Arthur is standing when Gaius shuffles into the light, holding his round case of supplies. His outer-robe is thrown over his sleeping shirt and his hair is kinked at strange angles.
"Sire, you should not be up," he scolds, not even within reach yet.
"I'm fine, Gaius." Tension and smoke turn his voice hoarse. Behind his back, he clasps the balled-up scarf in one hand.
"We'll see," is all Gaius says. He shoves his kit into the stomach of Alymere, who grabs hold with an umph of lost air. Hands free, Gaius captures Arthur's face and pulls him down to his height, peering into his eyes. Torchlight shines on his own.
"Gaius, what're—"
"Checking for concussion, sire. Sir Alymere told me you were unconscious. Do you feel pain anywhere?"
Overwhelmed, Arthur's mouth opens, but all that comes out is a tiny ah, an undecided word, then he clicks his mouth shut and yanks his head free. "I'm fine. What I don't understand is how."
Arthur tells his story hunched on the patients' bed in the physician's quarters. Gaius sits at his table, hands woven together in a knot of sinew and joints, his expression inscrutable as he stares at the red fabric Arthur placed before him on the table.
Once Arthur's finished, Gaius hesitates for only a moment before saying, "Your memory is probably hazy, my lord. You may have fallen and hit your head, and you just don't remember it. The fire could be a dream, a hallucination."
Arthur shakes his head. It is telling, he thinks, that all concerns of injury are forgotten. "The memory's clear, Gaius. That fire was sorcery, and the wound was real. "
The physician's eyes narrow, scowl deepening. "You think it's Emrys."
"Yes." Arthur catches the skepticism in the man's voice. "You disagree?"
Gaius sighs, gaze dropping back to the scarf. "Palengard is a powerful sorcerer. One of those spies was one as well. It's impossible to know who manipulated the fire."
"If it wasn't Emrys, how do you explain my miraculous recovery?" Arthur looks at the fabric scrap, fraying and mud-stained. His hands curl into his trousers and he swallows. For the first time, cold fear pools in his chest. "Gaius, I want an explanation for… this." He nods at the scarf.
For a moment the only movement is Gaius' eyebrows climbing, then he shoves back the bench and stands. "It's a piece of fabric, my lord." He pops open the lid of his supply case and unloads bottles, glass clicking on wood, his back to Arthur.
Arthur's throat constricts, and his voice is half-strangled when he says, "You know it's his."
The sounds stop, Gaius' shoulders gone rigid under the accusation. "That doesn't make sense," he says, head turning to eye the offending material.
"I know that," Arthur snaps. "That's the only thing I know about this ridiculous excuse of a war."
Gaius shoots him a look, then returns to his unpacking. Clack clack thump, two bottles and a suture kit. When he speaks, his words are frigid. "My ward left Camelot days ago. That cannot be his."
"But—"
"Sire, you're exhausted. You need rest."
"I want—"
"You need some time to put this event in perspective—"
"Gaius—"
"—And see things more reasonably."
Something snaps in Arthur's chest and he stands. "You will tell me what is going on!"
The fire sputters, reflected in Gaius' stare. Arthur meets it.
Then the man turns his back, voice as sharp as the glass. "There is nothing to tell. You have gone on a ludicrous search I advised against, and now you have the audacity to accuse Merlin of treason. Sire."
Click. Click. Arthur is gutted. "I just want to know—"
"I prescribe rest. Good night, my lord."
Then it is just the glass and the dying fire. Arthur stands, struck still. "You can at least tell me he's safe," he says, and the hurt bleeds through.
This time Gaius leans on the table and sighs, staring down. Light flickers on his back. Finally, he says, "No, I can't."
Arthur hesitates, but Gaius doesn't look up. The bottles warp gold on the table, silent.
Arthur walks out, burning with lost faith.
Arthur forgets the names of days and refers to them only by the number left.
Day five, and he is confined to bed, though he suspects this has more to do with his mental health than his smoke-caught breaths. Nonetheless he assists in administrative work and directs his knights; the constant in-and-out of his door is like the entrance to a beehive.
The immobility drives him half mad. In the morning he strives not to think about the scarf that he has hidden in a dresser drawer, safe from Philip's compulsive cleaning, but when the boy leaves to fetch lunch Arthur clambers out of bed and retrieves the piece of fabric just to have something to study in the lulls.
His feet pad across scrubbed flagstone and the dresser is slick with polish. The room smells of cheap soap and varnish and everything shines, and Arthur feels like he's in a facsimile rather than his real room.
He pulls out the scarf and stretches it between his hands, studying the patterns of mud and blood, some of which is not his own. Tentatively he lifts the fabric to his nose, and though he hacks on the smoke at first, he breathes shallower and picks up sweat and—so faint he's not convinced it's real—the clarity of mint.
Breathing that in, the room suddenly seems his own again. Why it's so familiar, he refuses to think.
Day four, and he's out all day, rushing and the panic is starting to curl in his gut. His knights are good, more than good—the finest, he's sure, but there are so few after the dragon… He doesn't sit all day, skips lunch, and only staggers back into his room after a fruitless night-patrol.
Little Philip is slumped in Arthur's chair, slack-jawed and snoring, but he startles awake and is apologizing before Arthur can form a reaction.
"So sorry, milord, so so sorry, it's just so late…" He runs to the far corner, snatching up his stepstool, and scampers back to Arthur, who stood in mild shock to watch the spectacle. Apologies spill from the boy as he climbs up and undoes buckles.
"Philip," Arthur snaps, and he hears the click of the boy's teeth.
Arthur takes a deep breath of silence. The fire has nearly burned down, but there is enough to see by.
The outer armor is off before another word is said. Arthur sighs when he lifts off the weighty chainmail, and as he hands it to Philip he says, "There's no need to apologize."
