Warning: this chapter has one of those exploding villains this show is so fond of (seriously, I challenge you to count how many bad guys have been blown up) except my version of exploding villains has significantly more gore. Because if a human body exploded, it would not be tidy and bloodless.

Wanting to take full advantage of her day off, Gwen ventured out of the palace into the marketplace and spent some of her wages on a bolt of yellow cloth patterned with little pink and lilac pastel flowers; it struck her as sweet and cheerful, and it would make a fine dress. There might even be enough left over for one or two small embellishments for her other dresses. A new vest or sash to wear with her lavender dress would be nice.

She returned to Morgana's chambers to put her purchase in her room, and of course noticed that her mistress wasn't there. The lady's absence meant nothing to her until she passed the stables, saw Gwaine combing Justinia's mane, and was informed by him that Morgana had returned from her ride a good two hours ago. Nobody Gwen spoke to had seen her since. That struck the maid as odd - Morgana was usually anything but inconspicuous. Perhaps she's gone off by herself somewhere, Gwen thought. Morgana had had her private places in the palace of Camelot, secret places she went to where no one except Gwen could find her. It drove Arthur mad. But she doesn't know this castle well enough to have a hideaway here...so maybe she's spending time with someone else.

It wasn't until she was out in the gardens, picking some flowers that she thought would brighten Morgana's chambers beautifully, that realization of a flaw in her logic came down on her with all the force of the anvils in her father's forge. The only friends Morgana had in Dagon were Arthur, Merlin, and Gwen herself. The first two were gone and she obviously wasn't with Gwen; therefore Morgana was not spending her afternoon with a friend. But with an enemy...? She'd told Gwen that she was afraid someone was plotting against her, and if you wanted to murder someone, what better time to strike than when they were alone, when circumstances had conspired to put everyone who might come to their aid elsewhere?

Gwen dropped her flowers and ran back into the palace; Morgana's life might be in danger, but she couldn't save her on her own.

###

"Maybe we should just go home," Merlin suggested. "Doesn't seem to be any prey out today."

"We saw a unicorn," Arthur reminded him, "but someone wouldn't let me shoot it."

"Because unicorns are creatures of magic; the legends say that if you kill one you'll be cursed forever."

"Legends," Arthur scoffed. "So you don't actually know if killing a unicorn would trigger a curse."

"No, because no one's ever been stupid enough to try it."

"Well, there must be some animals somewhere that won't curse us if we kill them."

"I don't think it's the unicorns themselves that cast the curse-" Merlin stopped talking when he realized Arthur wasn't listening. This was nothing new - he guessed Arthur only listened to him in about half their conversations. Actually, he thought it might be less than half.

"Sire?" As Arthur's long strides took him slightly ahead of Merlin, Lancelot approached him from behind. "Maybe you should just let him find something to shoot at," he said in a low voice that only reached Merlin's ears. "He seems very determined."

Merlin agreed; warning off any potential prey annoyed Arthur very much, and at first it had been fun watching him get frustrated when he wasn't able to impress the men from Dagon with his 'legendary' hunting skills, but now Merlin had had enough. The next time he sensed an animal nearby, he let it come to them.

It turned out to be a thick-skinned, bad-tempered wild boar. Arthur's arrow didn't bring it down, or even wound it as far as Merlin could see; it did, however, make it angry. As the boar charged, Merlin sent a large rock flying at its head. The boar let out an enraged squeal, changed direction so fast its hooves threw up little clouds of dirt and dead leaves as they skidded on the forest floor, and ran at Merlin, its tusks aimed so that they would gouge deep into his stomach if it reached him...and the warlock didn't know what to do. Throwing the biggest rock he could find at the beast hadn't even slowed it, it was in such a rage that its mind was beyond the reach of his magic, and of course he had no weapons since he hadn't planned on killing anything.

Arthur snatched up a spear and leapt at Merlin, knocking him out of the way seconds before the boar closed with him, and thrust his weapon down into the animal's skull with such force that the point poked out through its lower jaw. The boar died instantly, but the momentum of its charge was such that Arthur was barely able to stand against it. In the end, though, he was still on his feet, and Merlin wasn't. He was proud of that. Deciding to be magnanimous, he gave him a hand up.

The knights swarmed in like a cloud of hornets to check the princes for injuries, but Merlin ignored them; his piercing blue gaze was fixed on Arthur. "You saved my life."

Arthur chose to disregard his slightly insulting tone of surprise; Merlin might have magic, and he might be...well, Merlin, but now that they were getting to know one another Arthur didn't want him dead. "Now we're even."

"Even?"

"Yes, you stopped that witch from stabbing me at the feast on your first night in Camelot." I hope he didn't hit his head - he might become even more of an idiot.

"And I healed you before that - you still owe me one."

"That doesn't count since I was wounded by your dragon in the first place. We're even," Arthur insisted.

"Well, if you consider that my father was the one who brought the dragons into our war and you were the one who killed-"

"Merlin," Arthur exclaimed in exasperation, "if you talk me to death you'll owe me-" he paused to calculate what dying at the hands of an overly loquacious sorcerer was worth "-five."

