~5~ Nothing Is Ever Easy

Arthur dismissed Merlin that evening, but knew that the sudden air of relief came not only from the servant. As the big door creaked closed behind him, the king crashed backwards onto his bed. He'd told Gwenevere not to wait for him, for he had some business to attend to, and that was true enough. But now, as his aching muscles experienced the blessed relaxation of his feathered mattress, he didn't want to get up to do it.

His heavy, throbbing eyes closed, only for memories of the day to bombard his inner vision. What had happened that afternoon on the training field could not be described in any logical sense that he could think of. Everyone has their bad days and good days, but this was an insane, superhuman good day, for both of them. Merlin should have been limping out of the room that evening, bruised black and blue from the beatings just like every other practice outcome, but it was like two decades of devoted fighting had miraculously bloomed in his blood and made him a veteran, not better than Arthur, but nearly as good as. It startled him, and he couldn't help but believe that if he himself didn't have one of the good days, then he would have been clobbered.

He snorted. Good days. This was no ordinary day. Something is happening to him, him and his servant. But what?

It should have been impossible to shatter those swords, for they were made by the best blacksmiths in Camelot. It should have been impossible for Arthur to punch Merlin in the stomach like he did without shattering his hand. It should have been impossible for Merlin to be fast or skilled enough to foil the king's every trick, especially those of his own creation. And it should have been impossible for both of them to have such stamina, to not tire even though they had been fighting relentlessly for nearly ten minutes without pause. Arthur himself could have kept going, just not as vigorous, but with the speed and power they both delivered, Merlin should have been panting and sweating and struggling to move by the end of it.

Something. Wasn't. Right. But what?

Arthur felt his body drifting off to sleep despite himself.

But what?

Ͻ Ϫ Ͻ

Gaius woke up three hours after the sun broke free of the horizon, his face in the open book before him. Grimacing, he straightened, trying in vain to loosen the knot in his neck and back.

He had been up the whole night, knowing that he had little time left to discover if his suspicions were true. He'd been going at it for days, but as he lost hope, he fell asleep in his chair in the archives. Now, he tossed aside his current book in disgust and reached for another, noticing that his discarded pile was now considerably higher than the one of tomes he had yet to investigate. There were a few that he kept aside that mentioned even a little bit about werewolves, but they all said little, and they all said the same thing.

This new book, however, looked promising, for it was about the more rarer beasts of Albion. By the date on the inner cover, it was printed nearly a hundred years ago. Wishing that this volume had been at the top of the pile in the first place, Gaius flipped through the contents and eventually landed on page filled with a monstrous beast fitting the description given to him by the king and the knights.

The werewolf was snarling at the artist, long, clawed fingers stretched and ready for slashing. The arms were long like a primate's, good for far reaching and running on all fours. Its feet were like huge paws, more sinewy than a wolf's and longer nailed. Its legs had the musculature of a human, but the structure of a canine, with the extra backward joint, only slightly elongated. The hair was short, but longer on the back, forearms, calves, sternum, and behind the head, which was like a mane of glossy hair. The head was wolfish, with slight changes that made it look demonic, and pointed ears and cruel eyes. And, of course, a tufted wolf tail. Gaius was sure that if he was to show this drawing to any of the witnesses, they would agree without hesitation that this was indeed the beast.

A horrible, gnawing sensation invading his stomach, Gaius read the text on the opposite page.

Werewolves were the creatures of a past age. Their natures were vicious, their strength unbeatable, but their hearts were human once.

There was no such thing as werewolf offspring. Their kind survived through an ancient magic no creature possesses today, other than sicknesses – in a way, the magic was a sickness, for those who were bitten, or had come in contact with the beasts' saliva or blood, were tainted by the magic and were doomed to suffer its consequences.

Once infected, a man, woman, or child had only a manner of hours before they started to feel the symptoms, which included, depending on the person in question, headaches, cramps, dizziness and fatigue, and festering around the bite wound. In two days, they might have undulated between feeling strange and feeling wonderful, but usually, they lapsed into states of stupor, after which they continued on as though nothing had happened.

Before the end of a week, their strength magnified. They might have jumped an extra foot and sprinted faster and longer, and even lifted things that would leave a normal man gasping. By accounts taken by bitten victims, most were awed and excited about the new found yet undetermined strength, while others, the ones more cautious by nature, were worried and sought explanations.

It was a misconception that victims turned into their first werewolf on the full moon, but in reality, it happened between six and nine days after the bite. It usually occurred at night, when the body was resting and the final dregs of humanity were being mutated into the disease that was werewolf venom. When the body changed, the victim no longer had control with a human mind, and was entirely feral beast. All it saw were enemies and potential food. It attacked anything and everything, even close friends or family. After several hours, the human mind won control back and retook the body, which transformed back into the victim's original form.

The next change was anywhere from between one to seven days later, during which they might have been confused and disoriented, especially about the large memory block of their first night. Then they transformed again, for longer this time, and depending on the willpower of the person, he or she might or might not have turned back for one last session as a human. By the third transformation, the last trace of humanity was gone, and all that was left was the monstrous beast that was the werewolf.

Gaius reread the last sentence two more times, as if it bore deeper secrets than it revealed.

