998 NE, Winter

Merlin arrived in Illian on a horse on its last legs. The feeling of Arthur was clear in his mind. He'd pushed his mount as fast as possible, the anger and fierceness from Arthur a spur against being caught. He'd run out of water the day before, even with the forethought to grab some spare water bottles as he ran from the battlefield. Merlin had spent the first few days thinking nothing but I can channel. I will go mad. I can channel, and then slowly a blankness overcame the fear and exhaustion.

He began to pay more attention as he wove through the outer town of Illian on foot, leading the horse by its reins. The horse hung its head low, walking almost by rote, and Merlin worried for the mount. Merlin patted the horse, feeling the ribs slide under its hide. There had been far too many days without food or water.

"You, there." An angry woman placed herself in front of him. "What've you done to that horse?"

"Ah"

"Do you be thinking I'll allow someone treat a horse that way? You do be giving him to me, now," she said, and snatched the reins from his hands. She fumbled at the waistband of tools for a moment, then dropped a number of silver coins in his hand. "That do be because he's good Tairen stock. Not because you have treated him at all well," she sneered.

Merlin stared after the woman as she left. She patted the horse on the nose, talking to the mount in a calmer manner as she led it away. The coins were heavy in his hand, unfamiliar with the head of the Illianer King stamped upon them. He blinked when he realised he was now without a horse; it'd taken him all of five minutes to have lost his mount, but it was for the best. The horse needed care, and he ... couldn't.

A silver went towards new clothes from the ragpickers, food, and a bed in one of the rougher inns for a few nights. He rolled into the thin bed, listening to the snoring coming from the others in the shared room. It was a counterbeat to the thought coming back to him, a constant I can channel. Gaius had told him of men laying waste to villages before Aes Sedai could get them, and now this was to be his fate.

Merlin thought of Morgana Sedai falling to the ground, possibly dead. Arthur was after him to seek retribution, he was sure, to kill him, and was willing to follow him into Illian to be certain of it. I'm dead. He thought over where he could go to do the least damage, and briefly thought of going to the White Tower to hand himself over to the hands of Aes Sedai, but the image of Morgana crumpled on the ground halted that train of thought. Arthur was white hot with anger over his sister. The White Tower would treat him no more gently.

The snoring lulled his mind, and even though he knew Arthur was coming closer, he eventually fell into sleep.

The inn was full of workmen in the morning, all eating the same sticky porridge before heading off to their works. Merlin left the inn after a bowl, his stomach protesting the unfamiliar influx of food, and found himself caught up with a swell of people. An excitement sparked the air.

The Great Square of Tammuz was full. He didn't stand out in the populace; there were lords and ladies standing shoulder to shoulder with the roughest ruffians, and they ignored each other as plain as shouting.

"What's going on?" he asked the nearest likely looking fellow; he wasn't too scruffy, and yet not too well dressed; a merchant's guard, perhaps.

"We're here to take the Oath to become a Hunter for the Horn!"

"The Horn?"

"The Horn of Valere," said the man with scorn, blue eyes looking him over. "Surely you know what that is." He had heard of the Horn in children's tales. The great Horn, to which great heroes were bound for the turning of the wheel, forever returning from the grave to fight at its call.

After that it was all he heard; every man and woman haunting the inns were on the Hunt, and every one of them had their own theories of where to find it. There were tales of Birgitte Silverbow, tall and strong, her aim sure and true, Rogosh Eagle-Eye, standing unfaltering and resolute beside Arthur Hawkwing, Paedrig the Peacemaker, with his honeyed tongue, and Artur Hawkwing, himself.

Artur Hawkwing was especially popular. The similarity of his name to 'Arthur' had Merlin cutting his eyes to the speaker every time he heard it on someone's lips, an ugly twisting of fear and despair within him. He could channel, and soon he would go mad and die. If he could, he would go to the Borderlands and fight Shadowspawn, die fighting for the Light before he killed all those around him. He couldn't; he knew what he had done to Arthur, and his death would take Arthur along with him.

Merlin was in the square a few days later, his last silver coin light in his pocket. He stood for the second swearing of the oath, hand raised with the hundreds of others.

"Under the Light and by my hope of salvation and rebirth, I will hunt for the Horn of Valere until such day it is found, to bring the Heroes of the Horn to battle the Dark One on the fields of Tarmon Gai'don. I join the Hunt for the Horn."

There was much back slapping after this and drinks all round. Spines stiffened with pride at having taken the oath, and suddenly the inn's common room found itself full of men boasting of how they would find the Horn, of the honour it would bring.

