Chapter 3

A/N: I know that the last chapter is, by all accounts, rubbish. I just thought the Pendragons own a bloody castle on the banks of that river in Egypt! It made sense to me that Arthur would deny Merlin's death as fiercely as he denied his friendship with him. You know, Uther- style: " I did not lose my wife because I asked for a son, no let's blame magic itself!" Or in this case, Merlin's supposed uselessness. The git.

Right, so this chapter should be better. I hope. A lot of dialogue. I'm not very good at that... Gulp. Cheers!

Guinevere had her face in her hands, sighing. "Might as well tell you", she mumbled.

Arthur certainly did not like the sound of that.

There was a long silence, filled only with the roaring of the fire in the hearth. Arthur's forced lightness died a silent death. He didn't dare ask what Guinevere had kept from him that got her so desperate. He couldn't stand it. Not again. Yet, he had to know, hadn't he?

"What?", Arthur asked, even though he had the feeling he didn't want to know.

Guinevere sighed and started talking, forcibly calm.

"Right, I'll tell this from the beginning. When you lost Merlin to the bandits, did you have any hope of them leaving Merlin alone?"

"Of course not, they're bandits after all!"

"Yet they did. Why?"

"How should I know the reasoning of the vermin? Probably thought he would die anyway."

Guinevere nodded and hummed. "And when you last saw Merlin, was he able to walk very far?"

"Gods, no. I had to carry him! Against his will, too. He thought it was the time to make jokes about leaving him behind." Arthur huffed affronted. As if he would ever let that happen!

"So, he couldn't possibly have walked into a bog close to Camelot, having no problems doing so, as if he hadn't been struck by a maze? Even though he was and he should, by all accounts, have bled to death, alone, not that far from the Valley of the Fallen Kings?"

Arthur had no idea what, exactly, Guinevere had just asked him. He played safe by making a noncommittal sound. Guinevere sent him a pitying look. He blushed. Busted, dammit! Again, there was a long silence.

"Merlin's wound was healed before you found him. With magic.", Guinevere said at last. Arthur's world started slipping sideways again. All his false cheer for nothing.

ItwasthestrangewolfMerlin'...!

"Morgana had healed him. The bandits were sent by her. She healed him and...sort-of enchanted him, I guess you could say."

His world righted itself again as Arthur breathed in, relieved. Of course Merlin's not a sorcerer I knew it! ... Hang on... Arthur jumped up from his chair.

" What do you mean, 'sort-of enchanted him'? What did she do to him?"

Guinevere looked at her hands in her lap. No longer able to contain her nervousness, she started rambling: " She had this weird snake with nine heads, I think, and when you cut off one of the heads, it grows back again and when you then let that head bite someone, that someone must obey all your commands if they like it or not, which they don't, of course and-"

"Guinevere", Arthur said. Guinevere stopped rambling and gave Arthur a concerned look. He' d paled during her speech, had sat down again and was now digging his nails into the armrests. Merlin bitten by a magical snake, obeying all of Morgana' s orders? Gods, why had they kept this from him?

"Explain again, slowly: what was it with the snake- bite and what order did Morgana give?"

Guinevere looked disgusted. "The snake-head bit its way into Merlin's neck and stayed there. Merlin-" She gulped, as if to keep back bile. "Merlin was conscious." Arthur felt utterly disgusted and angry. It must have been torture! If he ever lay his hands on Morgana, damn her! Arthur almost didn't want to ask, but-

" The order was to kill me, wasn't it?" Guinevere nodded, not meeting his eyes.

"What did he do?" Guinevere looked doubtingly. " I can't exactly arrest him now, can I? Even if I could, I wouldn't. You know that." She nodded and started summing up Merlin's pitiful assassination attempts.

" He tried poison. Something to do with a crossbow in your wardrobe, too. An acid bath..." Arthur's wife suddenly turned a lovely shade. The King himself remembered perfectly the time his not-yet-wife had forbid him to bathe. Only now, he understood why. That, though, didn't keep him from blushing too.

