~ Chapter 8: Lancelot and Guinevere~
- Arthur -
Surprisingly, despite a sleepless night, I was wide awake as we continued our journey the next morning. I knew we wouldn't get back to Camelot tonight, but if we got half-way through the forest of Eden then we would make it back to Camelot tomorrow, and I was beginning to feel excited.
I appreciated Merlin's presence, but I missed my kingdom. More importantly, I missed my wife. I was ready to go back. It was the first time I truly allowed myself to believe we'd make it back. Tomorrow, I would see my wife again. That thought echoed through my head.
As we walked, I hounded Merlin about his magic. Walking gave me too much opportunity to think and I needed him to answer a lot of the questions that I had. "Gwen," I said softly about an hour after we continued our journey. "Gwen and Lancelot."
It was something I had been considering for a while. Merlin must know something about that. He'd always defended Gwen to no end, and I was starting to think that it was because he knew something I didn't. Merlin sighed. "When Lancelot came back, I knew there was something off about him, but I couldn't figure it out. It was the little things that just didn't seem like something Lancelot would do," Merlin said. He seemed lost in thought. "Lancelot was the only one, other than Gaius, that knew about my powers."
"How did Lancelot figure it out?" I asked curiously.
"When Lancelot first came to Camelot and fought the griffin? He heard me using the spell that killed the griffin," Merlin explained.
I looked at Merlin amazed. "So it wasn't Lancelot that killed the griffin?" I asked him.
"I couldn't have killed the griffin alone. I simply enchanted the spear. Lancelot did the hard part," he told me.
I nodded, processing the information. "You were saying that Lancelot didn't seem right?" I asked him.
Merlin nodded. "As you know, he stayed in my chambers. I… I apologized to him. When he sacrificed himself at the Isle of the Blessed, he was stopping me from doing it," Merlin told me. "It was supposed to be me. I used my magic to knock you out so you couldn't sacrifice yourself. Camelot needed you. But Lancelot wouldn't let me do it. He sacrificed himself and for a long time, I tried to figure out a way that we could have closed the veil and still have saved Lancelot. When he came back, I told him that. I told him I wished I could have used my powers to save him. He didn't remember that I had magic." Merlin looked lost in thought for a moment. He looked up at me. "Lancelot wouldn't have forgotten about that. I didn't want to believe it, but I had to face the reality.
"Gaius and I started to look through the books he had. Many of them had information on magical creatures or magical concepts. Well one of them had information about a shade. We had to test Lancelot, and we realized that's what he was," Merlin explained.
"Merlin?" I asked, interrupting me. He looked up at me curiously. "You do realize I don't know what a shade is right?"
Merlin shrugged. "Not surprising. You don't know a lot of things," he joked. I glared at him. "A shade is a person that has been raised from the dead. They are given a task to do. In Lancelot's case, his job was to ruin Gwen. Gwen was meant to become queen of Camelot, and Morgana couldn't bear to see Gwen on what she considered her throne."
"So you're saying it was Lancelot's job to make Gwen commit adultery?" I asked confused. "But why would Gwen do it? She loved me?"
"I never really figured that part out," Merlin admitted. "I'm guessing that there was some spell cast on Lancelot that made Gwen want to be near him."
"Why couldn't you stop him?" I asked Merlin curiously. It's not that I was blaming him, I just wanted to understand.
"I thought he was brought back to hurt you. And while he was, I didn't realize what he was doing until it was too late," Merlin said.
I looked at Merlin curiously. There was a strange look on his face. Guilt, I realized after a moment. He blamed himself. "It wasn't your fault," I told him.
"If I had figured it out sooner or reacted earlier," he started to say.
"It wasn't your responsibility to figure that out," I told him. "You are a sorcerer, not a mind reader."
"Did Arthur Pendragon just try to make me feel better?" Merlin asked me.
I rolled my eyes. "Don't be ridiculous."
We continued our journey in silence for a while. "Why did you tell me you weren't going to be fighting in the battle?" I asked him after a while. It was something I have been wanting to ask him since he first told me, but I never could make myself ask.
"Morgana unleashed a creature that made me lose my powers," he told me. "It was not the first time Morgana targeted me, but this time, she knew what she was doing. Mordred told her I had magic. She knew if I didn't have magic then I couldn't save you. I went to the crystal caves to get my magic back."
I listened to everything he said, but something was sticking in my mind. "That wasn't the first time Morgana targeted you?" I asked him curiously.
"Since I poisoned her, she hated me. I was suspicious of her when she came back and I quickly realized that she wasn't all she said she was. She realized that I knew she was a traitor. It's not necessarily that she was targeting me, but if she'd had her way I would have died long ago," he told me.
"When did she try to kill you?" I asked incredulously.
"Um… a couple days after she came back to Camelot. That was before I knew for sure that she was a traitor. I followed her out to the woods and she knew I was there. She and Morgause tied me up in chains and left me to be killed," he told me. He looked like he was considering something. "I want you to know. I never spent the day in the tavern."
I looked at him shocked. "But Gaius always said that you were," I told him confused.
"Well Gaius couldn't really say, 'oh he's the old sorcerer locked in your cells', or 'he's off using magic to save your life', or 'sorry he's out destroying a magical creature known as a fomorroh so he won't kill you'. Really what did you expect him to say?" Merlin asked me.
I was about to make a joke when his words sunk in. "So you wouldn't kill me?" I asked, raising my eyebrows.
"The fomorroh," Merlin answered. "It's a creature of the old religion. It has multiple heads and one thing about it is when you cut off one head, another grows back. Morgana put one in my neck. It drives you so completely, you can only think about one thing. In my case, all I could think about was…" He looked down. "Was killing you. Luckily Gaius realized that I was being possessed, and he was able to paralyze the creature in my neck so I could destroy the mother creature in Morgana's cabin."
I carefully thought about what he told me. I felt like it should bother me that he tried to kill me, but it didn't. I was getting to the point where when I heard that someone was possessed and tried to kill me, it didn't surprise me. Even Gwen has been possessed. It was only because Gaius knew the woman… I froze. "Merlin," I asked, trying to hide the amusement in my voice. I really wasn't successful and I was fighting to keep my smile from spreading.
"Yes?" He asked me curiously.
"Merlin, were you a girl?" I asked. My voice was shaky as I tried to cover my laughter. I coughed to hide my chuckle.
Merlin groaned. "You are so lucky that I like Gwen," he told me. "Or else I would never have done it."
"That's why you needed a dress," I said, connecting the dots. I coughed again to hide a chuckle.
"Are you laughing at me?" Merlin asked.
I coughed again. "No," I lied. I really owe Merlin a lot more than I realized. I can't believe he dressed like a girl for me. "You make a lovely woman Merlin." I couldn't help myself. This was too great to pass up.
Merlin glared at me. "You better stop," he warned me.
"What are you going to do?" I taunted.
"You'll see," Merlin said darkly
I rolled my eyes. What was the worst he could do?