Chapter VII: Lancelot's Choice

Lancelot didn't quite know what he was supposed to think.

On the one hand, sorcery was illegal. It was, in fact, the most illegal thing in the entire kingdom. He had, like most other people his age, grown up on stories of sorcerers' evils: blighted crops, hailstones bigger than a baby's head, plague and pestilence and sour milk and rampant infertility. He had been taught that magic corrupted, that its practitioners had sold their very souls in return for power.

On the other hand, any idiot could see that Merlin wasn't quite like the sorcerers in the tales.

When Lancelot had seen the scrawny lad about to be mauled by the whatever-that-was, he had forgotten the magic and acted instinctively, dragging the boy out of the way. Then the youth had turned, had looked upon the face of his savior….

He had been more afraid of Lancelot than he was of the monster. He had been absolutely terrified, but he'd still automatically conjured that golden shield and saved Lancelot's life. Then, instead of letting the monster kill him—which he could have. It would have been so much easier, so much more convenient, if he'd let the man who knew his secret die—he'd done that fire thing to Lancelot's sword. The blade had cut through the monster like a dinner knife through warm butter.

And now it turned out that the boy—Merlin, his name was—was Prince Arthur's manservant and friend. The affection between them was obvious even after just a few minutes, though he doubted that the prince would ever admit to it. It would have been heartwarming if their closeness didn't mean Merlin was in constant danger of fiery death.

It was also insane. Merlin was, as mentioned, in constant danger of fiery death due to his proximity to the prince of Camelot. Arthur was Uther's son. He seemed a fair bit nicer than the king (or perhaps Lancelot was a bit prejudiced against Uther for shattering his long-held dreams), but Lancelot had no doubt that Arthur shared his father's prejudice against magic.

So what on earth was Merlin thinking?

There was only one thing to do. He had to talk to the lad, ask him what was going on and why a sorcerer had decided to get a job in King Uther's household. So, partly to distract himself from the pain of rejection and partly because he was genuinely curious, Lancelot started plotting a way to get Merlin alone. He'd probably have to use some form of trickery, as the sorcerer was quite skittish and he didn't particularly want Arthur suspecting anything.

The prince in question sighed heavily. "I did think he would at least let you demonstrate your skills," he grumbled. "If he had—well." Arthur frowned. "It isn't a knighthood, but would you be interested in a job as a guard? They're recruiting and could always use a man with your talent."

"I—I'll think about it, Your Highness. I need time…."

"I can show you to an inn, if you'd like," Merlin volunteered.

"Ah, no. I've actually already got a room. Thank you for the offer, though."

"Okay." Merlin nodded. "But I can still show you around the castle, maybe introduce you to a guard or two."

"No, Merlin," Arthur interjected, "you can't. This might come as a surprise to you, but you work for me. You do what I say, when I say it. You do not go traipsing away from the training field to play with flowers."

"That's right. I traipse away from the training field to help my dearly beloved great-uncle create the life-saving medicines that help keep your kingdom running."

Arthur pulled up short. "Great-uncle?"

"Yeah," Merlin replied, looking a bit surprised. "My grandfather was Gaius's brother."

"Maternal or paternal?"

"Maternal." Something flickered in those blue eyes, but Lancelot had no idea what it could be. It was gone before he could process it. "Sort of. Mother's adopted. Seriously, though, hadn't you figured that out?"

"I had wondered why he put up with you, yes."

"Speaking of putting up with, I don't have to put up with your bullying for an entire week." Merlin smirked, then, remembering, turned to Lancelot with a rather embarrassed expression. "Sorry."

"Not your fault," the other man sighed.

"Still, I probably shouldn't keep bringing that up."

"No, no, don't worry about it."

"No, no, I should." Merlin turned his head so that Arthur couldn't see his face. He winked, eyes flashing gold. "In fact, I feel so guilty about it that I absolutely insist on inviting you to eat with me and Gaius."

Arthur's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Are you trying to get out of your chores again?"

Merlin was the very picture of innocence. "Would I do such a thing?"

Arthur glared.

Merlin rolled his eyes. "It's supper, Arthur. I'll be done with your slave labor by then."

"Are you absolutely certain, Merlin? Because you're quite a bit behind after sneaking out on me."

Ah, that was right. Arthur had been grumbling about how his useless lazy manservant had made a break for it rather than continue sparring. Now that Lancelot knew the useless lazy manservant's identity, he wondered if his presence was the real reason for Merlin's flight. Considering that the sorcerer had tried to hide under a table when Lancelot entered the physician's chambers, he wouldn't be surprised.

"I'd be glad to eat with you, Merlin. What time do you and Gaius usually eat?"