" O, I forgot:", she said, "before the bath, he tried to stab you in the back with your own ceremonial sword. Merlin's try at poetic murder, I guess." They both chuckled at that.

"How did it stop? Did you cut out the snake-head?", Arthur asked.

She shook her head: " We tried that. It grew back. We didn't realise until, well, the bath... After that, Gaius sedated the snake. That worked, for a while. We had Merlin back, but he claimed he didn't remember anything that had happened. And he really didn't remember anything that had happened since you found him, though I could tell he did remember the snake." Guinevere stopped talking and hugged herself, looking smaller. "I asked Gaius what to do to make it stop for good. He said the only way was to find out wherever Morgana was hiding, get past her and kill the mother-beast. When Merlin disappeared and you thought he'd gone to the tavern, I thought at first Merlin had gone and tried just that. But then I realised that Merlin could never find Morgana before the sedative stopped working and he'd be controlled again. And that Merlin must have realised that too."

Guinevere was shaking and Arthur sat himself on his knees in front of her and embraced embrace her, although he didn't understand why she was trembling.

"For two days- for two days I thought Merlin had killed himself, to stop himself from killing you. It was something Merlin would do for you." Arthur stiffened. "Yes he would, wouldn't he?", he whispered softly. He hugged Guinevere closer. Merlin would never leave me for a month. Not like that. He hadn't run away. He was-

" I don't know how he did it,", said Guinevere suddenly, "I never dared to ask, but- after those two awful days, he came back. The snake-head was still in his neck- it's now in a jar on one of the shelves in Gaius' rooms- but he was all right. No enchantment. I heard from Elyan they found an old sorcerer in the woods who claimed that you would be killed if they kept him from wherever he was going. I think he helped him. Merlin's best friend growing up was a sorcerer. I don't think Merlin's as suspicious of them as we are. He never told me though, and I never asked." She looked him in the eye:

"That's why I was angry you punished him for going to the tavern, of all things. He was probably planning on killing himself, until that sorcerer turned up- or something. It were probably two awful days for him, and you thought he was getting drunk..." She shook her head. "You should know better."

"Why are you telling me now?" Arthur asked Guinevere. Tears began to form in her eyes.

" Merlin has proven time and again he would do anything for you. I think Merlin wouldn't have just left, after so long. I think something happened a month ago, something so bad you haven't told any of us and probably tried to convince yourself it didn't happen. You've never acted this careless, certainly not about Merlin."

Arthur didn't meet her eyes. She ducked her head until they looked each other in the eyes. " What happened?", she asked softly. The dam broke. Crying, Arthur told her everything. Every thought, every suspicion. After that, they both grieved and talked about Merlin; about his courage and mystery and goofiness and – well- Merlinness.

King and Queen were both so distracted in their grieving, in trying to figure things out, they didn't hear a certain old physician enter the chamber. He had heard everything. And when the King asked his Queen: "He has kept the enchantment secret, saying he had gone to the tavern. How many times has he not gone to the tavern and was he a hero without anyone knowing it?", he answered: "More times than I can remember, Sire." And he told them every time he could.

The next day, the truth of Merlin's disappearance during the hunting trip was revealed to the court and Merlin was announced dead, for if he hadn't come back to Camelot already- and with his power, although that wasn't revealed outside the Round Table until much later- he never would. He was given a Knight's burial, similar to Sir Lancelot's before him. A week later, King Arthur made work of subtly reintroducing Magic to his Kingdom. He had learned the truth. Magic was returned to the land, Merlin's destiny was fulfilled.

Too bad he wasn't there to see it.

A/N: Few, that was that. Sorry if the ending's a bit rushed, it was late when I wrote it. Um, the wolves- thing from the summary will be explained in the next chapter. The end isn't near yet. Far from it, actually.