa safe.

"Can you call Morgana from here?" the former maid demanded. Sefa's head jerked in a nod. "Then do it!"

"Right."

Merlin, she ought to call for Merlin. Gwen fumbled for the amulet she always kept on her person, eyes scanning the crowd. The men were falling, wounded by her protectors' blades, their bodies forming a field of tripping hazards that slowed the tide, but not all of them were unconscious or too wounded to move. Some were stabbing at the defenders' ankles, forcing them to divide their attention and dance around. Their swords slowed.

Gwen's fingers closed around the charm just as she looked up, searching for anyone who might try to charge them. Her blood froze.

"Archer!"

The first arrow flew towards them, swift as the falcon whose feathers fletched its end.

Sefa screamed a word, and the arrow veered impossibly to the side. The archer nocked again, but the druid spoke another incantation. The bowstring snapped, whipping into the archer's face.

"Merlin, Merlin, Merlin!" Gwen yelled.

For a few heartbeats more, the chaos continued. Gilli shouted, stumbling; someone had stabbed his leg. Sefa's magic (or perhaps his own, Gwen didn't know) jolted the offender's knife from its wielder's grip, burying it in the ceiling.

Then all was silent, save for two people breathing and Merlin asking, "What's going on, Gwen? We have really got to stop meeting like this."

The lady's heart slowed. She shuddered. "I wanted to—to speak with the people, tell them face to face that there's nothing to hear. Someone I spoke with yesterday recommended this pub, and like an idiot I brought us here without backup."

Merlin looked at the pile of bodies. "I think you did have backup."

"I could have gotten us all killed, Merlin. Gilli's hurt."

The warlock knelt down, inspected the red stain on the other spellbinder's pantleg. "It's nothing that Gaius can't fix up."

"It could have been so much worse." Gwen's stomach roiled at the mere thought.

"Did you come here unarmed? Not you personally, but you as a plural. You came in a group, and everybody had something they could use for defense." His smile was gentle. "You hoped for the best, but you were prepared for the worst. Now, what do you want me to do with them?"

"Capture them, of course!" Gwen disagreed with Merlin's assessment, but she knew better than to argue when time itself was paused, especially with him. His stubbornness could be incredibly endearing, inspiring, or annoying, sometimes at the same time.

"What I meant is, how much do you want me to terrorize them?" His smile held a few too many teeth.

"Not at all!"

He arched his brow.

"Only a little," Gwen sighed.

"Right then. Showtime!"

The world resumed. A great force swept out from Merlin's stave. It only rustled Gwen's skirts, but when the shock wave reached the attackers, it seized their weapons and flung them across the room.

Merlin spoke again. Ropes snaked around the attackers' wrists, binding them together. A cacophony of swearing—first confused, then horrified—rose from the downed men. Gwen couldn't blame them for their terror.

Gone was the smiling, laughing boy she'd met in the stocks. In his place stood a warlock with a Sidhe staff, his golden eyes alight with barely tempered fury.

Only terrorize them a little, she'd said. Now, she realized that her request was probably impossible. Emrys commanded terror just by existing as one's enemy.

Not for the first time, she was very glad that Merlin was on their side.

Her friend closed his eyes, took a deep breath. When he opened his eyes again, he turned to Gilli, pointedly ignoring the men he'd captured. "Do you need emergency healing, or can you wait a few minutes before I get you to Gaius?"

"I'll be fine," Gilli assured him. "It looks worse than it is."

"Sefa, can you keep an eye on him, make sure he doesn't pass out?"

"Yes, my lord."

"I really do hate being called that," Merlin groused, but he said nothing aloud. He simply nodded in a gesture he'd picked up from Arthur or Morgana, then turned back to the captives. Some of them were struggling, while others were frozen and one appeared to be playing dead. "So, who wants to get on my good side by spilling the beans?"

Silence, and tension, and shiftily exchanged glances.

Gwen leaned over. "I don't think they'll answer in front of their comrades."

"Damn, I should have thought of that. Time for a new strategy."

Merlin's fingers drummed across Béothaich. He suddenly pointed the staff at a random fellow towards the front of the pack. "You there. Was this planned? I recommend answering before I lose patience and use a truth spell on you."

