41 The aftermath of glory
Merlin faced the great pyre with an outside, hard as flint stone and an inside, soft as jellyfish. The Druids had erected the pyre in the middle of the clearing and it had been them who brought Antek's body to rest on its top in all the splendour and grandness of a royal knight, weapons and all. No coat of arms or crests were visible, but the red velvet with the black and golden brocade spoke volumes from where this splendour had come.
King Uther would find some of his crates and coffers much depleted as soon as he came round to having a look at them.
Must have been Arthur's orders, then.
In fact, the clothes and blades were so utterly familiar that Merlin, at first sight, violently winced, thinking for one wild, mad second that it was Arthur who lay there, dead.
When the Prince suddenly joined him, Merlin jumped with shock, like a startled bunny.
Arthur glowered at him. "You're all right?" and it wasn't a friendly question.
Merlin gritted his teeth and shook his head. "Your father will have your head for that" he hissed, nodding at Antek's still body in his fineries.
"No" Arthur retorted harshly. "At least not for the clothes."
Merlin gave him a peculiar look. What the …. but he forgot about Antek's vainglory appearance when the slow, menacing sound of drums wandered over the clearing.
From the edge of the forest came Agneta, once more dressed in the ancient gowns of a High Priestess of the Old Religion. In her hands, raised up above her head, a leather clad book.
Just that.
A book.
The magician marvelled at the fact that such an insignificant thing could bring about so much suffering and evil.
At his side, Arthur fidgeted nervously and murmured to himself.
"What?" Merlin asked unwillingly.
"Are we doing the right thing?" Arthur said.
"He fought for possession of its power, he died to defeat this power, what more befitting place for the Rashnijaan than this one?" Merlin replied crisply.
Arthur fell silent.
Merlin's gaze followed Agneta to the pyre. There, right in front of it, stood another female figure, her back straight, her chin raised, but even so she looked forlorn and fragile. Merlin looked away. Morgaine's grief was not something he could easily cope with.
Agneta lowered her hands, turned and laid the book into Morgyan's hands. Slowly, feigning indifference, the former Princess climbed the three stairs and laid the book on Antek of Llanfair's chest and folded hands. Then she walked away as if nothing had happened, her face a calm, composed mask of restraint.
"Your turn, I believe" Arthur snapped, looking vaguely in the direction of where Merlin was standing.
Merlin did not answer. He walked closer to the pyre, raised his own arms, and closed his eyes. All he wanted was to call for Khilgarrah and watch the end of an endless adventure without which they'd all been much happier. And yet, he did not make a sound. Without his conscious thought, his mind wandered to where the book was. Searching for the stirring, for the abhorred and yet familiar siren song. Of riches beyond compare, of power beyond imagination, of secrets revealed and magic redefined.
But there was nothing. Silence. Calm. A void, an absence of anything. It should feel comforting and yet it did not. It felt – empty. And sad. As if any hope and any dream that humans ever harboured lay dead, too.
Merlin licked his lips and tasted salt. His cheeks were wet. Panic rose inside him, and the words of the Dragon's call fled his mind, as if he'd never known them. Why live on when all this, this unbelievable miracle of magic, was dead?
Suddenly the black void expanded into his soul, called for him, beckoned him, to leave these magic-blind, uncaring, ungrateful world, leave it all behind…
"Don't!" a sharp voice suddenly ordered. "How dare you?"
"Why not" Merlin retorted defiantly. The conversation in his mind was, for him, as real as the spoken word.
"Your duty to me, to your friends, to your own self and to your singular gift – you're not the warlock born of legends to suit your whims!"
"Who are you to speak to me like that?" Merlin fought back.
"I've been the leader of the magic world before you were born, you insolent pup. I'm the Lord Druid and you will give me the peace and rest that I deserve, Merlin Emrys. And you will do it now!"
Merlin opened his eyes, the words of the Dragons' language flooded into his mind, and he shouted them loud enough to make even Uther cover his ears. The warlock felt the powers of the enchantment rise, they formed a bond between him and the Great Dragon as they had done a hundred times before; Khilgarrah inhaled, and, his huge lungs filled with air up to their rims, the mighty beast set the pyre ablaze.
