A/N: Happy thanksgiving to my American readers! We didn't get much of one cuz dad's in the hospital again, but there's not much we can do about that. Anyway. Here's another chapter for you!
It was a good long while—most of it spent tracing patterns in the hard-packed dirt floor and definitely not pouting—before Hunith was content to let Merlin out of the corner. Dinner was already made and on the table by the time she finally came to stand in front of him, her arms crossed tightly over her chest, and gave him a firm nod. Merlin breathed a sigh of utter relief and struggled to stand properly on feet that had long since fallen asleep. Then he wrapped his mother in a tight hug that she gladly returned.
She accepted his apology easily enough after that, though she still gave him terribly disapproving looks when he explained his, admittedly rather weak, reasons for delaying this particular trip for so long. But she kissed his cheek and put a bowl of her heartiest stew into his hands, and Merlin knew he would be forgiven soon enough.
Dinner was full of laughter and smiles as Hunith was bombarded with stories from Carthis, anecdotes of Merlin's trials of courtly life, training mishaps from Cecily, melodramatic complaints from Raime about the woes of a servant's life—which Merlin was happy to corroborate from personal experience—and the like. She was overjoyed to learn of her love's heritage and the wonderful kingdom that he had left their son, but there was a bittersweetness to it that had her dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief when she thought that Merlin wasn't looking.
As Merlin had predicted, Hunith took an instant liking to Raime. She fussed over the state of his hair and poured him out a second helping of stew and said that he looked cold and did he need a blanket? Merlin and Cecily sniggered over it until Hunith turned around and gave Merlin the exact same treatment, at which point Cecily took to seconding all of Hunith's concerns with what appeared to be the utmost sincerity as long as you didn't notice the hint of a smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth and the mischievous glint in her eye.
When night fell, all the guests put their collective foot down to ensure that Hunith slept in her own bed rather than give it up to Cecily.
"A lady should never have to sleep on the ground," Hunith had said, while Cecily replied, "Just as I would say, Lady Ambrosius."
That made Hunith so terribly flustered that it was easy for Merlin to tuck her in, ignoring her protest that she had never been anyone's lady and likely never would be, and pull the dividing curtain resolutely closed. The rest of them then settled down with their bedrolls spread out across the floor, the heat of so many people in such a small space promising to keep them all nice and cozy through the night.
Merlin almost didn't notice the call at first, surrounded by snores and the shuffling of blankets. But the second time Kilgharrah's voice whispered into his head, Merlin reluctantly pushed himself upright and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. He nearly tripped over Raime's foot in the darkness, but conjuring a small mage light let him make it out of the hut without waking anyone up or doing himself an injury.
He followed the call through the village and into one of the larger fallow fields beyond it where he found Kilgharrah waiting for him, an imposing silhouette limned in moonlight. Merlin stifled a yawn and squinted up at his old friend.
"What is it, Kilgharrah?" he called. "It's the middle of the night. Couldn't whatever this is have waited until morning?"
"If you wanted to send the townspeople into a panic, perhaps," Kilgharrah said dryly.
Merlin had to concede the point, shrugging and scratching his beard sleepily.
"And you said that you wished to be told as soon as I discovered something of value," the dragon continued.
Merlin looked up sharply, hardly daring to believe what he had heard. "You have something? You've found a way to heal Aithusa?"
"I may have determined a way for the hatchling to be restored to his proper form," Kilgharrah confirmed.
Merlin whooped and punched the air, all vestiges of sleep gone as relief and hope spread through him in a rush. "Yes! Yes, thank you, Kilgharrah! Oh god, this is brilliant. I can't wait to—"
"Do not celebrate just yet, young warlock," Kilgharrah cautioned. "This is all theoretical on my part."
"What do you mean?" Merlin asked.
"The ritual that I propose you use is designed for another purpose," the dragon said, settling down on his haunches. "I believe that, if the incantation is modified, it may be the solution to our problem. However, there is no precedent for this and I have no guarantee that it will work as I intend it to."
"It's worth a try," Merlin said gamely. "What do I have to do?"
"You will take Aithusa to the Cauldron of Arianrhod in the White Mountains. You will bid him enter the waters there, which he must do freely and in full knowledge of what is about to occur. Then you will summon the White Goddess and beg for her aid."
Merlin let out a long, slow breath; they had discussed the possibility of a deity's power being necessary to affect Aithusa, and yet he had still held out hope that such extreme measures would not be necessary. The prospect of summoning a goddess was a little daunting now that it had been set before him. But he would do it if it would stop Aithusa's pain and give him the chance to become the magnificent creature he was always meant to be.
