Can it be?
Is this really an update?
After almost three months?
Certianly not!
But it is!
My apology is in the profile. Now, without further ado (since you've waited long enough…)
Chapter Fourteen
Most everyone had gathered in the hall, shouting like a horde of well-dressed monkeys. At first Lora led her toward them, where her family stood huddled together, her father glaring at Uther with a smile of victory lining his jaw. Atora pulled her back, overpowering the young girl easily. She was not going to be locked in a room with hundreds of other pampered royalty for who knows how long.
"My lady, we have to-"
"I doubt the dragon has come to attack the peasants, Lora," Atora told her, pulling her by the hand toward the stairs. "We should go somewhere where its targets aren't rounded up."
"Targets, my lady?" Lora's voice was shaking. Atora glimpsed her frightened face, and let her cold words fill with sympathy.
"Dragons don't eat humans, Lora," She told her gently, reducing the strength of her hold on the girl's fragile wrist. "They're intelligent creatures. They can even speak. If the dragon has come to Camelot, it certainly has a purpose other then lunch."
"…I thought dragons were extinct, my lady," the girl whispered. Tears dropped from her eyes. Atora pulled her onward, up the stairs, and into an unfamiliar corridor she's never before visited.
"I don't believe men could ever destroy such a powerful species," Atora said. "Their skin cannot be pierced by any manmade weapon. Their flames are hotter then the fires of hell. Their teeth are so sharp, they can break even stone."
Atora glanced back. Lora's eyes were horrified.
"But overall they're very nice," The lady said hurriedly, pulling her maid down another corridor, trying to go as far away from the packed hall as possible.
"How do you know so much about dragons, my lady?" Lora asked, her voice shaking. Tears still poured down her face, and Atora tried not to glare at her exasperatedly and say something rude.
"From story books," she muttered instead, turning another corner. "And… Well, I met someone, once, who knew a lot about dragons."
"How did they know about dragons?"
"He said he just did," Atora mumbled, and then froze, almost falling forward with the force of her stop, gaping at the hall before her.
It was black with ash, the wall torn off, so that the courtyard could be viewed from it, many feet below. On the remains of the charred stone floor was burning furniture, the remnants of what seemed like curtains, and by them…
"I thought you said dragons don't kill humans," Lora managed in a high-pitched whimper, leaning her meager weight on Atora.
"I said they didn't eat them," Atora corrected automatically, before letting go of the girl's hand, walking over carefully toward the bodies littering the floor.
"My lady! Be careful!"
Atora tiptoed around the burnt tiles. They were warm, but the searing warmth had died down under the winter winds. It began to snow, and the droplets entered through the shuttered wall, extinguishing the remains of the flames and evaporating into clouds of vapor when touching the floor.
She couldn't recognize the bodies. There were five, and two she immediately knew as dead. They were both women, one so tiny she must have been younger then Lora. Atora felt tears collect behind her eyes, but she would not let them slide through.
She moved to the rest. There was only one boy, young, with his eyes half open, moaning mutedly on his back. His eyes were blue. They reminded her of the eyes of another, whom she has not seen in almost a year.
"Lora, come here. And take off that apron of yours."
The younger girl whimpered, but obeyed. Atora accepted the cloth, and begun to rip and then tie it around the worse of the boy's wounds. "Check on the others," She told Lora. "And then call for help."
Lora did as she was told, dropping to her knees, shaking, to examine the others. "My lady," she cried hoarsely, pulling her hand quickly away from the body right next to the boy's. "It's… the girl you were talking to…"
"What girl I was talk-"
She looked over at the woman, lying on her stomach with her hands distorted behind her back.
She gasped.
Gwen.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
"I must say I'm surprised," Amaroe said, watching as Arthur and Lancelot dangled helplessly in the air above him. "I never imagined you'd go as far as chasing after me. You are searching for your servant, I assume?" The prince did not answer. Amaroe's smile grew. "So am I."
"I know Merlin," Arthur said through clenched teeth. "He's no sorcerer. He's too much of a buffoon."
Amaroe ignored him. He nodded at his men, who raised their arms again, dropping the two hostages on the ground roughly. Lancelot groaned as his head hit the stone.
"Do you like my home?" Amaroe asked, staring at the prince disconcertingly. "Your father was the one who built it. You probably don't remember, you were… seven, eight years of age. It wasn't as large, of course. We've extended it as was necessary."
Arthur shuddered. He thought of the six corridors, each of them endless and full of uncountable doors, behind each of them a prisoner- like Robert, like his grandmother, like Norane.
Like Merlin.
Lancelot stumbled to his feet. He was bleeding from a gash to the head, and still he looked at Amaroe with hate and determination.
"Why did you say you were looking for Merlin?"
Amaroe grinned. "Ah! Excellent question. Your friend's decided to… run," he chuckled, the sound sounding unnatural in his voice. "I doubt he'd get far. He was not in the best of conditions last time I saw him. And beside-"
"What do you mean, 'not the best of conditions'?" Arthur cut him, feeling fear fill his chest. This was his fault. He shouldn't have argued with his father. He shouldn't have let the king win. He shouldn't have let Amaroe take Merlin in the first place. He should have told Merlin that the cure- the poison- was in the water. He should have warned him. He should have stopped Gaius from leaving in the first place. Gaius would have known what to do.
He couldn't get the image of Merlin, chained and broken, being led away in a cage, out of Camelot.
Amaroe did not answer the question, but smiled. Arthur glimpsed Lancelot, white faced beside him. Merlin was just a servant to him, but to Lancelot, he was a true friend.
He's your friend, too, a voice said in his head.
Yes. He was.
"What are you holding us here for?" Lancelot demanded, wrestling against the ropes chaining his hands behind his back. "You can't hold the prince of Camelot against his will. If the king built this place, it belongs to Arthur!"
Arthur. Not sire, not my lord. Who was Lancelot, anyway?
"Can't I," Amaroe whispered, so they could barely hear him. He signaled his men, and the chains around the prisoners' arms extended, connecting to the wall behind them, pulling the two back. Arthur strained against the invisible force, but he felt himself stumbling backwards inelegantly. Lancelot's chains chimed loudly.
"Go get the potion from my study" Amaroe told his men. They turned, walking slowly in the direction of the room with the stairwell from which Arthur and Lancelot had entered. Amaroe remained motionless before his two chained prisoners, who glanced at each other uncertainly unable to move.
"When my father hears about this-"
"He won't," Amaroe dismissed Arthur's words passively. "Why would anyone suspect you died here, of all places?"
There was silence.
Lancelot cleared his throat. "Died?"
"Well of course," Amaroe replied, as if shocked by their surprise.
"Why would you kill me?" Arthur demanded, head pounding.
"Well, to stop you from becoming king, of course," Amaroe said. "You have radical views of sorcery, Prince Arthur. You do not understand that sorcery is evil and wicked, and that anyone that has ever used it cannot be considered human, or even beast- they're monsters. Creatures that should be destroyed. And I fear that if you were to become king, you'd destroy everything your father has worked so hard to buil-"
A large stick of wood arrived out of nowhere, smacking Amaroe on the back of the head, sending the man crumbling to the floor, dazed and hardly conscience.
"…Merlin?"