The boy's head is bowed so all Arthur can see is the bowl-cut hair. "I'm not a good servant, am I?" he asks at last.
A corner of Arthur's mouth twitches. "You're better than my last one."
But Philip shakes his head. "No'm not. If I was, you wouldn't miss 'im so much."
Day three, and he steps into the physician's abandoned chambers. Most of the contents have been moved to the great hall, which has been converted into an infirmary. Only the books remain, leaving half the shelves bare and the other half crammed. Dust hazes the air like smoke, and halfway through the mess Arthur sneezes.
Merlin's door groans when he pushes it open and the floorboards creak under his feet. He pauses in the center, noticing the dust fuzzing the nightstand.
He stands for a several minutes, but the silence of absence presses his ears, and the draft from the shattered windowpane has breathed away any familiar smell.
Three days after leaving Camelot, Merlin's fingertips prickle and there's a hum in his chest.
He's in moorland, a dead land. Rocks rip through the sloped earth like fangs and the grass is faded, the color washed away. It is silent but for the hiss of wind.
Merlin would say he's standing at the foot of a mountain, but its point has been sliced off to leave a sharp plateau at the top. A ring of black stones crown it, and their teeth scrape the overcast like a wool carder.
With a mental groan—he daren't make such noise here—he begins the climb, bracing his hands on his thighs each step. His right shoulder aches, an echo of his healing. It was instinctual, a surge of his energy into the wound to heal it shut, locked with his blood on the scarf. Merlin grimaces just thinking of his stupidity, but Arthur was draining into the black and pain had seared away words but for the Please.
Halfway up he pauses, staring at a slab of rock to his right. The scattered gravel atop it is shivering.
And he thought the sensation was just the magic, maybe another manifestation of his fatigue. The shaking pauses for a moment, then rattles, then pauses… He sucks in five breaths, stinging on air, before recognizing the similarity.
For the first time since leaving Camelot, Merlin feels relief loosen his ribs. The cave must be underfoot. The realization gives him the strength to resume climbing.
He stoops over to catch his breath at the top. He studies the crooked pillars towering over him, hesitating to enter the ring they form. They sing with old magic, the bass vibrating his heart and the high notes just out of hearing, in an octave he can't hear, only sense in the hairs on the back on his neck.
The clouds swirl around him like wary spirits. Some brush him, leaving a damp chill on his white skin, perhaps stealing a little of his life-force. For a moment he considers the implications of standing in the sky, among the clouds, but the thought makes him dizzy and he presses the heels of his palms to his temples.
Once the world stops revolving, he takes a deep, preparatory breath and steps into the ring.
The air puffs out of him as power rams into his chest and he sways, vision glaring-bright with magic. This is not the warm stuff in his blood, familiar and controlled, but a shapeless, raw power, so old the stories of it are forgotten, though he can see it now in the colors so brilliant that everything's haloed, sense it in the pillars surrounding him and in the sky so close and in the ground vibrating like a great, living thing.
He takes a cautious breath. The air crackles with magic. He exhales a week's worth of exhaustion to take in life, and he blinks, light splitting to spectrums at the rim of his sight.
He breathes deep and his spine straightens as the breeze carries away the pain.
This magic is alive, this magic is just quivering to pour through him, a conduit, and here he can do anything; he's in the sky and the ground at once, he can fly, he can fill himself with magic, drown in it, choke on stardust and become pure power and forget his past and his sins and his name because he'll be stones and sky and light and night and nothing and everything at once—
A flash of a man in armor that glares as bright as the magic.
Merlin's knees buckle under the rush of returned memories, consciousness checking the overwhelming power. A bleeding sky faces banners fire two gold eyes scales Arthur—His chest hitches, arrhythmic, and the air's so sharp with magic his eyes water.
The memories fill him, then he gasps in a lungful of sky, lets loose the desperation and the roar tears from his throat, louder and deeper than his wasted frame alone could summon.
Arthur never thought to find the sorcerer directly—if he did find Emrys so easily, he would question his true powers—but instead hoped the message would reach him via some underground. The prince is after magic. The prince is desperate. See it in the circles under his eyes?
He hoped that Emrys would find him.
Merlin falls onto his hands, listening to the echoes ricochet off the valleys. Dragon, gone, gone…
Slowly the void of silence swallows them up, leaving only the black stones looming over him like unmoved judges.
"What are you trying to find, my lord?" Gwen asks the next night. Philip is clattering about, sorting through the armor and weaponry scattered across the table to find the pieces for Arthur's final night of patrol. Tomorrow there will be no sleep, just preparations for the siege.
He could be sleeping now, he realizes; it would be far more beneficial. He hasn't considered not going, even though he has resigned himself to failure.
The fire turns Guinevere's eyes amber, her hair braided with gold thread. In her soft face is concern, and Arthur sighs away the lie he has prepared.
"Hope," he admits.
Day zero dawns with clouds glowing red. Arthur stands atop the battlements and soaks in the sight of his Camelot, still patched from the dragon weeks ago. People filter through the castle gates, taking shelter inside, while the undulating black of Palengard's army arcs over the horizon, set against the red. The curse sealed over the blue yesterday.
He grips the stone so hard his knuckles turn white and he squeezes his jaw, the heat welcome. You must learn to listen as well as you fight. Well, he listened plenty, but there was no one to hear.
He burned the useless piece of fabric this morning.
Abandonment is acid in his heart. It corrodes to rage, battle rage, and he embraces the blinding urge to break the world and cauterize it clean.
A drop splats on Arthur's cheek. He swipes it, then stares at the red streak staining the back of his hand.
The blood-filled sky rumbles, and Arthur draws his sword.