A/N: Sorry this one's late too! I was out of town all weekend and nowhere near a computer! This chap's pretty short, but things are really starting to come to a head. Next one's will be longer again.
The small party set off before the sun had truly breached the horizon, too unsettled to have slept for more than a few hours in shifts even within the confines of the cage of protective spells that Cecily had woven around them. Aithusa especially was restless and anxious, sticking as close to Merlin as he could manage at all times. Even as they traveled he stayed near enough for him to jostle Llamrei with his wings and for her to whicker at him in annoyance.
They reached the edge of the Cauldron of Arianrhod when the sun was high in the cloudless sky and starting its descent, though they had to slow their pace when the ground beneath them turned rocky and dangerous for the horses to traverse. Even from a distance Merlin could feel the immense magical presence that was the lake at the Cauldron's center and he used it to orient them. It took them another two hours to reach it, finally cresting a rise to see the deceptively small and average-looking lake lain out before them and glistening in the sunlight.
They left their horses on the rise, untethered so they could roam and munch on the sparse grasses that had forced their way through crevices in the stones, and climbed the rest of the way down the treacherous slope on foot. Merlin stopped on the lake's shore and closed his eyes, breathing deeply and sinking into the sensation of so much magic, as strong as the aura of the Isle of the Blessed but purer, untainted by the dark magic that had been perpetrated there.
"What now?" Cecily asked, her voice hushed as if she too could feel the sanctity of their surroundings.
Merlin turned to Aithusa and crouched down to be on a level with him. "Aithusa, you must enter the waters," he said. "They will be the conduit for the Goddess's magic, should she choose to heed my call. You don't need to go far. Do you understand what we're going to do?"
Aithusa bobbed his head and then bumped it against Merlin's stomach. Merlin patted his neck for a moment, taking as much comfort as he gave with the gesture, and then nudged the dragon toward the shore. He went hesitantly, tapping his foreleg at the surface a few times in a very feline manner that made Merlin smile. But he eventually splashed out into the water, staying close enough to the shore that he was still stood on the silty bottom.
"Now we hope that this works like Kilgharrah thinks it will," Merlin muttered, quietly enough that Aithusa wouldn't hear. He closed his eyes, reaching deep into the warmth in the pit of his stomach and drawing it forth until it skittered along just beneath his skin, the force of it all barely contained. Then he raised his hands to the sky.
"Gydenu, hὶere mec ond fulgӕe! Ágíeme þys héahgesceafte áwierdnesum geanbesetted uppan hine. Ar ond heofontungol sceal þurhswiþan!"
His voice rang out strong and clear, echoing around the stony outcrops and sheer canyon walls and resounding back to them a dozen times until it sounded like a whole chorus of pleas. The magic inside him swelled and crested, overflowing from the fragile container that was his mortal body and reaching out over the water to meet the center of the Cauldron's power.
A light began to grow over the water, starting out as a mere pinprick and then surging out and out until the whiteness of it forced them to turn away or risk being blinded by the its radiance. A whisper sounded in Merlin's ears, the words too soft to make out but the intent clear: the White Goddess had heard his invocation and she would grant his request.
A piercing cry sounded from the midst of the glow where Aithusa had been engulfed, but it did not sound pained. Merlin didn't know how long the moment lasted, how far each second stretched, but soon Aithusa's hoarse cry became fuller, less hoarse, ending in a proper roar the likes of which Merlin had never heard from him before.
Slowly the light began to dim, almost imperceptibly at first and then leeching away quickly until there was nothing left but the blinding afterglow. Merlin and Cecily blinked furiously and rubbed their eyes, trying to clear their vision, and looked out over the lake again. There was nothing and for a moment Merlin thought that maybe the spell had gone wrong, that something had happened and Aithusa was gone, but then a bright form erupted forth, water spraying high into the air.
Wings unfurled that were straight and whole, the bones unbroken and the tightly stretched skin gossamer thin and no longer lined with scars. Pearlescent scales glittered in the sunlight, sleek and smooth now where once they had been dull and patchy. Aithusa stepped free of the water on legs that no longer shook and threatened to collapse and he seemed to be half-again the size that he had been before. He reared his magnificent head back and roared to the sky with the voice that had so long been denied to him.
Cecily laughed freely and punched the air, crowing their success. Merlin simply stared, awestruck and overcome. He sent up a silent prayer of thanks to the Goddess and her benevolent presence brushed across his mind, bolstering him and soothing his weariness.
Wind buffeted them as Aithusa launched himself into the sky, gliding around the Cauldron on sturdy wings and circling back around to land gracefully before them once more. He shook himself like a dog, sprinkling them with water, and he laughed.
"Oh Emrys!" he said in a ringing voice that didn't yet have the full depth of maturity but held its promise nonetheless. "Merlin, thank you! I can never repay you for this!"
Merlin shook his head, wiping tears of joy from his eyes before they could fall. "No, Aithusa. You owe me nothing," he said. "I am simply righting the wrong that was done to you. And I will never be able to fully atone for allowing it to come about in the first place."
