Disclaimer: I don't own Merlin, I don't own Angel, yada, yada, yada.

Thanks to dieticlast for being my beta-reader.

The Ruins of My Kingdom to Come

By Alkeni

Chapter 16: The Witchfinder Rises

At least he didn't have guards pinning his arms behind his back at this moment.

That was about the only thing that was going well as the guards tore apart his room, Aredian watching from near the doorway. Arthur was there as well, and he at least didn't seem that enthused by what the guards were doing. Combined with his disbelief at Aredian's accusations, it suggested that Arthur was at least tentatively on his side.

Unfortunately, that doesn't count for much as long as Uther believes everything Aredian says. And all available evidence suggested that that was true. Unless Aredian found nothing in this search...

Wesley wasn't stupid enough to have any sort of magical implements within his quarters, even if he'd owned any in the first place.

He'd had nothing of the sort with him when the interaction of Illyria and the Mutari Generator took them both to this past timeline, and he'd hardly had any sort of opportunity to get anything like that since. But Aredian didn't need to find an actual magical implement, if he'd even recognize one in the first place.

No. All the Witchfinder needed to find was something he could claim was magical. Something he could use as a wedge to get Wesley into the dungeons. Where I'll likely be tortured into confessing. Wesley was grateful they were still over eight hundred years before the Spanish Inquisition – the arts of torture and self-incrimination were just not as advanced yet.

Not that they aren't rather effective at this moment.

Wesley had little doubt that if Aredian was given enough time, he'd break and confess to the very real fact that he was a magic-user. His experience at the hands of Faith, and his own various descents into the darker parts of his own psyche meant that he'd be able to handle far more than Aredian was likely counting on or expecting – or used to – but...

Given enough time, everyone broke under torture. There was simply a limit to how much the human body and especially the human mind could take.

Of course, things won't get to that point. Well before he broke, Illyria would have broken him out of imprisonment and killed anyone that got in the way. Which would mean they'd have to leave Camelot, which would be the least desirable option. Of course, it will be hard enough convincing her to wait even a little while.

He had no illusions that Illyria held any concern for him as himself – but he was her Qua'ha Xahn. No one else could damage him, or kill him. It was the insult on her property and her majesty that she would be outraged about.

What he was hoping, assuming Aredian simply failed to find anything, was to expose him. With any luck, Merlin would be his usual overly nosy and involved self and find a way to expose that Aredian was faking his 'ability' to find those who used magic. And if not...

Well, there's always the Illyria option. It remained viable, if a distinctly secondary one. Not that relying on Merlin was all that comforting either. Though Morgana would have every reason to want the Witchfinder gone as well.

Wesley was pulled from his thoughts as Aredian gave an order to the guards searching his quarters. "Comb every inch. The sorcerer is a master of concealment."

"There's nothing for you to find, Aredian." Wesley told the Witchfinder, resigned to the fact that it was hardly going to stop him.

"Well, I can hardly take your word for that, now can I?" Aredian pointed out blandly. Before he could give the guards more directives, Wesley heard Illyria's voice at the door, on the other side of the guards blocking the entrance.

"Entry will be mine, regardless of any pathetic resistance you would attempt to inflict upon me. I do not wish to be so inconvenienced as to have to remove you. You will move." Wesley bit his lip at Illyria's words. He had been rather hoping that they'd not move straight to the violence this early.

"Let her through." Arthur told the guards at the door, who parted, allowing Illyria through.

Despite a few entreaties to make some attempts to blend in – and they had been halfhearted at best, given how little effect Wesley had known they'd be likely to have – Illyria had persistently refused to wear anything other than her armor.

"So you would be the Lady Illyria?" Aredian guessed, matching her to the descriptions of her he'd no doubt gotten during his various interviews.

"The unworthy speak my name with peril." Illyria told the Witchfinder, turning to face him. "You violate the quarters of my Qua'ha Xahan." She turned to Arthur, "And you allow him to. Remove him at once."