The flames roared up, the fire lit the sky, high and brilliant and strangely beautiful. The wood seemed to scream while it instantly burned to cinder.
When Khilgarrah lowered his head, nothing in this world bore witness of a book once called the Rashnijaan. Or of a creature that once had lived, and laughed, and erred and failed, as an unlucky fate had made him Antek, Count of Llanfair.
Where the pyre had been the grass was as green and unscathed as if no fire had ever touched it.
Merlin turned, urged by some strange sense of obligation, to Uther, wanting, absurdly, to report to him, that it was done and over. If anyone would greet the end of this with a pure and untainted gratitude and joy, it was the King who'd almost – and twice – lost everything he had to the Llanfair family.
However, the King's eyes were glued to the green, peaceful spot in the clearing's centre. Pendragon's face was pale, strained and faintly, ever so furtively, disgusted.
Gaius searched Merlin's gaze, and shook his head.
The warlock turned away. How easy it was nowadays to forget that Uther Pendragon's truce with magic was a fragile one.
"Is it over?" Gwen asked, searching, of all people, the hand of her father-in-law for support and protection.
"Yes" Uther answered. "The Rashnijaan is no more!"
Merlin listened to these words. Just a few syllables somehow seemed inadequate to describe the end of so prolonged a nightmare.
And yet it was true. The demons had been there, and now they were there no more.
Just like that.
Guinivere closed her eyes, and covered her face with both hands. She was trembling. "All will be well now" she said, and she repeated it. "All will be well now."
It occurred to Merlin that somehow she wasn't speaking of the Rashnijaan at all, but of her marriage, but from where this peculiar thought might come, he had no idea. Briefly he thought of the brave, valiant young woman who'd set out to save her Prince's life. Somehow, sometime since Arthur's return from Blackrock, marriage and motherhood had changed her.
Perhaps fate just did that to people who rode into the sunset only to see that a story teller might break off his narrative at this point, but life never does. Your heart may be wrenched, your joy and youth might be taken away, you may have survived the greatest of perils, fought the most vicious battle – there will still be another morning, and another, and another, and you will get up, brush your teeth, comb your hair and think that some place on the way you've lost the knowledge of how and why it should all make sense.
Merlin looked around, saw the gloom on each and any face, and thought how very much he felt like Guinivere.
Morgaine stood not too far away, her mad brother by her side. Her head hung low now, her pretence of bravado lost and gone. She walked away quickly, into the forest, her brother in her wake.
Arthur was pained and pale, and Merlin did not know why. Gaius was tensed and did not take his eyes from Arthur.
Marwon was staring dead ahead, so that he would have to look at no one.
Agneta would see her husband today for the very last time.
Mirella did not yet know if she and Leon would ever go back to Camelot together.
And so many faces just weren't there. Merco. Or Cendred's son.
Or Antek, the 15th Count of Llanfair.
If this was how final triumph felt, Merlin could shit on it in future.
In the midst of all the gloom and sorrow, Uther took a deep breath. "My dear friends…." he began, patting his daughter-in-law's hand with the tenderness of an angry bear getting ready to have it for breakfast, and Merlin almost collapsed in despair.
The last thing, the very, VERY last thing he could survive now with his sanity intact was one of Uther's grand and long-drawn speeches. No, please Gods, please, Great Mother, would someone STOP the man!
"Father…." Arthur began, but he had no chance to say more as all of a sudden a storm wrecked the place to shambles.
Amidst the angry fury of the wind, the Great Dragon had unfolded his wings, and risen to full height. "Beware, King Uther" the huge beast growled loud enough to almost throw anyone to their knees with terror. "You're indebted to me once more. The day will come where I will call in every debt you owe me. Do never break the oaths you gave the magic world. They are all that stands between you and your utter destruction!" The Dragon rose into the air, gave Uther a last threatening stare and roar, and was off.
May the Great Mother bless him.