"Alright," he said resolutely. "It will be done. We will set off for the Cauldron at first light and I'll call for Aithusa on the road."
"Not yet," Kilgharrah said and Merlin huffed impatiently.
"Why not?" he demanded, anxious to get started now that he had a plan, a concrete goal to work towards after so long with only vague speculation.
"A goddess is not easily brought forth into this world by mere men," Kilgharrah told him, curls of smoke furling from his nostrils. "It will take an extraordinary amount of power to accomplish such a feat."
"In case you've forgotten, I'm sort of the personification of extraordinary power," Merlin pointed out. "At least according to the Druids."
Kilgharrah ignored him. "Your best chance to perform this ritual will be on Samhain, when the veil between the worlds is at its thinnest."
Merlin sighed. Samhain was in three days. He could wait three days, especially if two of them were spent on travel. "Fine," he said. "Go to the Cauldron on Samhain, get Aithusa into the water of his own free will, and summon the goddess with an incantation that you have not given me yet but surely will."
Kilgharrah growled at him in annoyance and Merlin ignored him, just looking up at him expectantly.
"Open your mind," the dragon said archly.
Merlin obediently closed his eyes and let his mental defenses fall. When Kilgharrah's warm breath washed over him, a wave of pure magic that made every piece of him vibrate with life and energy, the words to the spell rose to the surface of his mind as if they had always been there. Merlin ran over them a few times, dissecting the words and parsing their meaning. He nodded; it would serve their purpose quite nicely.
"Thank you, Kilgharrah," he said. "With this ritual, I will see Aithusa healed."
"I do not doubt your determination, young warlock," the dragon said.
"Only my results?" Merlin quipped.
Kilgharrah laughed, making the ground tremble slightly under Merlin's feet. "Oh Merlin, I know you too well for that," he said. "Even when you are left to fumble in the dark, you still somehow manage to achieve your aim."
"I am going to take that as a compliment," Merlin said, crossing his arms over his chest. "Though I'm not entirely sure that was the spirit in which it was meant it."
"Return to your sleep, young warlock," Kilgharrah said, unfurling his wings to block the moon from the sky. "You will need your strength in the days to come."
Merlin bid him goodnight and watched as the dragon launched himself into the sky, his enormous form growing smaller and smaller until it disappeared among the stars. He turned back toward the village proper, taking a moment to revel in the comforting darkness and silence all around him.
It had been a long time since he had had the opportunity to take a walk at night. Kings were not allowed such liberties, their safety far too important to the sake of the kingdom for them to put themselves in such a vulnerable position. But Merlin was not accustomed to being guarded and monitored every hour of the day. This, sneaking out in the middle of the night to consult the dragon on matters of magic, was much more familiar territory.
He smiled to himself, thinking back on all the times that he had made a trip like this full of worry and apprehension, terrified that someone might see. Now he had nothing to fear should he be caught out. Merlin put his hands in his pockets and would have whistled a tune if he hadn't at that moment felt a frisson down his spine.
Merlin whipped around to look the way he had come, but he couldn't see anything through the gloom of the night. The hairs on the back of his neck rose, warning him that he was not alone here. He was still a good ways from the nearest houses, surrounded by open ground and low-growing crops that should not have been able to hide anyone from his eyes, but there was definitely someone there that he wasn't seeing.
Merlin called his magic to his fingertips and let it coalesce into another mage light, enough to illuminate his immediate area but not so big as to attract attention from the village. He tossed it up to float unsupported and looked around cautiously.
Again, it was only some instinct that had him turning to face his attacker before the first blow fell. A heavy sword whistled through the air just beside his ear as Merlin jerked to the side. The attacker swiped at him again and Merlin ducked, scrambling back out of range of further attacks and cursing that he hadn't thought to bring his own sword with him on this trip or even wear his chainmail.
Instead he held up his hands, calling forth an attack spell even as he funneled more magic into his mage light to brighten the playing field. The attacker, he saw, was a very large and muscular man with a face that would scare a boar into full retreat. He was clad from head to toe in leather, his arms bare but heavily tattooed in dark ink, and there was a battle axe strapped to his back to accent the enormous sword he had clutched in both enormous hands.
The attacker was surprisingly light on his feet for such a large individual. He dodged the knockback spell Merlin threw at him, rolling to the side and back onto his feet within seconds with his sword at the ready. He rushed at Merlin with a battle cry that made his ears ring. Merlin dove aside, grabbing hold of the sword with magic and wrenching it from the man's hands to imbed it in the ground a hundred meters away.