The man who had talked to him the first day found him as he wandered, a little lost, ever aware of the sense of Arthur coming closer to Illian.

"You took the Hunter's Oath, then," said the man, introducing himself as Mordred. "You had that look about you."

"What look?" Merlin wasn't certain how to take his comment.

"Somewhat lost, wanting to do something, but not certain what. Do you know where you'll seek the Horn?"

"No. I thought, perhaps--the Borderlands?" About as far from Arthur as he could get, and then when he finally succumbed to the madness, he'd be somewhere he could get away from everyone. Arthur had mentioned the Borderlanders were hard men; their constant fight against Shadowspawn so near the Blight had whittled away any softness they might have had. He would join them fighting the Dark One, and when he went mad, he would take as many Shadowspawn as he could with him.

"As good a place as any," said Mordred. "I'm headed that way myself; I'm leaving in the morning for the Eye of the World. The Green Man is there, so the tales go, and if any will know of the Horn of Valere, it will be him. I could do with another hand, if you wish to travel with me."

He woke the next morning certain that Arthur was outside of Illian, and did something in his fear which cut him off from that certainty. He knew Arthur was out there still, but couldn't point at him anymore; for the first time in a month he didn't feel the anger and determination in the back of his head, growing ever closer. There was just him.

Merlin was up in a mad scramble, his satchel packed and ready when Mordred came sauntering out of the inn.

"That eager to go?" Mordred was looked him over, amused, and with that they were on the road, Merlin slowly growing more relaxed as they trod the Silver Road north to Lugard.

Mordred complained about his family one evening, after an especially tiring day trying to source a bed for the night.

"My brother died, and I was to inherit--the farm," he said. "But no, my father had legitimised his bastard son, only a year older than I! One year. I'd worked hard for the, the family, done things"

Mordred never mentioned it again, but he'd brood as they came upon larger estates, muttering when those there would have no bar of them. He glared darkly at younger fops with too much lace on their cuffs, and tug at his own more prosaic woollens.

It took them months on the road, hunting stories of the Horn along the way. Mordred didn't work; he never said, but Merlin thought he was a noble, from the way he carried himself and his innate expectation of things. Merlin worked while Mordred went off to find the source of these stories, sometimes on farms, pitching hay and milking cows, sometimes wielding an awl to fix fishermen's nets, sometimes his arms deep into scummy water, scrubbing at pots with a fistful of oily sand.

Merlin could no longer feel Arthur the closer they got to the Borderlands, and sometimes forgot the muffled knot in his mind was there. He was constantly tired from working sunup to sundown, sweating freely, and come nightfall collapsing on a bale of prickly hay, if he was lucky. When he was unlucky it he would sleep under a bush. The dry hot days were long, but the clear skies meant he could be sure he wouldn't be woken by rain. After a while he came to wish for it, not minding the thought of waking to a puddle of mud beneath his cheek instead of sparse brown grass.

Mordred would come back, full of stories of where a farmer had heard his neighbour's sister's family had had a golden horn in their families once, that they had been lords, and they would set off again. Merlin wanted to avoid the cities--too many people there, should he turn mad overnight--and Mordred thought the best place to find the horn would be out in the country, where long-forgotten nations once held sway.

One day Merlin looked up from his scythe, where he'd been cutting more browning grasses for livestock from a field where there ought to have been food. Mordred was back.

"News is so slow in this infernal country. The Dragon Reborn has taken the Stone of Tear," said Mordred. "Tear has fallen, and the battle against the Dark One nears by the day. We need to find the Horn of Valere soon, Merlin! Once I have ..."

Merlin didn't hear much more than 'Dragon Reborn' and 'Tear'. He wondered how Arthur was, whether Uther had let him finally have his head and fight against the Lord Dragon. Aware of his muffled bond like he hadn't been since Illian, he let it go. Instantly he could point south to where Arthur was, but little else. He blinked in surprise; he hadn't realised that distance would affect it so.

"When did this happen?" he asked. "News is slow, you said?"

Mordred stopped his tirade and gave him a hard stare. "What happen? Tear? Oh, yes, you're from there, aren't you? A month, two months ago, from what that peddler said. They oftentimes get things wrong anyway. It could have happened a lifetime ago and they would present it to you as if it was only yesterday's news." He sneered.

Merlin turned to face south. He could feel Arthur down there somewhere; The Dragon Reborn was probably still in Tear, and he could channel. He now sometimes thought he saw weaves when he wanted to do something; it wasn't always intentional, but when not paying attention he would sometimes heat dish water to make things easier, or make something fall to distract when townsfolk looked at them too suspiciously.