"My authority to search the quarters of Wesley Wyndam-Pryce comes from the King, Lady Illyria." Aredian told her, repeating his use of her name confidently, unafraid of this short woman in strange armor with even stranger blue hair. "Interfering in this search will only tar you with the same guilty brush as your servant."

Arthur cut in before Illyria could speak. He'd not spent much time around the woman, but his exposure to her was enough for him to want to keep her as calm as possible. Illyria was seemingly impossibly strong and fast for a woman of her size. While he believed he was better with a sword than she was – though he couldn't be sure – there was only so much skill could do.

Nor did he want to risk the guards or knights if it could be avoided.

Though, the prince admitted to himself, if she killed Aredian first, I wouldn't mind that at all. Arthur had found very quickly that he disliked this 'Witchfinder'. Perhaps he was a trusted ally in the fight against the evils of magic. But the man was...annoying, and just...

Arthur couldn't really understand why, but he did not like Aredian. Well more than that – Aredian gave Arthur a sort of 'bad taste' in his mouth, for the lack of a better way of putting it.

"Wesley has not been proven guilty of anything except having a loose tongue." Arthur told the Witchfinder.

"Do you doubt my findings, Arthur? Do you doubt the trust your father has placed in my skills?" Aredian raised one eyebrow as he glanced at the prince.

"I doubt your findings, as I would doubt anyone's findings, without proof." Arthur replied. "If there is proof," He gestured to the room, "then you will find it, and I will accept your findings. Until then, I'll stick with doubt."

"Irrelevant." Illyria cut in before Aredian could say anything else. "My Qua'ha Xahn is not the sorcerer you are searching for, nor the one you claim him to be. You will cease this-"

"Illyria." Wesley cut in, then continued, speaking not in modern English, but instead in Atreshian, a common demonic dialect that Wesley knew Fred understood some of, and suspected Illyria would have been able to understand regardless. "While this is hardly a situation I'd like to be in, I don't think you need to engage in any violence at this moment. I'd really rather-"

"Your desires are irrelevant." Illyria replied in the same language, confirming his suspicious with the fluency in which she handled the complicated pronunciations. "This so-called Witchfinder is a liar and even more detestable a mortal specimen than Uther. He intends you harm, and I will not allow any harm to come to that which is mine."

"I'll be fine. I can handle whatever it is that he's likely to throw at me in the short span he'll have me." Wesley countered. Aredian and Arthur were both looking from one to the other of them – and even the guards had slowed their search to a crawl as they watched the two strangest people in Camelot speak a language that none of them understood.

Not that that was new, but this was a new unintelligible language.

"I insist you stop that at once!" Aredian demanded.

"You're unlikely to have any effect like that." Arthur told the Witchfinder. "It doesn't really matter what-"

"They could be using this language to plot against the Kingdom!"

"If they are, they're hardly going to stop using it, now are they?"

For his part, Wesley didn't really pay any attention to the conversation between Arthur and Aredian. Convincing Illyria to not go on a killing spree was enough to focus his mind.

"Aredian is a fraud and a liar. But he needs to be exposed as such before he starts a frenzied hunt that leads to him arresting people who don't have a God-King to break them out if things go poorly. If he does find or manufacture 'proof' against me, he'll be too busy with me to notice Merlin proving him false." I hope.

"Irrelevant." Illyria repeated herself. "I will not have you come to harm at this one's hands." She gestured with disgust at Aredian. "I do not give you permission to allow yourself to be injured or die."

"Is that concern I'm hearing?" Wesley didn't believe that it was, despite the subtle change in pitch in Illyria's words. He was just hoping to perhaps throw her a little off balance. "Actual, real concern?" The scorn and incredulity in his voice was obvious from the slight laugh underneath his words, the pitch of the question

"You are useful and convenient, when whole and alive." Illyria replied, her voice somehow even flatter and more emotionless than before. "Damaged or dead, you are less so. You will cease allowing this immediately."

