A/N: Aaaaand now we get some more Merlin! I know you've all been missing him, lol. And a bit of my OCs, since we haven't gotten to see much of them either!
Ellison and Gerund were already in the throne room when Merlin reached it, hearing the last of the day's open audiences. Something in his demeanor must have caught their attention because Gerund shooed the man out the door with some vague reassurances that they would handle the situation, whatever it was, promptly and with all due care. Then he shut the door behind him.
"How did Ealdor go?" Ellison asked, taking the circlet off his head and tossing it onto the seat of the throne.
"It went fairly well, all things considered," Merlin said, hedging a bit. "Mum knows all and she was only angry for a little while. She has some stuff to do for now, but she is thinking about moving out here when harvest season's over."
"That's great!" Gerund said, clapping him on the shoulder. "But why do you look so shifty?"
"Oh, er…shifty? No!" Merlin scratched the back of his neck. "Kilgharrah showed up," he said. "He's found a way for me to heal Aithusa! So I'll be setting out for that tomorrow and—"
"That still doesn't explain the shiftiness," Ellison said, crossing his arms and giving Merlin a very no-nonsense look. "Out with it."
Merlin bit his lip. "There may or may not have been a very brief and highly ineffective attempt on my life," he said in a rush. "But obviously I am completely fine and it's of no consequence whatsoever. So if we could just get back to the—"
"What?" Gerund cried, a similarly outraged noise erupting from Ellison as well.
"I'm fine!" Merlin insisted.
"That's not that point!" Ellison said. "What sort of attempt? And by whom? What happened, Merlin?"
Merlin sighed. He picked up Ellison's circlet and tossed it back to him so that he could flop down onto the throne. "It was just a run of the mill assassination attempt," he said. "Not exactly flashy or special. A big burly man in leather came after me with a sword in the middle of the night and I put him down. That's just about it."
"Was there any indication of who sent him or where he came from?" Gerund demanded, his hand on the hilt of his sword as if he was going to run off after whomever it was himself right that moment.
"No, there was nothing that I could identify," Merlin said. "Everything very standard. But really, I'm more interested in the ritual Kilgharrah that told me about."
"Well, I'm more interested in who keeps trying to kill you," Ellison said, exasperation dripping from his tone.
"All new monarchs face opposition," Merlin said. "Especially ones that come out of nowhere, immediately start forging connections with powerful kingdoms, and generally make waves and cause a ruckus.
"This is the fifth time someone's come after you in two months, Merlin," Gerund said, his expression grave. "All of them completely unidentifiable. I think it's cause for concern at this point."
"There's not much we can do about them considering that they are, as you have pointed out, unidentifiable," Merlin sighed. "And anyway, none of them have been successful so far, have they?"
"It only takes one," Ellison said. He rubbed at his forehead. "We need to know who's responsible for this," he said.
"We've already gone over the whole list a dozen times, Ellison," Merlin groused. "Plenty of people have reason to want me dead, but none of them particularly stands out. We don't have any way of narrowing it down."
"You're certain there wasn't anything on this latest attacker?" Gerund asked. "Anything at all that could help us figure out who sent him?"
"No. Well, maybe. Only this."
Merlin untied the cloth pouch that he had taken off the assassin from his belt and handed it to him. Gerund looked at it curiously before opening it. The second the metal of the cuffs touched his hand, he dropped it. He and Ellison exchanged startled looks.
"Yeah, I did the same thing," Merlin said. "Are those what I think they are?"
Ellison tugged a handkerchief from his pocket to wrap his hand in as he knelt down to pick up the dropped cuff. He turned it over and over in his hand, examining the runes etched into the metal. "I've never seen anything like it."
"I have," Gerund said grimly, holding the other manacle with the pouch as a buffer. "Years ago. I was lucky enough not to have to get locked into them myself, but others weren't. These right here are the reason that our mages are required to have at least one secular weapon as well as their magic."
"So I was right to think that these are meant to contain and suppress a person's magic?" Merlin asked. He shook his head, his very skin crawling at the thought of having his magic trapped and useless. It brought back memories of the Dorocha and the way they had affected him. He couldn't remember a time when he had been so helpless, or so terrified, and he never wanted to feel like that again.
"Yes, and these are particularly strong ones, by the feel of them," Gerund said.
"Where would this assassin have gotten something like these?" Ellison asked, gladly handing the manacle he held back to Gerund. "The runes are definitely magical in nature."
"But you don't need magic of your own to carve magical runes into metal," Merlin said. "The runes have their own power that can make use of."
"And the cold iron has its own anti-magical properties as well," Gerund added. "These could have come from anyone with the know-how, and that's not too hard to come by."
"Gerund, would those be strong enough to subdue someone as powerful as Morgana?" Merlin asked suddenly.
"Perhaps," he said, frowning.
"And could a similar cuff bind a dragon? A small one, at least?"