Aithusa settled his new wings along his sides and peered at Merlin, no longer small enough to need to look up at him. "I don't blame you for any of that," he said. "No more than I blame Kilgharrah or even Morgana. I went off on my own when I was too young and too bold for such a journey. Misfortune befell me, but that is no fault of yours."
"Whose fault is it?" Cecily asked. "Who did that to you, Aithusa?"
"It was Sarrum," he said.
"Sarrum of Amata?" Merlin asked, his blood running cold.
Aithusa nodded. "His men caught me in a net when I was out hunting and I couldn't break free. Morgana came to find me when I didn't return, but they threatened to slit my throat to keep her from fighting them. Sarrum chained us in cold iron, like the shackles that man had last night. He kept us locked in a pit for two years."
"Two years," Cecily breathed in horror.
Merlin's hand went to the pouch at his belt, too aware of the damnable manacles it contained and how much harm could be done with them. He nearly tore it free and threw it aside, but he refused to defile such a sacred place with the vile devices. He would destroy them when he returned to Carthis.
"How did you escape?" Cecily asked. "If you and Morgana were both bound and weakened from a long imprisonment, how did you manage it?"
"We had help," Aithusa told them. "There was a girl among Sarrum's men, one who hated magic even though she possessed it herself. Sarrum used her to find groups of magic users fleeing his persecution and destroy them from the inside."
"If she hated magic so much then why did she help you escape?" Merlin asked.
"Morgana talked her round," Aithusa said. "She talked all the time. There was nothing else she could do and it kept us both from losing our minds. Whenever Kara was on guard, Morgana talked to her and told her stories. Eventually Kara listened and she became Morgana's most devoted servant, championing magic and convinced that the Pendragons were the root of all the world's ills. She released us and stayed behind in Amata so that she could help Morgana overthrow him once she had won Camelot."
"Wait," Cecily said slowly. "Kara, you said?"
Aithusa nodded. Merlin wasn't sure for a moment what Cecily meant by the question. Then he frowned at her.
"Not Mordred's Kara," he said. "Surely not."
"She did say that she came from Amata," Cecily said.
"And she's from a Druid camp that Uther's men raided," Merlin remembered. "I don't know why she would have hated magic to start with, but she certainly has every reason to want Camelot and the Pendragon line destroyed."
"Why is she in Carthis then?" Cecily asked, pulling her braid over her shoulder so she could tug anxiously at the end of it.
Merlin shook his head, at a loss. "I don't know."
He remembered all at once the conversation that he had had with Raime before they left Carthis—if it could even be called such. Raime had been agitated, even angry when Merlin had not stopped to listen properly. He had said then that Mordred was acting strangely, that Kara had enchanted him, that she was evil.
Merlin took to pacing, pulling at his hair as his thoughts raced.
If she had ill intent, then why would she target Mordred over anyone else? Mordred should have been the most susceptible to her manipulations even without magic, since he already trusted and cared for her. She shouldn't have needed to ensorcel him unless she wanted something that he would not have given her freely.
Kara was a proponent of Morgana, someone who believed her dogma and fought for her cause. Morgana's ultimate goal had been the destruction of the Pendragon line. It stood to reason, then, that Kara wanted Arthur dead. And Mordred, out of everyone in Carthis, was the only one beside Merlin himself with unlimited and unquestioned access to Camelot and her king. If Mordred had refused to take Kara there of his own will, she could have turned to magic to make him more tractable.
But Kara would not have known that Mordred was in Carthis to start with, so she must have been there on Sarrum's orders for some other purpose. All of the attacks, the assassins that had dogged Merlin's heels so closely over the last few months, they had all come from Amata, but Kara must have had other orders.
Whatever they were, she seemed to have abandoned them in light of the opportunity that Mordred's access to Camelot presented her to fulfill her own agenda. An agenda which no doubt coincided with Sarrum's, at least where Arthur was concerned. If Sarrum was targeting Merlin, then he had no intention of changing his stance on magic no matter how eloquently Arthur spoke at his summit. He had not gone to Camelot in good faith, which meant that Arthur was in danger—on two fronts, it seemed.
Heat blazed to life on the sensitive skin of Merlin's inner wrist, wrenching him from his frantic thoughts and stopping him in his tracks. He shook down his sleeve to stare at the glowing charm, holding his breath and counting.
Three seconds. Not simply a summons then.
"Arthur's in danger," Merlin said. "Aithusa, I want you to go back to Carthis. Find Ellison and tell him what's going on. Tell him about Kara and the threat she poses, and that Mordred is under her spell and not in his right mind. Cecily, you're coming with me to Camelot."
"Right now?" she asked.
"Right now." Merlin pulled the transportation crystal from underneath his chainmail, reassured by the thrum of its power beneath his fingers. "If Sarrum wants a war on magic, then he had best be prepared to face magic itself."