"Illyria, the two of us cannot take on the entirety of the castle at once. And if you started killing guardsmen and knights indiscriminately, Arthur would get involved – and we both know that if Arthur is in danger, Merlin would get involved."

"Merlin is not so powerful that I cannot defeat him." Illyria told him, self-assured.

"Can you defeat him, and Arthur, and all the knights and guards of Camelot at once?" Wesley looked pointedly at her. "Can you risk it?"

Illyria looked at him for what felt like hours, but was really only moments, then: "You have three days exactly." She turned to Arthur. "When this one's accusations," She pointed to Aredian, "are proven ultimately groundless, you will leave him to me." Not waiting for a reply, she left his chambers.

"Quite a confident woman, isn't she?" Aredian asked, as the guards started overturning the bed and even cutting into the pillows.

"I did warn you." Wesley pointed out.

"You also warned me that she would get violent. And yet all she's done is talk." Aredian also pointed out.

"Rather like you, in that respect?" Wesley shot back, his tone even more clipped than usual. "And on the contrary – she was very interested in simply going straight to the violence. I was able to convince her that ripping your arms off and beating you to death with them would be counterproductive and potentially fatal – there's only so many people she can take on at once, after all." Wesley shrugged, "While I've no problem with her killing you in as brutal a fashion as possible, I'd rather she didn't die, nor do I particularly want to see any of the guards killed by her because they tried to stop her killing you."

"These idle threats do nothing for your case, Wesley."

"I have not made a single threat of mention against you, Aredian. As for my case, you chose to accuse me rather than someone else picked at more or less random because I had annoyed you." Now if only I could take credit for that. "You're a fraud and a charlatan, Aredian, and I wait with baited breath for the rest of Camelot to realize it."

Arthur looked at Wesley, "That's quite an accusation, Wesley." He seemed no more sure of that than he was about Wesley being a sorcerer in the first place.

"And a false one." Aredian replied, gesturing to a guard who was bringing him something. A rather thick bracelet, a gemstone set in the top.

"Found it under a loose floor-stone." The guard told him.

Aredian raised an eyebrow at Wesley, holding the bracelet in one gloved hand carefully. "An amulet of enchantment. Would you care to explain this, Wesley?"

Despite himself, despite the severity of the situation, and what the 'amulet's' 'discovery' meant about what was likely to happen to him over the next three days, Wesley couldn't help it. He burst out laughing – he hadn't laughed for more than a grim chuckle for...

A long time. And this...

There was just something so absurd about Aredian, and everything he did was only funnier. "An amulet of-" He was cut off by more laughter, and after a moment, he got some control of himself, though he still chuckled as he spoke. "You're even stupider than I gave you credit for, Aredian." Chuckling still, he held out his arms, "Arrest me then. Let's see if you're any better at torture than the last person that tried it on me. She was just trying to get me to scream and beg. You're going to be trying to get me to lie."

Aredian silently fumed, though it didn't show on his expression. "Take him away." He gestured to two of the guards, "Lock him in a cell. I shall deal with him shortly." He turned away from the still very amused Wesley.

Arthur watched with a mix of confusion and horror at the laughing Wesley. The man was laughing about being tortured? About being executed?

An implement of sorcery had been found, though Arthur thought that 'amulet' looked more like a bracelet...

Arthur turned to Sir Leon, "Post a guard outside the Lady Illyria's chambers. Don't let her leave." If Wesley really was a sorcerer, than...Well, Illyria had to be suspect as well.

"Yes my lord." Leon said without hesitation.

"As much as possible, treat her with the respect due her station. We may be keeping her in one room, but apart from that, she remains a noblewoman and a guest in this castle." Arthur told him. "Understood?"

"Of course your majesty." Leon replied, then left with a quick bow.