They continued in that vein for the next couple of minutes, Merlin and Lancelot arranging dinner and Arthur joking that it was a date, to which Merlin replied that Arthur was the one who had gotten him a flower. That, of course, led into a retelling of the Horrible Spiders Incident, which led to Lancelot wondering once again why on earth a sorcerer was so devoted to a Pendragon. It really didn't make any sense.

Merlin and Arthur left him to his own devices for the rest of the afternoon. With nothing better to do, Lancelot returned to the training field, where he met and sparred with a pleasant blond fellow named Leon. Like Arthur, Leon thought it a shame that someone with Lancelot's skills couldn't become a knight. Also like Arthur, he suggested getting a job in the guard. The knight had no doubt that the wandering soldier could easily become Captain of the Palace Guard one day, and that was a position just as prestigious and respected as knighthood. Lancelot plastered a smile onto his face and thanked him. He knew that the knight was just trying to help. It wasn't Leon's fault that the attempt wasn't working.

To distract himself, he thought about his immanent meeting with Merlin. And Gaius, he supposed, but he was mostly interested in the nephew rather than the uncle. It was about time to eat, so he made his way back to the medical wing, thinking that he could perhaps help Gaius with cooking.

It turned out that Gaius had finished cooking, but he let Lancelot set their tiny table. The failed knight had just set down the last napkin when Merlin burst into the room. "Sorry I'm late, Gaius, Arthur was being annoying again." He froze. "Oh. Hi, Lancelot."

The boisterous façade failed, and for a moment the would-be knight caught a glimpse of a hunted, weary man, a man who knew fear and darkness and lies. Then, like the sun coming out from behind a cloud, he was his chipper self again, though a bit less exuberant than he had been before. "I suppose you want an explanation, then?"

Lancelot nodded.

Gaius turned, his famous eyebrow shooting upwards. "An explanation about what?"

Merlin flushed, fiddled with his neckerchief. "He might or might not have seen me use… certain illegal means to fight a thingamajig that was trying to kill me."

"Merlin!" The physician was, unsurprisingly, horrified. "Tell me you aren't saying what I think you're saying!"

"I haven't told anyone about his magic," Lancelot said, "and I don't intend to. I would, however, like to ask a few questions."

The sorcerer bowed his head. "Fair enough. Ask away, then."

"Merlin," Gaius hissed, "what is going on?"

The sorcerer looked so jittery and unhappy that Lancelot opted to do him a favor and explain. "He saved my life."

Merlin blushed.

"I was just coming into the city when I saw some sort of monster attacking him," the failed knight continued. "He had set it on fire, but the flames went out when it charged. I pulled him out of the way. He returned the favor by creating some kind of… I don't know what. A shield, I suppose, a shield made of light that stopped the creature from murdering me. Then, even though he was losing consciousness from blood loss, he still managed to do something to my sword that helped it cut through the monster's skin."

"And then," Merlin sighed, "we agreed to pretend that I didn't exist and I started plotting to grow a beard."

"What?" Lancelot asked blankly.

"As a disguise," Merlin explained. "Except you saw me before I could grow one, so…." He gave a helpless little shrug.

Gaius's expression cycled from shock to horror to disapproval and back again. His eyebrow shot up in a most frightening way. "Are you trying to get yourself killed?"

"No," Merlin mumbled, staring sulkily at his feet.

"In his defense," Lancelot interjected, "the thing would have eaten him if he hadn't fought."

"I believe it's the griffin people have been sighting lately," Gaius said, "and you could have run."

Merlin looked up, his face developing a distinctly mulish expression. "Not really. I think the sorceress sent it after me."

"Pardon?" Lancelot asked.

"A few weeks ago, someone sent a monster—an afanc—to poison the water supply. Arthur and I managed to kill it, but then two weeks later a woman showed up and tricked me into drinking poison. I think we told you about that. Well," he corrected himself, "Arthur told you what he thinks happened. He doesn't realize that the poison was meant for me. But it was. Gaius, she's proven she has control over magical creatures and wants me dead, and she's not afraid to kill others to get what she wants. Using Bayard to poison me nearly restarted a war! If there was any chance that she sent that griffin thing, I had to stop it before it hurt anyone. I had to."

Lancelot stared at the foolish, brave, noble young man before him and barely kept his mouth from falling open. No, this was definitely not one of the monstrous magic users in the tales. He thanked the gods that he'd decided to let Merlin go free.

"Don't you think that assuming the griffin was after you is a bit arrogant?" Gaius demanded.

Merlin flushed. "Maybe, maybe not. It did manage to find me in the woods, and it was charging at me. Considering that there's a sorceress with a vendetta against me and that this beast fixated on yours truly rather than anyone else in Camelot, I can't help but wonder if there's more to this than coincidence."

