Thanks to Lady Clark-Weasley of Books, Glittery-excuse-for-a Fae, Ikchen, Lozrii and Siany-T! Loved the episode just gone but Merlin was a bit naive in not sensing anything wrong with Arthur's initial infatuation. Loved the random log he dropped on that bloke though.
"I do not understand it! I do not understand!" The king continued to pace back and forth across the floor, his heavy footfalls echoing around the hall. "There were guards! No one could have got in! Not one of them saw a thing. How can no one see a thing? And he didn't leave on his own that's for certain, all his things are still here. Why would he leave anyway? It makes no sense!" A couple of dozen eyes followed his relentless movement, all expecting him to explode at any moment. The vein in his temple was throbbing and that was always a bad sign.
When King Uther had checked on his son that morning he had discovered the bed empty and cold. There was no sign it had been slept in. That meant that Arthur must have vanished before he had a chance to go to bed, after the feast. There were no other clues to his disappearance.
"Do any of you have anything to say for yourselves? Any reason why Prince Arthur has been taken from beneath your noses?" The spectators had been waiting for the explosion and they were not disappointed. Fortunately they had braced themselves for the onslaught. "Are there any witnesses?" Uther was going in circles but he was not aware of it, he was too panicked, too scared. His only son had seemingly been abducted.
Merlin stood at the back of the crowd trying to be inconspicuous. He was sure that he would be primarily to blame for Arthur's kidnap because he was supposed to be his protector after all – his body guard. He really didn't want to face Uther's wrath. Despite that he really needed to know what was going on if he was to find out what had happened to Arthur.
"My lord." The voice was so quiet it was almost lost beneath the King's ranting. Someone pushed the speaker forward, egging her on. She shuffled into Uther's line of sight reluctantly. He paused when he caught sight of her quivering frame.
"Yes?!"
"My lord, I believe I may have been the last person to see Prince Arthur before he vanished." The girl could be no more than about sixteen with mousey brown hair and a pale face. Her eyes watered as she faced the ruler of Camelot.
"Where? When?" The man charged forward and grabbed the maid by the shoulders, shaking her as if he could shake the information from her. One of the spectators from the crowd stepped forward and told Uther to calm down before he hurt the mere child. The King complied, staring instead at the girl with fierce eyes. "Tell me!"
"Last night, around one o'clock in the morning, I was running an errand for the head servant – we were tidying up after the feast – and I bumped into Prince Arthur. He was quite drunk. He asked me to take him to the Great Hall. I did, of course. Then he just stumbled in and shut the doors behind him. I don't know what happened after that but I didn't want to hang about so I…left him. I'm sorry, my lord, if anything happened to him…" The maid trailed off looked ashamed of herself, her eyes downcast as a single frightened tear trickled down her cheek. Merlin couldn't help but feel sorry for her as she cowered, trembling on the spot, she must be petrified. He was glad it was not him to blame for once but sympathetic all the same.
King Uther looked left and right his eyes darting into every corner of the big room, searching the shadows as if Arthur would be hiding there waiting to jump out and shout 'tricked you!' or, at the very least, be passed out in a drunken stupor. Not surprisingly, he wasn't. Merlin's gaze followed the King's but then strayed, wandering over the stone walls before falling to rest on the tall mirror leaning against one of the colonnades. It glinted in the morning sunlight and then something moved within it. Merlin blinked and looked once more but there was no movement. He must have imagined it – he was too tired.
"I want you all to leave," Uther suddenly stated, "Guards, begin to search the villages and fields. Find my son. Girl, I will deal with you later." The last sentence addressed to the handmaiden made her squeak with fear. She turned and fled.
Once the hall was emptied the King slumped into his chair and held his head in his hands. He couldn't believe he'd lost his son.
Merlin waited for Uther to march from the room, hovering in the corridor until he was sure the man was long gone – not likely to come back and interrupt him. Then he slipped silently into the deserted hall. The object of his intentions glittered mysteriously. Tentatively, the warlock approached the mirror and stood square in front of it. He stared into the shiny depths of the mirror seeing a scruffy, black haired boy with wary eyes looking back at him. It wasn't often that Merlin got to see his reflection and he hadn't realised how tall he'd gotten, nor how skinny, and his face had lost all its childish fat to reveal high angular cheek bones. The magician was shocked. And, he now realised, his ears were huge!
Plucking at his ears feebly, as if they would shrink with a bit of tweaking, Merlin tried to ignore his own reflection and look at the mirror properly. There was something weird about the object – now he was so close Merlin could sense it. He couldn't see it though. To the naked eye the mirror was just an ordinary mirror, albeit extravagantly decorated and undoubtedly expensive. But that was it! It was so obvious now he thought about it! Merlin clapped his hands to his head in amazement at the revelation.