"You think the person attacking you is the same one who held Morgana and Aithusa captive?" Ellison asked.
"There's no reason to think it isn't," Merlin said. "I know Uther used something similar to chain Kilgharrah beneath his castle for decades, but I destroyed those chains when I released him nine years ago and Arthur has never seen else anything like them in the vaults or anywhere else. If another kingdom has a grudge against magic and also has the ability to suppress it, I can't imagine that they wouldn't act on it, against Morgana and against me."
"As it stands, there are plenty of kingdoms that still outlaw magic," Ellison pointed out. "This could have come from any number of them. How do we narrow it down?"
Merlin pushed himself to his feet to face them both fully. "By healing Aithusa," he said resolutely. "He's the only one who will be able to tell us who is responsible for all of this. I will take him to the Cauldron of Arianrhod and appeal to the White Goddess to restore him to full health."
"The White Goddess?" Gerund exclaimed. "Are you mad?"
"You want to get a goddess to do your work for you?" Ellison asked, disbelieving.
"If that's what it will take, yes. It's worth a shot."
"Ah yes, of course, it's worth a shot to just call down a goddess and have a chat, maybe ask for a favor or two, no big deal," Ellison drawled.
Merlin shot him a look. "Your sarcasm is not appreciated."
"Look, Merlin, if you're going to go running off into the wilderness again, we are going to do it properly," Gerund said, hands on hips and looking very stern. "We'll organize a party to go with you."
"We most certainly will not!" Merlin said, indignant.
"Yes, my Lord, we will," Ellison chimed in. "You're the king, Merlin. You're too important to just go wandering off by yourself all the time. Especially when there are people out there who are actively trying to kill you."
"People with the ability to take your magic out of the equation," Gerund added.
"Only if they seriously get the drop on me," Merlin countered. "Which none of them have been able to do."
"So far!" Ellison cried, throwing up his hands in frustration. "That doesn't mean one of them won't!"
"Look, this ritual has to take place on Samhain," Merlin said. "That's in two days. I don't have time to get a large party of knights and mages mobilized and all the way to the Cauldron before I lose my window of opportunity. And we have every available man and woman already assigned to a patrol."
"We could pull some of them from the—"
"If you say from the Mercian border, I might have to smack you," Merlin said with a hard look at Gerund. "You know as well as I do what a bad idea that is in the current climate."
"You need someone with you," he insisted. "You need someone watching your back."
"I'm more than capable of taking care of myself, but—" Merlin held up a hand against the inevitable influx of protests. "—if it will make you stop nagging me, I'll take Lady Cecily with me. She's the only one who isn't currently on a rotation, and she is an excellent fighter even without magic. Will that satisfy you?"
"No," Ellison said immediately, sounding distinctly petulant. "But you're damned stubborn when you want to be and I technically don't have the authority to overrule you."
"Too right you don't." Merlin smiled brightly as he headed for the door. "You know, I like being king," he said, turning around to walk backwards. "It makes getting my own way much easier. I used to have to fight for stuff like this."
Ellison made a face at him and Gerund opened his mouth to comment, but the throne room doors opened before he could get a word out. Raime was there, looking somewhat troubled.
"Merlin, sire," he said. "I was just talking to Mordred and he—"
"Oh good! Did he get those papers back to Arthur?" Merlin asked. He had spent the last two months answering every question Arthur could think of about magic and its usage, but the man was constantly thinking of more. Arthur's incessant questions had led to Merlin spending many a late night with the High Priest, though, as he and Kane discussed the ones they had not had immediate answers for.
"I don't know," Raime said, "but there was this—"
"Yes, he did," Ellison broke in. "It took us hours to finish them all, and honestly there were a few we weren't sure about, but Kane helped out with those. It should be enough to cover him for a while."
"Brilliant," Merlin said, rubbing his hands together. "Now I need to go get packing for the Cauldron." He swept out the doors, already planning what he needed to bring with him and running through the spell Kilgharrah had given him in his head to make sure he didn't forget it. There was a tug on his cloak.
"Merlin, wait," Raime said. "There's something up with Mordred. There's this girl and he—"
"Ooh, cloak!" Merlin said, stopping abruptly. "I almost forgot! Kane said the Lower Priests should have finished with the final prototype of the invisibility cloak by now. I was going to test it out, but I'm going to be too busy. Raime, could you fetch the cloak from the Priests and take it down to Sir Frederick? He'll try it out and report to me on it when I get back from the Cauldron."
Merlin set off for his chambers again, briefly marveling at how busy the life of a king was. There were just too many things to get done and never enough time to do them all in.
"Merlin!" Raime cried after him.
"Oh, and if you run into Cecily, could you let her know that she's going with me to the Cauldron?" Merlin called back, barely glancing over his shoulder. "We leave first thing in the morning! Thanks, Raime!"
Raime's only answer was a huff of irritation, but Merlin didn't notice.
