28 Writing on the wall

"How is he?" Marwon asked while he freed himself from the load of vitals he'd bought. Ruefully he looked at the still significant amount of silver coins in his hand. Just as well that the Lord Druid would never know how his son had come by that kind of money.

The simple but not very 'Drui-dish' truth was that, with Marwon's sword skills and Gaius' medkit hired out they'd done exceedingly well ever since they'd reached the little harbour town on the far southern coast of Wales.

Roman build and miraculously kept in good shape by its inhabitants through all turmoil the small place was busy and prosperous and used to all sorts of strangers. Even if these strangers arrived with an unmoving, by all appearances dead youth in their cart of whom they nevertheless took the most tender care, as if he were an Elfish Prince, what with his black hair, white skin and peculiar ears.

A few curious looks, some veiled questions, some rumours quickly ousted from people's mind by some other nine-day-wonders and that had been it. Marwon had rented the small but comfortable cottage with his first pay and Gaius had set up his practice here, which quickly flourished. It left him enough time to take care of his 'Elfish Prince'. Not that there was much to care about except washing and feeding the otherwise unresponsive body.

Now, as an answer to Marwon's question, the healer turned away from his patient to face the Druid. "Woof" Gaius said acidly. "Woof, woof, woof!"

Unnerved, Marwon kicked a chair through the room until it crashed against the wall. "Stop it, Gaius! I've said once, I've said a hundred times I'm sorry. What else can I say? Would you rather I'd let you lie where you were, unconscious and at risk of freezing or being eaten by some animal that roamed the outskirts of Markentower?"

"It took you three weeks to turn me back into my old self" Gaius retorted accusingly. "And even then you hit on the right spell by pure chance! Now you are on your little business trips all the time, escorting a so called noble man here, body-guarding a wayward Lady there, protecting a merchant's loot the one day and looking for a chance to steal it the other I shouldn't wonder. Which is, by the way, what I'm doing all the time whilst being stuck here, all alone. Wondering! Wondering what should become of us all! Or what has happened to the others in the meantime. Five months since Arthur and the others were taken away by Cendred's men, five months it will be come Monday!"

"Gaius, it isn't my fault that Emrys doesn't wake up. You are the healer after all!"

"If you had found that way into the Rashnijaan a little earlier..."

"May I remind you that, had you gone into the demons' world in your own self, they'd captured and devoured you, just like Emrys." Marwon snapped back. "Your spirit could move there at will because it – and thanks to me! - could take a dog's shape! And because my own father..." At this point, as always when talking about the day they had found Merlin unconscious and on the brink of death amongst a bunch of uncaring, brainless Cymbrian brutes, Marwon broke off.

"It was a wolf's shape, actually" Gaius said, much gentler, as he knew the turn Marwon's thoughts had taken. "The camouflage was indeed very helpful, I've never denied that. As was your help against the drunken soldier who thought of Merlin as his personal toy. As to your father and the Rashnijaan... I've said before, you're making too much of it. It's a mere shadow, a residue, nothing more."

"It was strong enough for me to sense it in the first place, and to use it as a foothold for you" Marwon said bitterly. "You hear what I'm saying? I could sense it, blind and deaf as my magic is compared to yours ... to think that a part of my father's soul is captured there, in this hell, to all eternity..." The Druid shivered. "He was a great man, my father" he said heatedly, as if Gaius was about to deny it. "A very great man. This is a disgrace, a shame to his name..."

"Yes he was" Gaius replied "one of the greatest I've ever known. But he was still a man, not a deity. When he was very young, and very ambitious, he was weak, for an instant, and tempted by the Rashnijaan. Yet he fought temptation and he shunned it and he came out of it stronger, as the man he was meant to be. He did the Druids and the Blessed Isle proud, every day of his life. What the Rashnijaan has kept is a memory of Arenboarth's greatest victory. Now where is the shame in that?"

"I saw your face, old man" Marwon said. "Don't you lie to me, I was there with you, in a way. I saw, through your mind, how you looked at him. You felt the shame, as I do."

"I knew how he'd never forgiven himself his one hour of wavering faith and courage. For that I pitied this lost, empty shadow, as a reminder of that remorse. But you, you have no right to think of shame. You should be proud of your father." Mentally Gaius crossed his fingers behind his back. He would never forgive the late Lord Druid for dragging Merlin and the Pendragons into the Rashnijaan's circle of evil, he'd hate and loath the dead Arenboarth for that until his last day. But that loathing was his, not Marwon's.

"Let's not argue" the young Druid tiredly gave way. The all too familiar quarrel did not become more valuable, or more comfortable, by repetition. "There's only one hope for anyone who's caught inside the Book of Demons. It has to be destroyed. And the one man who could have done that is lying on that bed, as lively and as useful as a rock inside a mountain!" Angrily he pointed at Merlin's still form.