But a cure, he thought, panic rising. What about a cure?

He turned the page, pointedly ignoring the charcoal illustration of the monster, and was relieved to see there was more information there. He recalled that the book had been written almost a century ago as he read the first line.

Ten years ago, the order of small gifted families known as the Silverbloods hunted down these beasts that plagued the land like vermin. They aimed to kill, no matter who the werewolf once was, even if they were able to cure the disease...

A cure! Gaius thought excitedly. What is it? He read on.

...They had thought it too dangerous to risk letting a former werewolf roam free, for if he ever turned again, he may very well begin a new chain of monsters. They invented the 'cure' simply to ease the minds of the family and friends of the victim; the Silverbloods had claimed many attempts to use it, only to grimly announce that there was no time for the cure to set in before the beast attacked them, that they had no choice but to kill it.

It was for these suspicious circumstances that the Silverbloods were eventually disbanded, after the extinction of the werewolf. Once every last beast was slain, no kings or lords would sustain the order, and so the Silverbloods willingly dissipated with the spirits of those they hunted. Their supposed cure, however, was stolen and written down, and then spread to scholars all over Albion. This—

And there it ended.

Gaius stared with incredulity at the missing third of the page, torn right out by some unknown hand long ago. He flipped the sheet, only to see the description of a phoenix, half of its information gone as well.

It should be expected, though. Nothing was ever easy in Camelot, not when it involved his ward, Merlin, and the king, Arthur Pendragon. Nothing.

Ͻ Ϫ Ͻ

Argus Vane, cult master of the Blackhands, fumed impassively as the last search party returned, empty-handed, like all the others. He felt like molten rock beneath stolid earth, wishing to burst free in fire and fury, but he resisted. He was the master. He could not reveal such trivial emotions.

"Remus is not among them," said Claudius the soothsayer, as though he believed Argus to be blind. "He must be dead or captured."

"And for the sake of us all, he'd better not be the latter," Argus replied tonelessly. He could not bear to think that the Silver Heart had fallen into enemy claws...

"Better him dead then?" asked Claudius, rather flatly. The cult master turned his warning gaze on him, knowing that his hauntingly pale grey eyes would unsettle him. His eyes always unsettled lesser folk.

"Sometimes I wonder if your father's intelligence ever passed down to you," he said coolly. "Or if you got your swine of a mother's scrambled brains." He turned away from the soothsayer, looking over his praying people. They were all huddled in the outpost ruins, deep within unfamiliar woodland. Argus hated hiding like frightened rabbits, but with their people currently scattered and few in number, their state was a precarious one. They must reform, regroup, redraw their plans.

Claudius wisely said nothing, at least until he came upon the painfully obvious spectacle that no one from the last returning search party was approaching to report.

"No signs of Rowan or Jonathan either," he said, and Argus bit back a sarcastic retort.

He felt guilty, of course, that his brother sacrificed his own freedom for Argus', but at the same time, he knew that it was necessary. Jonathan was never a good a leader as his older sibling, and at the Blackhand's current position, they could not afford to lose their master.

"Once things are at last in motion, we will liberate my brother and extract revenge for his imprisonment. Whatever they've done to him, I will do ten times worse to their king," Argus growled, and his soothsayer nodded eagerly, understandably so. Claudius had, after all, lost close companions and family when the Camelot knights attacked them days ago in that surprise attack, the attack in which they were stolen of their chances to reclaim past glories. With Rowan gone and out of their control, everything was sent asunder like ashes in the wind.

"Tomorrow," Argus decided. "Tomorrow, we'll send the parties out again. Tell them to stay away until they find something. Infiltrate Camelot. Track any whisper of howling. Slice open the bellies of every wolf and bear they come across until they give me something!"

The cult master bit his tongue and grit his teeth. He should not have lost control like that. Signs of weakness would only pry at the cracks beginning to form in their foundations.

Slowly, hiding his repulsion, Argus put his hand on wiry Claudius, trying to ignore the soothsayer's rather foul breath.

"When the king is infected and the secret revealed, we will no longer have to be who we are not. This shade we hide behind is merely a temporary ruse to get us to the level we need. The Silverbloods will return to Albion, and the Blackhands will be no more. I promised this to all of you. And I aim to keep that promise."

"But what of Baldwin?" Claudius asked lowly. "What if he should appear? We have not sent word for months—"

"Captain Baldwin is a fool and a usurper. Once his order has seen the power we shall posses, they will join us. That is, if he even as the guts to return here. Italia is a long way from here." Argus looked back over his resting cult, some of which looked despondent and discouraged. The master hated seeing them such, and turned towards them.

"Your pain and suffering shall only last so you will forever be in the embrace of our lord," he declared forcefully. "Once we have resurrected his most powerful of creations, we shall be his shepherds once more!" He held up a balled fist. "By the hand of Nocturn!"

"By the hand of Nocturn!" the Blackhands roared in reply, their voices filling the night air with a heat that filled Argus' heart.

"And by his will," he whispered to himself, "we shall succeed."


"I need a holiday, a very long holiday. And I don't expect I shall return...In fact, I mean not to." ~ Bilbo Baggins (The Lord of the Rings)