Gaius grimaced but was forced to acknowledge that his ward had a point. "Very well. But couldn't you at least have looked around before using magic?"

"Sorry, I was trying to keep an eye on the angry cat-thing that appeared to desire to eat me."

"It was a fairly isolated stretch of woodland," Lancelot chimed in.

"So what were you doing there?" Merlin wondered.

"I didn't want to enter the city smelling like a pigpen," the embarrassed soldier confessed. "I was following the stream out of sight of the road."

Merlin cracked a smile. "So can we agree that Lancelot being there and me not seeing him was a complete coincidence and that I'd had no reason to look around?" Eyes wide and innocent and hopeful, he looked up at his uncle.

"I'm not going to tell anyone," Lancelot assured the physician and his ward. "That would be poor repayment for saving my life."

Gaius groaned, sank into his chair. Every year showed in the wrinkles of his face. "You'll be the death of me, Merlin."

The sorcerer flinched. "I hope not."

Silence fell. In a (failed) attempt to break the ice, Lancelot commented, "The stew is probably getting cold by now."

"Right." Merlin's head bobbed. "Wouldn't want that." He frowned. "Well, actually, I could probably heat it right up again."

"Don't," Gaius ordered.

They served themselves. The next few minutes were quiet save for the sounds of chewing and occasional requests to pass the salt. Finally, when their bowls were empty and the last of their bread devoured, Lancelot tentatively got back to the point of the dinner. "So. You're a sorcerer in Camelot."

"Actually, I'm technically a warlock," Merlin corrected.

"…All right."

"You have no idea what that is."

"Not really."

Merlin adopted the tone of a lecturer. "A lot of people use terms like wizard, sorcerer, and witch interchangeably, but they're actually very different things. 'Sorcerer' has become catchall for magic-users of all shapes and sizes, but it technically refers to a person who was not born with the ability to access magic who learns it. A warlock is a male witch, a person born with the ability to access magic. The ability usually manifests in the teenage years, but there are a few cases—me included—where the magic shows up at another age."

"Wait," Lancelot interjected, "people can be born with magic?"

Merlin nodded. "It's like—it's like being born with a really nice singing voice, only having a nice voice can get you killed. Witches and warlocks are born with the nice voice. Sorcerers and sorceresses have to learn how to make themselves sound that good. And, um, I guess that people who can't become sorcerers are all mutes. The comparison kind of breaks down then."

"I see." Lancelot's gaze went distant. "I never knew that."

"Not a lot of people do, now," Merlin sighed. "And like I said, people will use the term 'sorcerer' for anyone with magic. That doesn't help."

"So you were born with magic," the failed knight repeated.

"Yup."

"You don't have a choice about using it?"

"I've tried to stop." Merlin winced. "I ended up using it in my sleep. I'd wake up to find myself floating by the ceiling or that I'd turned Mother's cookware into stone or that there was an apple tree sprouting from my bed."

Better and better. Something of Lancelot's alarm must have shown in his face, because Merlin quickly continued, "But that doesn't happen if I use magic while I'm awake. Which I do. You don't have to worry about me blowing up the castle in my sleep."

"Blow up the castle?" the soldier repeated.

"I won't," Merlin assured him.

"But you could if you wanted to."

The sorcerer—warlock—flinched. "Probably," he confessed.

He didn't look like the sort of person who could destroy a castle. He had big blue eyes and stuck-out ears and delicate, elfin features. He was slender, and his oversized shirt made him look like a child trying on his father's clothes.

Appearances could be very deceiving.

"I… see."

Merlin fidgeted. The warlock was clearly rather uncomfortable.

"But you're in Camelot."

"Yeah," he mumbled, "I am. It's a bit of a long story." Merlin settled back in his chair. His cadence changed. "I'm originally from a small village in Essetir. In a small town like the one where I grew up, people notice things about you. They notice that their fields are always free of vermin even when neighboring villages complain of swarms. They notice a single mother who never needs firewood. They notice a boy who never gets sick. They notice these things, and they whisper about them.

"My powers were growing too quickly for me to handle. Mother and I were terrified that I'd lose control and be discovered. Then we would both burn." He shuddered. "And one day, I was caught in the act of sorcery. If the discoverer had been anyone other than Will, my only friend, I wouldn't be talking to you right now.

"Will's always been a bit of a rebel and troublemaker. He was angry that I hadn't told him, but he quickly decided that a magical best friend was the best thing ever. He encouraged me, asked me to demonstrate for him and do pranks with him. Like I said, a troublemaker.