The attacker reached for his axe instead but Merlin set the handle to burning, red hot and glowing in the dimness. The man growled as he threw the weapon aside but faced Merlin squarely even without it. He reached into a pouch at his belt and pulled out something small and metal. Merlin peered at it, trying to figure out what it was; it didn't look like a weapon, at least not any sort of weapon that he was familiar with. He reached out with his magic to investigate further, but his attacker noticed his distraction and took advantage of it.
The man crashed into Merlin with the force of a battering ram, knocking them both to the ground and forcing the breath from Merlin's lungs. They rolled together, the man trying to get his arms around Merlin to pin him down. Merlin let out a pulse of magic, unfocused but effective in throwing the man off of him. He gasped in air, dizzy from all the spinning and the impact with the ground.
The battle cry gave him advance notice of where the attack was coming from, which he very much appreciated. He called forth a shield to give him enough time to regain his feet, though his attacker wasn't stupid enough to run into it like Sir Bruin had been back in Camelot. Instead he skidded to a halt and dug a dagger out of his boot, holding it at the ready in case an opportunity to bury it in Merlin's chest presented itself.
Merlin watched him warily, panting, and briefly considered trying to attack through his shield, but the mage light was still hovering above them and he didn't know if he could split his focus three ways. In the middle of a fight for his life against what seemed to be a very skilled and very determined assassin was probably not the best time to test it. So he decided to take a different sort of risk instead, hoping that passive magic would be easier to utilize now than active magic.
Merlin closed his eyes and took a deep breath. While he let the breath out, he allowed the rest of his magic—the core of it that wasn't being funnelled into light or shield—to seep out with it, flowing along the ground to creep under his shield, pool around the assassin's feet, and flow upward again until it encased the whole of him. His presence was suddenly bright in Merlin's mind, not clear or precise but enough to give him an idea of where the man was and when he moved.
Then Merlin dropped the shield and extinguished the light in the same instant.
The two of them were plunged into a sudden darkness, doubly blinding with the afterglow of the mage light lingering in their eyes. Merlin's magic worked as a sixth sense and he felt it when the assassin flew at him. He sidestepped and immediately lashed out at the bright spot against his closed eyelids. The snap of the man's neck was very loud in the quiet night, and he crumpled and did not move again.
Merlin remained where he was for a long moment, half-expecting the man to leap up and run at him again, but the body stayed where it had fallen and the brightness of his life force dimmed slowly until it winked out entirely.
When he was satisfied that his attacker was truly dead, Merlin knelt down to examine him, using magic to push him onto his back and to light the scene once more. He scanned the body with his eyes and his hands both, looking for identifiers or markers of nationality, but he found nothing. There was only the close-fitting leather armour, which was common enough for mercenaries and swords-for-hire in several kingdoms, the tattoos that he didn't recognize, and the pouch that he had tied to the belt at his waist.
The pouch was empty and Merlin cast his light further into the field, looking for whatever it was the assassin had pulled from it. He found it—them—a few meters back where the assassin must have dropped them when Merlin's last blow had connected. He picked them up and immediately dropped them again with a hiss of pain. Bewildered, Merlin pulled his sleeve down over his hand and picked them up once more, carefully this time.
They were manacles, though they were delicate enough that they almost looked like bracelets. No chain connected them as was usually the case with shackles but the clasps were thick and sturdy; once locked, these would likely prove difficult to remove. Etched into the metal were what seemed to be runes, though Merlin did not immediately recognize them or their origin. Even through the fabric the manacles felt shockingly cold against his hands and there was a disturbing sensation that came with them, an almost sucking feeling, as if they had a gravitational pull to them.
Merlin shuddered and quickly stuffed them back in their pouch, tying it shut and giving a sigh of relief as the sucking feeling went away. He cast the dead assassin another searching look, then turned back toward his childhood home, leaving the body behind.
—
The two men—bounty hunters, judging by their conversation on the journey—rode for hours through forests and villages and eventually larger cities with Kara still slung over the back of a horse like a sack of potatoes. Every one of the horse's steps jarred her until she felt as if her ribs might snap under the force of the jostling, and the blood rushed to her head and made her dizzy, but they paid no heed to her shouts or her thrashing so she had soon stopped wasting what little energy she had on such things.
She never managed to throw herself over the animal's rump either, because the man riding it had tied a rope around her waist and attached it to his saddle and she didn't fancy being dragged all the way to wherever it was that they were going. There was nothing she could do but wait to see what fate awaited her when they reached it.
It turned out to be a palace, or maybe just a fortress of some sort; Kara had never seen such a building up close before, very different from the small and impermanent structures of the Druid camp she had been raised in, so she wasn't entirely sure what the difference was, but she had sort of expected a castle to be bigger. It was still huge to her, though, and built of a dark stone that made it look like the whole thing was constantly in shadow.