Gaius sighed. "This impatience you've got from your mother" he said, thinking of how Nimueh had brought doom about herself and Camelot because she'd been too rash in granting a King's wish for an heir that nature wouldn't give him. More power for the Blessed Isle and for it's High Priestess, the prestige of having done the impossible, the fortune as well as the splendour of a future High King's friendship ….. dreamt of and ruined in the blink of an eye.

And no sign, no word about the Crown Prince who'd been born from the wreck and ruin of that day. No word about Uther, Little thomas, Gwen... No news from Camelot would ever make it to thios godforsaken place...

"As you said, it has been almost five months" Marwon shouted and cut through Gaius' musings. "I've been very patient I should think! You said, his magic has to recover. You said, he needs rest. You said, in this state we cannot risk him being seen by anyone who knows what he is, not even by Camelot or by his own mother. So we went into hiding, we left my people, and yours, and his, I've not seen my wife, my sister, our kids... Almost half a year and nothing's changed. I'm sick of it, Gaius, sick up to my back teeth."

The healer looked at the seething young man, the broken chair, the damaged wall and cocked a brow. "I'm not quite sure you're really a match for Prince Arthur's sword skills yet. But you sure do have His Highnesses' temper."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means" Gaius drawled with gentle irony "that you both tend to overrate and underrate Merlin's powers at the same time. Yes, they are great and no, they're neither infallible nor invulnerable. He will come back to us, as his old self, do not worry. But it takes time. You must be patient."

"Look who's talking." All the irony was on Marwon's side now. "The man who bit my head off on sight, just a few minutes ago, because he was tired of staring at a white washed wall and a living corpse while I was out earning the money we need to survive!"

"Oh, get lost" Gaius shouted, throwing his arms into the air in frustration. "Put away the stuff you bought. It will be useless anyway, as always." With a huff he turned away and resumed his seat by Merlin's side. He listened to Marwon's angry rummaging through the cottage. It sounded as if a few chests and cupboards were once more in dire need of some magical repair skills. Oh, let them rot for all Gaius cared. He was a healer of people, not of furniture.

But, as usual, Gaius' anger was short lived. What Marwon said was true. The healer couldn't do much good to his one pet patient and all his other pet patients were far, far away, and out of reach of an old, homesick fool who no longer believed in his own professional optimism.

The days dragged on after that, morning turned into night and night into morning, Gaius held his lonely and fruitless vigil at the sickbed dutifully, but the sense of it was lost to him. He just did not know what else to do.

Marwon was mostly out, he couldn't stand the still life on the bed under the southern window.

What was more, the Druid found out how much the life of a wandering warrior suited him and the day came on which he finally admitted to himself that he had never felt that free and like himself before. A Druid with a sword, a born magician with hardly any magic at all – a living contradiction and it felt wonderful. He got in many fights and each victory made him stronger, every near-disaster taught him another lesson of how to improve his skills. His friends were friendly, his adversaries gratifyingly adversarial and life was great.

During the days, the sun shone warm on Marwon Son of Arenboarth.

But there were the nights, too. The moon did nothing to flatter him with praise of what he'd achieved, it tortured him with memories of what he'd left behind. His tribe, his village, family, his childhood friends – and all the promises he'd made.

Five months became six months, then six months and a week.

Life had become a quiet affair in the cottage, with two men painfully avoiding each other to the best of their abilities, each one suffering his nightmares of the past and dreads of the future in silence and alone.

Marwon came home from an escort job, with a broad gash in his shoulder. Irritably he shrugged Gaius off and went to bed, sulking.

The healer heard the Druid talking in his sleep. It didn't sound very cheerful.

Gaius stuffed some old rags in his ears.

Sometime during the afternoon he realized that stuffing his ears wouldn't help.

They simply could not go on like that.

The old man mustered all his strength to take Merlin to a special place in the forest behind the village. The young warlock was skin and bones and yet magic had to help or Gaius could not have carried his ward all the way to the ancient ring of stones with the remains of an altar in the centre. All so much decayed and eroded that they were hardly visible but for someone who knew what to look for. And who could feel the power softly sleeping under the rotten leaves and fallen wood.

Gently, ever so careful, Gaius placed the wizard on the stone plate. He made the younger man as comfortable as he could. Then he leaned back against a tree that had fallen many years ago. While it slowly died and withered, it gave life to myriads of beings, very small, small and bigger ones, one of which would one day help a new tree to life, to start the eternal circle all over again.

Silently the former disciple of the Blessed Isle's Healers' Temple waited for the moon. She wandered through the sky and Gaius felt the place's age old magic stir in its sleep.

When her pale light flooded the altar the old man knew that it was time.

Resolutely Gaius took out his best surgeon's knife and with some fast, strong cuts, he opened the veins in both his wrists.