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"So you're going to just sit there and let an innocent man be tortured and then killed?" Morgana demanded of Arthur. The prince had been sitting at the desk in his chambers, doing the administrative work assigned to him. It was bothersome, but he understood why his father delegated a portion of the assorted administrative and legal work that made it all the way to the King back down to his son.

When he'd been younger, he'd protested the point, being more interested in training with the knights, or hunting or any number of other pursuits – and he still found all of those to be more interesting than this. But his father had been right when he'd said 'if you're going to be King someday after me, it is best that you be prepared for what you'll face now'. This was important, and it was best he got his practice in now, rather than once he'd inherited the throne.

But he didn't mind a distraction from addressing the petitions of farmers in the western marches. Even if that distraction came in the form of Morgana berating him.

"Wesley is hardly innocent. An implement of sorcery was found in his chambers." Arthur pointed this fact out to his all but sister without much hope that it would matter much to her. Morgana knew this fact as well as anyone else, but it hadn't stopped her simply sweeping into the room and proclaiming Wesley's innocence.

Arthur had always known that Morgana was never happy about the way his father pursued the war against magic and those who used it. But in the last few years – and especially in the last few months – she'd grown more and more open and militant about her hatred for what the King was doing. Never around his father himself – one stint in the dungeons after she'd tried that had been enough to convince her of the futility of trying to convince the King that he was wrong, but around Arthur, even more so.

Arthur himself wasn't all that thrilled about some of the measures his father took, but magic was evil – how many times had his or his father's lives been threatened by those who used magic? Magic had attacked Camelot multiple times – both the town and castle, and the wider kingdom itself. Arthur felt his father was perhaps too indiscriminate and ruthless, but the word of the King was law.

"If Wesley was a sorcerer, why has he never done anything?" Morgana demanded. "He's either kept to himself, or been nothing but a help since he arrived – the vampires that have arrived in Camelot would have been a far greater danger if not for his help. If not for the Lady Illyria, one of them might have killed me, for God's sake!"

"Don't ask me to explain the inner workings of the mind of a madman." Arthur replied, looking at her, keeping his voice level. He didn't want an argument with Morgana, though he knew it was likely to come to that sooner or later.

"Mad? What on earth makes you Wesley's mad? Unpersonable and infuriatingly mysterious, yes. But an insane man-" Morgana scoffed.

She didn't care overmuch that it was Wesley who had been arrested – yes, he had been helpful to them all since his arrival, especially in rescuing Gwen, but the man and his liege – if Lady Illyria really was his liege – had their own plans. She didn't know what they were, but that fact hardly made her like them.

But she wasn't going to stand by and let the Witchfinder arrest and torture – then execute – Wesley. Merlin had told her that Wesley had admitted to him that he could in fact use magic – that magic had brought them here, from some sort of accidental spell during a battle. So technically, Wesley wasn't innocent...

But that hardly mattered. Uther was in the wrong to target so many people simply because they used magic – and most of the magical attacks on the Kingdom came from those who hated Uther and Camelot for what had been done to their friends, families and loved ones.

He makes enemies with everyone he imprisons, everyone he burns at the stake.

If Wesley had even made any direct action against Camelot, she'd not protest his imprisonment to Arthur. But he hadn't. Simply using magic wasn't enough to justify torture, or execution. And if she couldn't stop all the death, she could try to stop this one. She knew Arthur didn't like the Witchfinder. That meant – that meant there was an opening.

"When the guards found the magical amulet," Arthur started. In actuality, it hadn't really looked like a necklace to the Crown Prince, he was willing to concede to Aredian's greater knowledge in what a magical implement looked like, and what it was called. "When they found it," He repeated, "Wesley merely started laughing, to the point where he couldn't even speak properly for a minute. And then he told Aredian to arrest him. He even dared the Witchfinder to torture him, and then challenged him to do better than the last person who had!"