Not even Merlin wasted a single thought on the fact that, by protocol, Khilgarrah should have waited until his Dragonlord dismissed him. He was much too grateful for Khilgarrah's aid at the very last moment. They all stood in awe, with their legs being wobbly, until the Great Dragon had vanished from their sight.
All but one, that was.
Marwon grinned. "Well, trust a dragon to have a sense of good old melodrama" he loudly said. "They always know a good exit when it hits them into their ugly faces."
"Uhm….. eh…. yes, or…" Uther had trouble regaining his regal, superior attitude. He felt that the tension was broken, that they all could breathe normally again and yet he had the disturbing idea that things had once again spiralled out of his control.
A thing that, as of late, had happened to him far too frequently for his taste. In any case, more often than a King as powerful and eminent as himself could allow. He cleared his throat, looked around him quickly and hit the man closest to him on the shoulder until it almost broke. The unfortunate shoulder of course, not the royal hand.
As it happened, the shoulder was Merlin's and he whimpered involuntarily under the unsuspected, bone-crushing onslaught.
"Take a heart, young warlock" Marwon bellowed merrily, raised his own calloused hand, and let it fall on Merlin's other shoulder until the warlock toppled over and almost fell to his knees with a sharp yelp that sounded like an indignant maiden's last shriek before she was a maiden no more. Or so Marwon commented.
Uther was the first to laugh. That is, he discreetly and most royally chuckled. That was how it began. And it spread. Gwen was the first to follow, then Gaius, then Leon, Mirella and the other Druids, finally even Arthur and the ever-sombre Agneta laughed and laughed and could not stop, until they felt as if their lungs would burst and their heads would come off, loud enough and hard enough for all to not notice that Morgyan had left them.
All the fear, the suffering and the dread went after the Book of Evil in one unbelievable, liberating burst of laughter and sheer glee. Finally, in the very end, even a blushed and highly embarrassed Merlin joined in.
Yes, it was over.
They had survived.
All shadows gone, all darkness banished; the sun was warm and it felt wonderful.
As soon as he could speak again, Uther, on the spur of the moment, invited each and anyone to a victory party in his quarters – he actually called the makeshift wooden shed his "quarters" – and somehow, without thinking, everyone present fell into step behind Uther Pendragon as if it was their natural place to be, Druids, knights, the remaining soldiers from Uther's escort.
Quite enthused by what he thought a tremendous success of his unfailing personal charm and charisma, Uther marched in the lead, radiant, beaming, and grabbed Little Thomas, whom his mother had taken to the ceremony against all advise and protests, as she was no longer willing to part with him even for a second.
"See the future King of Camelot" Uther shouted, lifting the laughing child high up into the air, and for a precious second, they were all Pendragons, all from Camelot, and today's victory was finally shining in its glory.
Gwen moved to retake her little son, but Arthur stopped her by taking her wrist. "Leave him alone" he muttered. "He's been waiting for this moment all my life."
She gave her husband an uncomprehending look, but she did as he said. Arthur's happiness had been short lived, and she vaguely felt that she should not anger him now.
Merlin flinched when Gaius laid his arm around Prince Arthur's shoulder and squeezed lovingly. Only then Merlin remembered Arthur's idea that Uther might take his child away from him.
Had that really been only a while ago? The family quarrel, the move away from Camelot, to Antek's house, the long, stupid, useless struggle that ensued from that – for what?
What if all the old feuds would just start all over again, in spite of everything that had happened?
The only man completely unaware of the waves of emotion that sprang up all around him was, as usual, the King of Camelot himself. Grinning like a Cheshire Cat, he admired his splendid, merry grandson, rocked the child to and fro – gently, as he thought, precariously in any other eyes – and turned in the entrance to his "quarters" – and stopped in his first word.
Ahem.
All his life there had been someone else to care about the logistics of his parties, and now he was in the woods about how to proceed on his own.
But he would not have been Uther Pendragon if he had not found a perfect solution in the blink of an eye. "Gaius" he ordered grandly "you and that useless boy of yours can put all this senseless magic to good use for once and bring us some food and wine. We're going to celebrate."