"Merlin?" The voice was soft, questioning. The manservant whipped round realising he was caught. Behind him stood Bedivere; his eyes were pained.
"Bedivere….this mirror…."
"It's strange isn't it?" The boy stepped forward, staring passed Merlin at the mirror.
"Well, yes but…"
"My father's gone, you know. Nobody has noticed. They are too caught up in Prince Arthur's disappearance. It's not surprising really, he is royalty and my father is a mere tradesman. However, if they had thought about it then maybe they would have realised its very suspicious." The way the youth spoke was too mature for his age, as if he was stating some dull facts about crop yields and the weather rather than vital information.
"You mean your father has taken Arthur?" Merlin asked, forgetting his previous ideas for a second.
"Not exactly. It's hard to explain, even I don't understand," Bedivere replied. He wandered over to the edge of the room and sat on a discarded chair, his eyes never leaving the golden mirror. He looked tense.
Merlin could tell that the boy was in turmoil, his mind fighting a battle with itself and if the warlock wanted to get any information out of Bedi then he would have to go slowly and tread carefully. The adolescent was ready to talk; he just needed to open the gate. Padding quietly over to Bedivere's side, Merlin leant casually against the wall and looked at him expectantly. His expression was encouraging. The fifteen year old observed him for a minute or two and then, seeming to have made his decision, began to speak.
"There was this woman. My father met her one day; she just appeared out of nowhere. I have to say she was the most beautiful lady I have ever seen; she had these blue eyes that kind of trapped you with their intensity – they were so bright – and she had dark brown almost black hair. Really shiny. I wasn't surprised my father was completely taken with her, who wouldn't be? And the weird thing was she seemed to really like him. She flirted and laughed at all his rubbish jokes. Eventually, when it came for us to leave, she followed us and it sort of became official that they were a couple. Father loved showing her off to every man he met.
Anyway, cutting a long story short, they fell in love – well actually I think my father fell in love. He even proposed to her. That's when things got nasty. She began to do these vile things; she killed my puppy right in front of my eyes. Told me that I wouldn't be needing him. That made me terrified for Guardian's life so I kept him by my side all the time, never let him out of my sight, but somehow she got to him. I woke up one morning and knew he was different; he wasn't my faithful companion anymore.
Father barely noticed though, he was too caught up in marrying her. They would go away for these long periods of time and leave me with the wagon. At first I thought they were doing…you know….man and woman business but then I heard of these murders that had been taking place in every single place we'd been. I reckon they just went out and killed random peasants – for fun! My father was a changed man; he seemed not to be their most of the time, blank and emotionless. Occasionally though, when she wasn't there he would have these moments of lucidness. He'd tell me things, really creepy things, like 'she's stealing me, Bedi, she's eating my soul' and 'you have to do something, save me, save everybody, don't let me do it'. None of it made sense and the next thing I knew he was in love with her again. He denied he'd said anything.
I couldn't do anything; I couldn't leave my father in the hands of this witch, I had to do what he'd told me and save him. But then they vanished, one night without warning. I searched everywhere; the villages, the fields, the towns until I found my father's brooch on the edge of the Black Forest. You know the place? Anyway, it's the scariest place in the land, I reckon. But I had to go in and find my father. I kept finding these little clues, trinkets that belonged to Father: a ring, a slip of material, a deliberate footprint in the mud. I followed the trail. Then it brought me to The Cave. I thought the forest was frightening but this was something else. It was the gates to Hell itself.
I was all set to go in, certain Father was in there, but then he came out, on his own, and told me we had to go. So we did. Ever since then….well, things have been the same but different somehow. Father seems to be his old self but sometimes I'm sure he's not all there – like before." The boy finished his tale, a guilty expression on his face, like he had done something terribly wrong. Then he added vehemently. "That mirror belonged to her."
Merlin rocked back on his heels, more than a little shocked. He had a fairly good idea who this woman was and what had happened to Arthur. But what to do now? And how to reassure, Bedivere? The youth looked stricken. Maybe the best thing to do was to tell him what he thought.
"Bedivere," the magician began, "I think that that woman was called Nimueh – the evil sorceress that King Uther detests – and I think she enchanted your father into doing all those things. I think she let him go and sent him here to get Arthur. Also, I think that this mirror somehow has something to do with the abduction." As Merlin finished speaking he pushed himself off the wall with his shoulder and strode over to the mirror. When he reached the front he lifted his arm and touched the gleaming surface with his fingertips. The glass was cool and hard beneath his pads. If the boy had been expecting anything to happen, it didn't.