The Queen was waiting on the steps when they finally rode into the courtyard, with a guard of knights. It was the time between sunset and darkness, and torches had been lit around the courtyard. To Cottia's tired gaze, they made the stones glisten like diamonds.

Later that night, after she had taken a long bath and changed out of her muddy clothes, she settled down on the couch with the Red Book. But it was much harder reading it to herself, and she missed the sound of Merlin's voice.

Merlin looked up from mending a tear in one of Arthur's shirts to see Cottia looking at him wistfully. "What?"

She exhibited the book. He took it from her.

"Do you want me to read more of it to you?"

She nodded. "I like it."

When he finished the chapter - and the hobbits were safe in the inn at Bree under Strider's watchful care - he looked over at his audience. Cottia had built a small mound of pillows and was lying back in it, looking at him through mostly closed eyes. They opened a little wider as he watched, and she sat up, dislodging the grey blanket from around her shoulders.

"What did you think of going on patrol?"

"It was cold and sort of grubby," she replied sincerely. "But the land is beautiful, and I liked the feeling. And riding all day gets really tiring."

"The feeling?"

She waved her hands vaguely in the air. "Like a team."

"I enjoy that too. It used to be much more fun when the original Round Table was still alive."

"How many of you were there?"

"There ended up being ten of us. Myself, Arthur, Guinevere, my mentor, and six knights - Leon, Percival, Lancelot, Elyan, and Gwaine."

"That's only five."

"The sixth joined later, but . . . he was very young, and fell into bad company, and . . . well, he was the person who killed Arthur."

"Oh," she said a little blankly. "Why?"

"It was mostly about a girl, I think. He was in love with a girl who supported Morgana. When the girl came to Camelot and tried to kill Arthur, he couldn't see why she couldn't be set free. Arthur had to execute her. He gave her every chance to change."

"And what happened to the other knights?"

"Gwaine died trying to protect Arthur. Elyan died saving his sister - he was the Queen's brother - from Morgana. Lancelot died repairing the veil between this world and the world of the dead so that the Dorocha wouldn't kill everyone in the kingdom."

"What's a Dorocha?"

"A spirit of the dead. Supposedly."

She sat up a little further. "How do you mean?"

"Well, since these people started returning from the dead, I've been wondering why the Dorocha were so ferocious. But it doesn't really matter. They invaded this world through the veil by someone sacrificing themselves and the guardian of the veil demanded another sacrifice to close it. Magic can be brutal."

"Who was the first sacrifice?"

"Morgana's older half-sister. Morgause was her name. Same mother, different father."

"Why did she kill her sister?"

"I don't know, but I suspect it was on Morgause's orders. She was that kind of person. They weren't much alike to look at, but they had the same expressions and the same personality. Both were very ambitious, and proud, and brave, and had a strong sense of justice, even if it was warped. They could have been either very good or very bad."

"And they were very bad?"

Merlin sighed. "Unfortunately. Morgana led a failed attempt to take over the throne with Morgause providing the army. They were both caught in a collapse of one of the towers and vanished. A patrol found Morgana much later with someone they couldn't identify, but her companion was sick and I personally am sure it was Morgause."

Cottia yawned uncontrollably. "Why did she hate Uther so much?"

"She felt that he had killed Gorlois, her father." Merlin decided that she didn't need to know that Morgana's father was actually Uther. It was sort of an open secret in the castle, but most people had forgotten it or just didn't care. "He hadn't, but he had sent him into battle and was delayed in coming to his aid. Morgana was ten when he died and she was brought here. And Uther wasn't a very reasonable or loving person, though she could usually get what she wanted. She was a very unhappy person."

"That's awful," she murmured.

"Time for bed," said Merlin. "You can barely keep your eyes open."

0000

A few days later, he gave her her own music player. She kept taking the one in the main room. It was much smaller than his, but it would still hold quite a lot. Oddly enough, he was better at using technology than she was. She was particularly frustrated by the laptop he had salvaged and brought back from the Other Side. When she tried to load some music from it onto her device, he found her staring at the screen in furious impatience. He had to explain the function of a track pad to her.

"But this is stupid," she complained. "Why doesn't it know what I want? All the other screens always did."

"You don't have your portal anymore. How could it know what you want?" he asked reasonably. She deflated a little.

"So this one can't tell what I think about anything?"

"No. That's why you have to actually touch it."

She beamed. "But that means I can lie to it, and it won't know."