Kara tightened her grip on the crossbow in her hands and slowly shifted her position, waiting to be absolutely certain that the soft shush of her feet on the cobblestones had not given away her position. When the guard simply rubbed his nose and turned away, Kara reached for a bolt and knocked it, sighting carefully. When the guard turned back toward her once more, she let it fly.
The bolt—fletched with the black and green of Escetia—buried itself in the guard's neck and he went down with a quiet gurgle and a thump. Kara waited until his struggles slowed and then stopped before she emerged from her cover. She stepped over the growing pool of blood that surrounded him and boarded the little wooden platform against the pit wall, using the winch to lower herself down into the darkness as quickly as she dared.
It was a very tight fit. Aithusa had grown over the two years that he and his mistress had been imprisoned, though not nearly as much as he would have done if he had been free and properly fed, and even his emaciated form took up the majority of the space. Morgana was tucked beneath his good wing, the one that wasn't permanently bent at an unnatural angle, and she looked up when Kara said her name.
"What are you doing?" she whispered.
"Breaking you out of here." Kara cast a mage light and Morgana squeezed her eyes shut, turning away from the brightness.
Kara bent down to get a better look at the manacles around Morgana's skeletal wrists, fury pulsing through her when she saw the clotted blood around them from where the skin beneath had been rubbed raw. She pulled a lock pick from her pocket and set to work, hoping these wouldn't be too different from any of the other shackles that she had been trained to break out of.
She was in luck. It only took a few minutes of concerted effort before the lock clicked open. Morgana gasped like she had been doused in icy water, her eyes fluttering closed. Kara set to work on the second manacle. This time when it fell free, Morgana's entire body arched and her eyes flew open, flooding with a pure gold that was brighter even than the mage light that Kara had conjured. Kara sat back, wide-eyed and awed at the rush of magic so strong that she could feel it even from a distance.
"You did it," Morgana panted. "Kara, you did it."
"Of course I did," she said. "You don't deserve this."
She turned her attention next to the thick cuff around Aithusa's leg. The dragon whined at first and tried to pull away from the unfamiliar touch, sure that this stranger wanted to cause him harm like all the others had, but Morgana reached out to stroke his head and murmured reassuring words to him. He settled down after a while and let Kara do her work. This lock was larger and a bit more difficult, but she got it off eventually and the dragon let out a strangled cry that still managed to sound like a roar of freedom.
Kara shushed him hurriedly, listening carefully for the sounds of shouts or footsteps coming toward them, but there was nothing; the guards were too used to listening to the poor dragon's pitiful cries, and Morgana's, to come running every time they made a ruckus in the middle of the night. Satisfied that they hadn't been caught out and still had some time, Kara helped Morgana to stand on weak legs and sat her on the platform so that she could lift them both out and then sent it back down to give Aithusa a lift out too.
"Can you make it?" Kara asked as Morgana swayed on her feet, looking frighteningly thin and frail after her prolonged mistreatment.
"I'll manage," Morgana assured her.
"I got you food and water," Kara said, fetching the pack from where she had left it. "There's a blanket as well, and a knife, in case you need it. Now go, before someone raises the alarm!"
"You're not coming with us?" Morgana asked.
Kara shook her head and pressed the pack into Morgana's hands. "I've got unfinished business here," she said. "I've been Sarrum's puppet for years. He manipulated me, twisted my mind. He has used me as a weapon against my own kind and he deserves to pay for that."
"But what if you're implicated in my escape?"
"Don't worry, my Lady. I've been careful. No one will suspect my hand in it," Kara promised. "In fact, there's a guard in the citadel who's absolutely certain that I spent the entire night in his chambers."
Morgana smiled, looking impressed. "That's not an easy spell. You're improving quickly."
"You have taught me well, my Lady," Kara said with pride.
"What will you do here, Kara?" Morgana asked, sober and worried.
"I will bide my time until I can be of use to you again," Kara said fervently. "One day soon, when you have wiped the Pendragon scum from this earth and reclaimed your kingdom, you will have your revenge on Sarrum as well. I will be your agent then. Sarrum is a suspicious man by nature, but he practically raised me. He believes me to be loyal to him and him alone. But my aims are yours, Morgana. And together we will punish him for what he has done to us and to our kin."
Morgana gripped Kara's arm tightly. "Be safe, Kara. And stay true to yourself, whatever you do."
"I will, my Lady. I will not allow myself to be controlled again," Kara said, covering Morgana's hand with her own and squeezing. "Now you must go. Follow the path until it forks and then go left. It will take you to a door in the west wall that leads to tunnels. Two rights and a left, the middle fork, and another left. You'll come out in the forest. Head north and don't stop. I will see to it that you aren't followed."
"May the Goddess be with you, Kara," Morgana said. Aithusa limped to her side, whining, and she leaned on him and patted his head. "We will meet again."
"I will await your orders, my Lady." Kara dropped to one knee and bowed her head. "I am but your humble servant."