He paused for a breath, then, "If that's not a madman, then I don't know what is. Besides, no sane sorcerer would ensconce himself in the middle of Camelot."

"Has he done anything against your father? Against you? Against the Kingdom? He's innocent. Even if he does use magic – something I'm not willing to grant, regardless of what this 'Witchfinder' claims – he's not done anything wrong." Morgana's voice was rising.

Next she's going to start insulting Father more directly and then we'll be shouting at each other. This was a familiar argument, though one they'd had far more often in the last few years and last few months than before then. But they'd been having it, on and off, for almost ten years.

"Why are you so confident that the Witchfinder is wrong? Father trusts him implicitly, and he has a record of success when it comes to rooting out magic and those who practice it. Both here in Camelot and in other lands."

Morgana scoffed in a most unladylike manner – far from the first time there – and rolled her eyes. "Because Uther is always such an excellent judge of character. And he's never wrong. After all, he didn't marry a troll." She switched her expression to one of mock innocence. "Oh," she added, growing a smirk, "wait."

"She used magic on him. Which is rather proof that magic cannot be tolerated in any-"

"Magic caused by a troll, not a human, and certainly not Wesley!" Morgana shot back, interrupting him. "And he was fooled by her deception before she actually enchanted him. He's arrested Gwen before, even though she turned out to be innocent. Shall I go on with the oh-so-numerous litany of failures, oversights, mistakes and instances of being outright wrong that your Father has inflicted on Camelot in pursuit of his mindless and merciless war on magic? How many times his small-minded prejudice and tyranny has brought harm on this kingdom, or killed innocent people? Shall we examine the number of people he's executed that have actually harmed the kingdom and its people, against all the rest of the -"

"Enough, Morgana!" Arthur burst out, standing up from his chair. "I will not deny that my father has made mistakes. Mistakes are what people make, even Kings. But you have presented no proof that Wesley is innocent, and all the proof that exists points towards him being guilty of sorcery. All you have are attacks on my father's character and motivations. Whatever you think about his actions in regards to magic, he is your king as much as he is mine or anyone else's, and you respect his position and his laws!"

"For a man who prides himself on his courage and fortitude, its amazing how spineless you can be, Arthur." Morgana spat. "You hide behind 'duty' and the 'law', ignoring right and wrong so you can avoid standing up to Uther."

"I don't see you storming into the throne room to argue the point with him either, Morgana. You're just as scared he'll throw you into the dungeons again." Arthur's blood was up, and if he'd been less angry, he'd never have said anything like-

Arthur recoiled and his face stung at the impact site of Morgana's slap – hard and right across the face. She drew back her hand to slap him again, but Arthur reached up and grabbed her wrist. "No." He let go of her wrist. Glaring at him with eyes ablaze, Morgana drew in a sharp, short angry breath.

"Fine, Arthur." Morgana said, drawing back. "Wallow in your moral cowardice." She stalked out of the room after turning around sharply. If Arthur won't do anything, then I will.

She'd stood by and seen too many innocent people die at Uther's hands. She had magic – she was one of them. She couldn't just let them be executed, like Merlin was all too ready to do.

Killing Uther always grew as a more attractive option in her mind, but Merlin's words still stuck with her on that. He was perhaps right, though given just how much Arthur seemed to echo his father's views on the subject of magic, it might not matter either way...

She couldn't go in half-cocked when it came to this...but one way or the other, she'd find a way to get Wesley out. The best option, she knew, would be to find a way to convince Uther that Aredian was wrong. If she could find evidence she could bring to Arthur, even he would be able to stop being such a coward.

Morgana didn't know what Wesley's plans were, but anyone who could hide the fact that they could use magic while in the very heart of Camelot, living in the castle itself wouldn't be so stupid as to hide any magical implements where the guards could find them.

The conclusion was obvious – Aredian had arranged for it to be found there.

Drawing in another angry breath, Morgana turned down a hallway, heading towards Gaius' tower.