(Gwen distinctly remembered Merlin telling her that truth spells weren't real, but it was safe to assume that these men didn't know that.)

The door blew open, and Morgana sprinted inside. She pulled up short, half-embarrassed and half-relieved. "Right, the amulet."

"Sorry," Gwen apologized. "I should have had Sefa or Merlin tell you."

"I'm just glad you're all right." Her smile melted as she fixed the perpetrators with a baleful gaze.

"Pretend that truth spells have horrible side effects," Merlin said. "Morgana, you know more about the law than me. If I cast a truth spell on this fellow, will the side effects get me into legal trouble?"

Morgana hummed, tapped her chin. "You'd probably just have to provide care for him for the rest of his life."

"We planned this!" the man blurted. "We knew—we knew that she was doing this, and there's those rumors about how she'll kill the king after she marries him and then we'll have a witch-queen for the next hundred years. We had to stop her."

"I'm not a witch, though," Gwen pointed out, exasperated. "You can have witch friends without being one yourself. Look at Arthur and Merlin! And I'm not going to assassinate the king. Even if we weren't—friends—why would I want to murder the man who brought magic back to Camelot?"

"We aren't the ones who want Arthur dead," Morgana confirmed. "That would be people like you and your friends here." She gestured at the other attackers. "I can handle this from here, Merlin. You should get back to… whatever you were doing."

"Making arrangements for a druid visit in this lovely little Gedrefi village."

"Yes, that. You should probably go explain what happened."

"Good luck," Gwen added.

Merlin hesitated a moment, but he knew how capable his lady was. "Good luck to you too," he said, then vanished in a gust of wind.

Things got a bit blurry after that. They marched the captured attackers through the streets, ignoring every baffled stare until a guard worked up the nerve to approach them with questions. Morgana explained in short, clipped sentences, commanding him to join their procession, Gwen assumed for legitimacy. They were almost at the castle when Tom raced up to his daughter, eyes wide with concern. "Are you all right, Gwen?"

"I'm fine, Dad. Really."

He gave her a dubious once-over but, seeing no injuries, concluded that she hadn't told a white lie to make him feel better. "What about the rest of you?" he asked her friends.

They were mostly fine, though Tristan and Gilli had minor cuts. Tom wanted them to see Gaius, but they eventually convinced him that it could wait until after their official debriefing with Brun. That debriefing ended up lasting almost twice as long as it should have because Arthur burst into the room right when it was about to end and demanded to know if everyone was all right.

Tom gave the king a long, appraising look. Gwen prayed that his delayed shock wouldn't catch up with him now. The last thing she needed was her father suddenly fully comprehending the implications of Gwen's engagement.

"Everyone's fine," Morgana assured him.

"They aren't," Tom argued, gesturing at Tristan and Gilli. "They said they'd go to Gaius after this debriefing."

Arthur scoffed. "Is their part finished?"

The injured men exchanged glances, then nodded. Their king made an impatient gesture of dismissal, and they walked away.

"Now, tell me what happened."

Gwen gave him the short version, watching as his already thunderous mien darkened further. "They tried to kill you," he growled.

She nodded.

"I think they see her as an easy target," Tom blurted. "She doesn't have the same protections as the rest of your court."

"She will soon," Arthur vowed. He turned to his lady. "I'd like to announce our engagement tonight. What do you say?"

Brun made a garbled choking sound, his eyes bulging nearly out of his head. Tom patted him on the back.

Gwen took her fiance's hand. "I say yes."

Lord Edmund visibly jumped when Merlin reappeared. Iseldir's reaction was subtler, the tension draining from his shoulders. Merlin winced. He hadn't thought about how the druid chieftain might feel about being abandoned with a lord of Camelot with only a hurried "Gwen needs me, back soon, sorry," for an explanation.

"I must apologize," the warlock said, the formal speech patterns awkward on his tongue. "Last year, I made special amulets for certain members of the king's court that would allow them to alert me if they were under attack. The nature of the summonings means that I can't predict them."

Lord Edmund nodded slowly. "Is this… Lady Gwen?... all right?"