"Äh.. My Lord…" Gaius began awkwardly. "That is not … you never quite understood the nature of these things….."
"I do not want to understand them, I merely want to eat and drink them" Uther stated very grandly, and again he laughed himself almost to pieces about his own joke.
"Leave it to us, Gaius" Mirella said, and after an astonishingly short time, trays and plates and cushions, food and wine appeared from this corner or that saddle bag or that hidden treasure among the Druids, and sometimes, as Merlin suspected, really from some unknown enchantment, and in the end a formidable, if somewhat farraginous, picnic was ready right in front of Uther's shed. Uther and Arthur sat side by side, and whoever chose not to look too closely could imagine that indeed all was well with the world.
"Well done, sister" Marwon said when they sat down, side by side, together with Leon and Gaius. "You're a worthy daughter of the Lord Druid" and suddenly the scales fell from Merlin's eyes. "It was you" he exclaimed. "Out there, before Khilgarrah destroyed the Rashnijaan. You saved me from the Demons' last trap, not your father."
"My father is dead and may the Great Mother rest his soul" Marwon said. "He loved you and he expected great things from you. What neither he nor Khilgarrah would ever want, is for you to be taken by the Demons into their grave. I swore to guard you with my life." He once more crashed his fist on Merlin's shoulder and grinned broadly. "I may not be a great magician, but as an imitator of my father's voice, there's not my equal in this world."
It was in that moment that Agneta came near them, with a few others, and her own son on her lap.
"Excuse me" Marwon said lightly. "I think my merry face is wanted elsewhere."
"Is there no hope for you and your wife?" Merlin asked in a hapless attempt to keep some of the happy mood with him.
"No" Marwon retorted, looking at his hand. "She's not mine; she and my son belong to our people. I belong to myself, therefore I cannot stay."
He left, and like one person, Leon and Mirella followed him.
"We're going to have a resident Druid in Camelot Castle" Gaius commented drily. "Who would have thought it possible."
"Who else will still be in residence in Camelot this day next year?" Merlin asked gloomily.
"We'll have to wait and see, won't we" Gaius answered dismissively, only to exclaim with an extremely artful falsetto "oh my Gods, a roasted chicken" and for the next few hours he spoke animatedly, prolonged and with a repetitiveness that could well bore a man to tears, about nothing but wine and food, insensitive to all of Merlin's attempts to speak of anything else.
Over dinner Uther was all joviality and kindness. He even mentioned to Arthur that Morgyan might still make a suitable marriage with one of the ancient but not very important nobles of Camelot. Naturally, nobody would wish to take in her mad brother Cendred, but, who cared. If needs be, a permanent nurse and carer could be paid at Camelot's expense. Or whatever.
Arthur looked at his father as if he'd just seen a ghost. Or a monster of a sort. But then he saw Uther's hand holding that of Guinivere, and his little grandson in his lap, and Arthur let it go, uncommented.
Indeed, nobody made any comments on so benevolent a plan for other people's lives, but Uther did not care for a second opinion anyway. It was his evening, after all. A Kingdom conquered, the Llanfair threat to Camelot and the Pendragons gone forever, the border country safe and sound – Merlin saw the King's face and wondered where on this list of victories and achievements the safe return of his son, grandchild and daughter-in-law might rank. Close to the top or further down?
Arthur was rather quiet, the Druids too, except for Marwon, who time and again thanked Uther and Arthur for their gracious invitation to stay in Camelot, with Leon and Mirella, as long as he pleased.
Agneta was pale and withdrawn. Marwon avoided looking at her and at their child all evening.
Repeatedly Gwen tried to talk to Arthur, but he always pulled away.
Merlin watched it all and thought again that his dreams of what a proper victory party should look like had been much exaggerated.
However, finally they were all sent to their respective beds by royal command. Only Arthur stayed behind and asked his father for a moment of his time, which Uther most graciously granted.
Merlin smiled to himself and hoped against all odds that perhaps the two dragons would finally make amends to each other.
Perhaps, just perhaps, it had been a victory party after all.