The horses finally stopped in a cobbled courtyard and one of the men untied Kara and unceremoniously tossed her over his shoulder. She kicked her feet wildly, hoping to catch him in the face, and beat her fists against his back as hard as she could, but none of it did her much good. He didn't set her down until they had disappeared into the castle, spoken to several people that she couldn't see from her undignified vantage point, and were ushered into a large, echoing chamber.
He dumped her on the stone floor then and delivered a kick to her side. Kara snarled and tried to launch herself on him, not caring that there was little that she could do against him, just wanting desperately to hurt him, to get away, to stop feeling so weak and helpless. She was jerked to a stop as the other man grabbed her by the hair and hauled her back. They each took a hold of one of her flailing arms, holding tight until they managed to get her under some semblance of control.
Eventually her strength failed her and she went limp, hanging from their grip and gasping for breath. She was dizzy and she couldn't remember the last time she had had anything to eat or drink.
Loud footsteps rang out from across the room, approaching her, but she didn't bother to lift her head.
"What have you got for me today, boys?" came a low, gravelly voice. The tone was a strange mixture of disgust and glee that made Kara's stomach turn and her blood run cold.
"A Druid, sire," one of them said. He yanked her left arm over her head and shook down her ragged sleeve to show the mark.
"Hmm," the new voice said, stepping closer. "We haven't seen one of those here in a while, have we? I thought maybe we had finally run the last of them off."
A pair of sturdy boots appeared in Kara's line of vision, scuffed and caked in mud. There was a creak of leather as the wearer squatted down in front of her. A large, heavily calloused hand took hold of her chin, wrenching her head up. The man was bald with jowls like a hunting dog's, thin lips pulled into a cruel sort of smile.
"Where are the rest of your kind, Druid?" he demanded and hatred thrummed through Kara's veins like a poison. She jerked her head back, trying to dislodge his hold. He let her go without much fuss, unconcerned.
"I am no Druid!" she shouted, glaring at him defiantly. "I am not one of them!"
"Is that so?" the cruel man asked with a raised eyebrow and a grimly amused smile. "That tattoo on your arm tells a different story."
"I hate them," Kara spat, yanking fruitlessly at her captors' grip. "They're weak and spineless, but I'm not. I'm not like them and I never will be. They deserve to die, every last one of them."
"Interesting," he said, eyes narrowed as he looked her up and down.
"Sarrum, sire," one of the bounty hunters said. "She's got magic. It's weak, but—"
"I hate that too!" Kara said, disgusted with the burn of it pressing against her palms. "I would rip it out with my bare hands if I could!"
"This one's got fire in her," Sarrum mused. He reached out to grip her chin again but Kara snapped at him and managed to sink her teeth into the meaty part of his hand, biting down hard enough to draw blood and shaking her head wildly. Sarrum snarled and yanked his hand free. Kara's teeth took a chunk of flesh with them and she spat it at his face, blood hot and rancid on her tongue.
"Like a fucking rabid dog," Sarrum growled, examining the wound. He stood up, looking down at Kara as she stared up at him, all but daring him to kill her. But he didn't.
"You say that you hate them," Sarrum said after a long, evaluating pause. "The Druids. You say that they deserve to die."
Kara nodded, remembering grown men and women with power in their veins cowering before mere swords, begging for mercy from those they could have struck down in an instant and had chosen not to—remembering Mordred doing nothing to help anyone, turning his back on her and leaving her behind to die when he could have saved them all.
"You say that you hate magic," Sarrum went on, circling her with slow, steady steps. "Even the magic that lives inside you."
Kara pulled harder against the restraining hands on her arms, writhing with all her might, no matter that it didn't do her any good. She itched with the magic; she wanted to scratch it, to claw it out, to move, to burn off the excess energy, to fight.
The Sarrum was squatted down in front of her again, his dark eyes boring into hers with a frightening intensity. She didn't look away, refusing to back down.
"What will you do about it?" he asked.
Kara stared at him, breathing hard. "What?"
"The Druids deserve to die," Sarrum repeated. "Magic deserves to be eradicated. What are you willing to do about that?"
"I don't understand," Kara said.
"If you could kill them yourself," Sarrum said, "would you do it? All those cowardly Druids, all those people riddled with the pestilence that is magic—would you put them out of their misery with your own two hands?"
Kara swallowed, the coppery tang of Sarrum's blood still coating her teeth and sticking in her throat, and thought of Mordred. She thought of Mordred's father, fleeing into the woods, and of Warren, leaving his children to die rather than fighting for them, and of the elders, teaching them all to be feeble and spineless while calling it righteousness.
She thought of it all, looked up into Sarrum's face with a red-stained smile, and said, "Gladly."