"I kept Will's knowledge from my mother for two months. Then she found out just what I was doing with my magic and Will's encouragement. I've never seen her so angry. It was scarier than that griffin we fought. But then she calmed down and gave it some thought, and eventually she decided to send me to Camelot."

"But why?" Lancelot demanded. "I mean—this is Camelot. People with magic—" He cut himself off, but the unsaid words nonetheless echoed around the room. People with magic die here.

"Part of it was that I couldn't control my abilities very well," Merlin sighed. "It's an open secret that Gaius used to be a sorcerer—a true sorcerer, not a warlock like me—the only one my mother knew. Well, aside from my father, but he's not an option. She had tried finding druids and other sorcerers while I was younger, but she couldn't. Gaius was the only person she could think of who could teach me control."

Lancelot nodded slowly. He supposed that made sense. If it was a choice between inevitable discovery due to loss of control or taking a risk to gain control and safety, he could understand why Merlin's mother had sent her son here.

"That's the reason she gave me," Merlin continued, "but I think there's another that she didn't want to admit to. I think she wanted to remind me of the price of indiscretion." His eyes darkened. "And I did remember."

Lancelot almost asked what had reminded him, but stopped himself at the last moment. Instead, he asked, "So if you were sent here to learn magic, how did you end up serving Uther's son?"

"There's kind of a funny story about that…."

Merlin spun a tale like nothing Lancelot had ever heard before, a story of dragons and destinies and secrets and lies. He told of an enemy and a guardian both hidden in the shadows. He spoke about Kilgharrah's prophecy (which Merlin admitted he wasn't certain he believed) and of his hope that maybe, just maybe, he could show Arthur that magic wasn't evil. He was still working out how to do that and hadn't really come up with any good ideas yet, but where there's a will there's a way, and he had will enough for ten men. Also, he added, if Lancelot had any suggestions, he was welcome to contribute.

By the time the warlock finished his tale, Lancelot's head was spinning. This was… it was quite a lot of information. It was an insane, fantastical story that made no sense and all the sense in the world. It was bizarre and wonderful and only just beginning.

"Lancelot? Are you all right?"

The failed knight jerked out of his reverie. "Er, I'm fine, Merlin. It's just a lot to take in."

"Oh." Merlin fidgeted. "I guess it is. I mean, obviously it is, but I went through it gradually and had time to adjust. You've just had really crazy day, though."

Lancelot barked a laugh. "You can say that again."

Merlin's lips twitched up. "You've just had a really crazy day, though."

The failed knight shook his head. "I think—I—thank you."

Merlin was honestly startled. "What for?"

Lancelot nearly rolled his eyes. "For saving Camelot. For saving my life. For telling me."

"Oh." The warlock blushed. "You're welcome, I suppose." He was clearly not used to praise.

The soldier laughed again, but this was softer, less harsh. "But I think I have to leave now. It's dark out, see?" He gestured toward the window. Sure enough, the sky outside had gone black. "I need to get back, and I think I need to sleep before I can actually comprehend everything you've told me. Lots of sleep."

Merlin grinned sheepishly. "Yeah. I guess that it kind of is a lot."

"Something like that, yes."

"So I'll maybe see you tomorrow?" Merlin frowned. "Unless you were planning on leaving Camelot. I'm pretty sure Arthur will knight you once he's king, but Uther is…. Well. He's Uther."

Lancelot goggled at him. "Merlin, do you really think I'm going to leave after everything you've just told me?"

"Well, considering that there's an evil sorceress trying to destroy this city and Uther pretty much just spat on your life's dream and you'll technically be committing treason for harboring a sorcerer by staying here and not turning me in, I would think that you'd want to get as far away as possible."

Oh. Lancelot hadn't thought of it like that. He had just heard tell of a city in danger, guarded only by a half-trained youth in constant danger of death, an old physician, and a potentially crazy dragon (a dragon. He didn't think he'd ever get used to that), that would need all the help it could get. He explained this to Merlin and Gaius in short, choppy sentences, unable to articulate his thoughts. He didn't really expect them to understand his babbling.

Except they did, Merlin especially. The warlock's face broke out into a wide grin that lit up the entire room. "You're really staying?"

Lancelot smiled back. "Of course. Camelot is far too interesting to leave."

A bit late in the day, but still on time. At least in my time zone. Not sure about yours.

A bit of wonderful news: The fantastic cropka has translated my Merlin fanfiction "The Birdbrain and the Bees" into Polish! It's now "Ptasi móżdżek i pszczoły," on mirriel - forum, for those of you who read Polish. Thank you, cropka! You rock.

Alternate chapter title: "Wherein Lancelot Has Much to Digest, Both Metaphorically and Physically"

Next chapter: September 11. Time passes and a new villain appears.