"You'll owe me more than that if your mad ideas of how to have fun get me killed," Merlin retorted. "Next time we'll do what I want."

"So we'll be embroidering? Isn't that what girls like to do?"

Merlin didn't rise to the bait. "No, I'm going to show you our library."

Arthur groaned; Camelot's royal library had never been one of his favorite places, and he was sure Dagon's would be the same: quiet and dusty, with no action to be found anywhere.

"Don't worry, I'll find you a book with simple words and lots of illustrations."

"Shut up, Merlin."

"Come on, even you can make sense of a picture book."

"No, really, shut up." Arthur's demeanor had changed from teasing to tense. "Something's coming."

He and the knights readied their weapons; Merlin closed his eyes and reached out with his mind, using his magic to sense the nature of whatever was headed their way. "Just a couple of riders," he announced. There were sighs of relief as the others lowered their bows and spears. "Lancelot, will you go to where we left Will and Cedric and get them to bring our horses? The riders may have been sent to fetch us for some reason. We should be prepared to go."

"Yes, sire."

While they waited for Lancelot to return with their manservants and horses, two bay mares arrived bearing Gwen and Freya. "Thank God we've found you!" Gwen swung down from her saddle before her horse had completely stopped, stumbled and started to fall.

Merlin and Arthur caught her. "What's wrong?"

"It's Morgana," Gwen breathlessly explained. "Yesterday she told me she was afraid someone in the castle meant her harm, and now we can't find her anywhere!"

"That's not exactly true." Taking over the narrative, Freya continued, "Gwen came to me when she realized Lady Morgana was missing and I tried a spell to locate her, but it wouldn't narrow down any further than the northwest wing on the second level; something blocked it. If someone's attacking her - and I think they must be, else why would they cast a spell keeping anyone from getting to her - their magic is stronger than mine."

"This doesn't make any sense!" Arthur burst out. "If Morgana thought she might be in danger, why didn't she tell me about it?"

"What does it matter?" Gwen demanded. "All that's important right now is finding Morgana before it's too late!"

"Don't worry, Gwen," Merlin said reassuringly. "I'll find her."

"We'll find her. Morgana is my oldest and dearest friend - I'm going to help save her."

"I'm returning to the castle by magic. You want to come with me?"

Gwen gulped. No, she did not want to go anywhere by magic, but she knew Morgana would do it for her if she was the one in trouble, so she forced herself not to shrink back from the sorcerer's challenge. "Yes."

"Me too," Arthur said quickly. Merlin and Gwen both looked at him. "What? You don't think I'm going to pass up a chance to taunt Morgana about how I helped save her, do you?"

###

Following Freya's advice, Merlin transported himself, Arthur, and Gwen to the northwest wing of the second floor. The three searched every room in that wing until Gwen found a door that wouldn't open and called Arthur over to help her. "It must be enchanted," he decided when his best efforts failed to budge the door an inch. "Merlin!"

He stuck his head out of a door further up the corridor. "What?"

"Gwen and I found a door we can't open. You want to give it a try?"

Merlin came over and examined the door. "There's a magical seal on it. Stand back." He gave Arthur and Gwen time to get clear, then focused his power on the obstacle standing in his way and pushed. The door was blasted off its hinges and shattered into fragments of wood and iron before it hit the floor. The would-be rescuers trampled the debris as they rushed inside, having already recognized the royal blue gown and dark, wavy hair of the figure stretched out on a table as if she already lay in state, but Morgana was still alive...if only barely.

Her blackened, distended veins stood out shockingly against her pale skin, poisoned blood had seeped into the whites of her eyes and dripped from her nose, and every breath she took rasped as she strained to suck air into her lungs. By rights she should be dead; Merlin didn't know how she'd managed to hold on so long, but she couldn't keep it up much longer. He would have to take temporary measures to keep her alive and ease her suffering until he could effect a cure. "Caperent eius in momentum. That'll keep the poison from spreading until I can counteract it."

"What do you need? I can fetch medicine," Gwen offered.

"Medicine won't do any good."

"We have to do something!" Arthur said urgently.

"She's been poisoned by dark magic. We can't reverse it without the vessel that was used to curse her."

"So what kind of vessel are we looking for?"

"Probably a bloodstone from the look of her veins."

"Where do we find a bloodstone?"

"Odds are it's with the sorcerer who wants to kill Morgana."

"Why would he keep it?" Gwen asked. "It could incriminate him if it was found on him, so I would think he'd want to get rid of it."

"He probably intended to after she died; until then he'd keep it so he could be sure his curse was working. By now he should know something's gone wrong, so all we need to do is wait for him to come and check on her."

"Are you sure? What if he doesn't?"

"Whoever did this put a lot of effort into this plan - bloodstones aren't easy to come by. If you were him you wouldn't let anything mess it up, would you?"

"I don't know!" Gwen nearly shouted. "I've never plotted to murder anyone!"

Arthur glanced down at Morgana, frozen in time by Merlin's spell. She wasn't making those awful rattling gasps anymore, but her face was twisted in pain. "This plan had better work, Merlin."

"It will. Trust me, Arthur."

"I do trust you. God help me."