Merlin grinned at him. Apparently he'd chosen a good man to start this project with. From Iseldir's expression, he thought so too. "Lady Guinevere is perfectly fine. She is King Arthur's unofficial ambassador to the common people of Camelot, and she's been helping Lady Morgana and me reintroduce magic to the kingdom. Since she doesn't have magic herself, some people see her as an easy target for their frustrations."

"No injuries?" Iseldir inquired.

"A couple of minor wounds, I think, but nothing that the Court Physician can't handle." Was he using too many contractions? Morgana had told him to cut down on contractions until he'd gotten to know the lords and ladies he was talking with. Better safe than sorry, he decided. "Lady Morgana arrived shortly after I did, and she is fully capable of handling what is left of the situation. Shall we return to the matter at hand?"

"On one condition," Edmund answered solemnly.

Merlin tried not to tense too visibly. "What would that be?"

"That you convey my best wishes to this Lady Guinevere." The lord's faux sobriety evaporated, leaving behind a brilliant smile.

Iseldir chuckled. "Mine as well, Emrys."

Merlin beamed back at them. Oh, he'd chosen well indeed. It wasn't a surprise—Cordelia the selkie, her husband Cagan, and Anhora of the unicorns had all spoken highly of this minor lord of Gedref—but it was a relief. "Gladly."

They settled in for their discussion. "You were saying something about a demonstration before anything else?" Edmund prompted.

"Yes. I thought that the people who need healing or other assistance might feel more comfortable if they could see harmless, fun magic before anything more personal."

"What sorts of magic did you have in mind for the demonstration?" Iseldir asked.

"Lady Morgana and I recently put on a sort of light puppet show in the citadel. We'd attracted quite a crowd by the end of it."

The druid was as baffled as the lord. "Light puppets? I've never heard of such a spell."

"There is probably another name for them, but I have always thought of them as light puppets. May I demonstrate?" At the other men's nods, Merlin conjured the crude brown bears that had so captivated his audience. "One of us narrated the story, and the other illustrated it. We were taking requests by the day's end."

Iseldir was nodding. "We used to do something similar when I was a boy, but the spellbinders would make their illusions as complex as possible."

"It sounds like good practice," Merlin acknowledged, "but I actually sort of like the look of them when they're this simple." Another contraction. Well, Lord Edmund had joked with him, so they were probably on more casual terms now. Nothing like what he had with Arthur, but friendly enough that he didn't have to guard his tongue so closely.

"You'll probably get requests for both versions," Edmund supplied. "My youngest daughter will even if no one else does."

Yes, they were definitely on contraction terms. Merlin's smile widened. "Then I'll have to practice. Does she have a favorite animal?"

"At the moment, she is bizarrely obsessed with seals."

"I can do seals," Merlin laughed. One of his illusory bears flopped onto its belly, shape changing as it fell.

"So can we," Iseldir added. "Emrys, I believe that you should start and finish the demonstration, but my volunteers should have an opportunity as well."

"Oh, definitely. Perhaps each volunteer could prepare a miniature demonstration and then we could all take questions and requests at the end?"

"Only for a set amount of time. We could dedicate the morning to making the citizens more comfortable, then carry out our tasks in the afternoon…."

They continued on in that vein for quite some time, finessing all the little details that went into a plan like this. In three days, Merlin, Iseldir, and a quartet of other druids would arrive in Lord Edmund's village. They would demonstrate their magic through stories—Iseldir would make sure that his people practiced—before the question-and-answers session. After that, the spellbinders would have lunch among the villagers and ask about their problems, which their afternoons would be dedicated to solving. If all went well, they'd sup with the smallfolk as well before going their separate ways.

All the spellbinders, even the mighty Emrys, would work in pairs. Merlin might be an optimist, but he wasn't stupid. He knew not to take unnecessary risks. Gwen's experience was a stark reminder that not everyone was so accepting of magic's return.

Alternate chapter title: "In Which Merlin Must Act Like the Magical Royalty he is (and is Better at it than he Realizes)"

Next chapter: February 3. The fallout of the attack, in which Team Magic takes steps to make their most vulnerable members less so.

So I'm late again. There's probably a deep-rooted psychological reason that I keep doing this lately. I really don't intend to, it just... happens. Well, tomorrow I'm marking each update day in my calendar. Hopefully that will help me, you know, stay on track.