###

Ten minutes later they heard rapid footsteps approaching. Gwen pressed back against the table, determined not to let the assassin get at Morgana again, Arthur flipped the hilt of his hunting knife into his hand, and Merlin gathered his magic in preparation for a magical duel...only to have his focus blasted away by sheer disbelief when Edwin appeared in the doorway. "You! Edwin... What is this?"

Arthur thumped him on the back of the head and hissed, "What does it look like, Merlin? He's the assassin!"

"No. Edwin, tell him this is all a mistake!"

"Indeed, sire, there has been a grievous mistake - made by your father when he agreed to an alliance with him!" Edwin pointed an accusing finger at Arthur. "Don't you see that the Pendragons must be made to pay for their crimes against our kind? It is your destiny to purge them from the land as they have done to us for years - as Uther did to my parents! Who else has the power to redress these wrongs?"

Merlin could only stare at him. The man who had taught him so much about healing and magic, who had been a trusted member of court and a friend, had become a raving madman. He had to be stopped, of course, but Merlin couldn't bring himself to attack his friend.

Arthur didn't share his conflicted feelings; to him Edwin was only the man trying to kill his sister. He charged forward, swinging his knife at the physician's throat. Edwin caught him in an entrapment spell that stopped him in midstride and granted the sorcerer control over his movements. Slowly, Edwin twisted Arthur's wrist until the knife was pointed at his own throat. Then he bent his elbow, bringing the blade closer to its mark as Arthur struggled against the spell.

"Merlin," Gwen screamed, "do something!"

Her words finally pierced Merlin's paralyzing indecision. Edwin's years of loyal service and friendship made it harder to do what must be done, but Merlin couldn't let that stop him. Edwin was a traitor; he was going to kill innocent people, people Merlin had come to care for. He wanted to destroy the peace between Dagon and Camelot. That could not be allowed to happen. Merlin's magic latched onto his fury at Edwin's betrayal and fed on it until it poured out in a tidal wave of destructive power.

This had happened only once before in his life, after his mother was killed. When her body was brought back to the castle and he had been made to understand that she was gone forever, little five-year-old Merlin had shattered every window in the great throne room and ripped up all the flagstones from the floor, lashing out at everything around him because he lacked a specific target. This time he had one. He hadn't been able to do anything for Hunith, but he could save Morgana and Arthur.

In the last moment of his life Edwin realized he had achieved his goal - he had pushed Emrys to act, just not in the way he'd intended. He tried to shield himself, but his magic was no match for Merlin's. He was crushed, the skin flensed from his bones, his blood and chunks of meat that were barely recognizable as the ruined insides of a man sprayed everywhere.

Merlin retrieved the bloodstone from the mess of Edwin's remains, noting that it was almost completely black - the curse had nearly run its course. He returned to Morgana, oblivious to Gwen scrambling out of his way. When he undid the spell holding her in stasis, her eyes met his and for a split second he saw recognition and relief there as his counter-curse voided the magical poison in her veins; then her eyes rolled back in her head as she fainted.

At least she hadn't seen what he had done to Edwin - Arthur and Gwen staring nervously, maybe even fearfully, at him was bad enough. Then Arthur remembered that he was the son of Uther Pendragon, a man feared by all sorcerers, and he was only facing Merlin. He had faced Merlin in battle several times without being afraid of him and didn't intend to start now. Still clutching his knife (he may not be afraid, but that didn't mean he wasn't cautious), he took a step forward. "How is Morgana?"

"She'll be fine once she's had time to rest. You should probably take her to her chambers."

"Aren't you going...to...?" But Merlin was already gone.

Gwen for one didn't seem sorry to see him go. "Come on, sire, you'll have to carry her," she said crisply. "Wherever he's got off to, Morgana needs us more right now." Arthur knew she was right, so he pushed Merlin from his thoughts and turned his attention to helping her with Morgana.

For those of you wondering why Merlin never went all mega-destroyer on Arthur when they were at war, I do have an explanation which will be revealed in the next chapter. And now that you know Morgana will be OK I hope you can spare a minute for a public service announcement from yours truly. Please read on:

I recently received a letter from PETA about cats and dogs - the same animals we keep as pets - being slaughtered to provide fur for clothing. And I'm not talking about humane killing either; they're subjected to torture that would turn the stomach of anyone who cares at all about other living beings, including skinning them alive, and they aren't all old animals that would soon die naturally anyway - this is happening to puppies and kittens. The fur harvested this way is then labeled as 'Asian jackal' or 'rabbit' so consumers are kept ignorant of what they're unwittingly participating in when they buy fur products. I know not everyone is able to contribute financially to organizations like PETA that fight this abominable cruelty so I'm not asking you to donate to them, but next time you're out shopping and you see something cute with fur on it, please think of the cat or dog that might have suffered and died horribly to make it and DON'T buy it. And if the store has a system for receiving customer complaints, please tell them you don't approve of them carrying such products. They will listen if they start losing business. This depraved practice has to be stopped, and the only way that's guaranteed to happen is if there's no longer a market for animal fur. Also, please spread the word to your friends and family - doing so might save a life.