"I think we're working from different ends of the conversation here," said Merlin slowly. "What do you mean when you say computer?"

"Interface with my portal to display information on a screen."

"Right. Well, this computer is both the portal and the screen all in one."

"But how does it store anything without using someone's brain?"

"Everything is on little chips made of minerals. Don't ask me how it works. I just know how to operate it. But it uses no living brain from a human whatsoever."

That helped a little, but she still struggled with the concept of touching the machine to make it work. Apparently, now the technology on the Other Side had gone so far that the human using the computer was the computer, and they all had portals to link everyone's thoughts and memories. It sounded horrific to Merlin. He understood now why she had been so desperate to get her portal removed. How could anyone keep a secret if millions of other people could randomly surf their memories?

On the other hand, it would have been very nice to have thought control over his laptop. He had limited control over it using magic, but of course he couldn't do anything like that in front of Cottia.

0000

About a month later, Cottia was lying in bed and listening to her music. She liked doing that. Headphones made a little world of sound. It was much funner than getting the vibrations streamed directly into her brain. It was very late, past midnight. She was supposed to be asleep, but she didn't feel sleepy. There was one song in particular that she liked very much, all about a battle between birds and bees told from the perspective of some kind of furry animal. It made her feel free, and it told a little story.

She turned over and faced the windows. The night was clear and crisp. She'd had to put an extra blanket on her bed a few nights before. Merlin had said that it would start to snow before long. She was excited. She'd never seen real snow, just heard about it. The moonlight was so bright that the frames in the window left shadows on the floor.

A shape drifted lazily across the moon. Cottia watched idly. It was a dragon. And it was big, probably big enough to fill the courtyard. She smiled as it soared up into the sky, spiraling up on an invisible column of air and twisting at the top to float down again.

A dragon! She sat up suddenly. A real dragon! She jumped up and ran to the window, abandoning her music on the bed. She pressed her nose to the cold glass and held her breath to avoid fogging up the window. It looked like it was golden, with four legs and claws on the ends of its wings. This was awesome, although it would have been cooler if it had been red, like Smaug. Oddly enough, none of the sentries she could see pacing the battlements as little points of reflected light seemed to notice it at all. But it was huge! She pinched her cheek hard, digging her nails in. Yes, she was awake.

This was worth waking Merlin up for. She grabbed the blanket off the top of her bed and clutched it around her shoulders like a cloak. It really was cold. Even the nice warm sleeping clothes Merlin had given her weren't enough. She padded across the main room, her bare feet acutely sensitive to the warm spot on the wood floor around the stove.

Cottia scratched gently on Merlin's door, feeling slightly guilty. Usually, she did not enter his room, and he did not enter hers. Their rooms were their own private spaces and they each had respect for that. But a real dragon outside was cool. He wouldn't want to miss that. Maybe he even knew something about dragons. He knew a lot about a lot of things.

She shyly pushed the door open. It wasn't locked. To her surprise, Merlin wasn't there. He hadn't slept in his bed yet, either, and his night clothes were still lying on the blankets. What a shame, she thought. He must have had to go do something for Arthur. He probably won't notice the dragon, then. But she hadn't heard him leave. Well, to be fair, she had had her headphones in.

Abandoning the problem, she went to the windows. His room was a mirror image of hers. Since he wasn't there, she swung the glass aside and leaned out cautiously, drawing the blanket up over her head to keep out the cold. It wasn't like he'd care about the draft.

The dragon was still circling above the forest. She watched it for ten minutes, her eyes shining. Then, to her surprise, it swooped down towards the ground and disappeared from view. Why had it landed there? Surely every sentry on the walls could see it now. She strained her ears to hear shouts or maybe the warning bell. Silence wrapped the castle and the town. The dragon was unnoticed.

She stayed by the window for another half hour, but it didn't reappear. Eventually, tired and very cold, she closed the window and went and stood by the stove for a few minutes and then went to bed. She dreamed of dragons, a big golden one and a smaller white one with big blue eyes like Merlin's and another tiny one, small enough to perch on a shoulder, that was bluey-green and shimmered in sunlight like ripples on water.

0000

"Did Arthur send for you last night?"

Merlin glanced at Cottia across the table. She had started referring to Arthur by name, instead of just 'the King'. He was glad.

"Yes," he said. "He - uh, couldn't find something."

"That's too bad. You missed seeing the dragon."

Merlin froze. "Dragon? What dragon?" He managed to keep his voice level. He'd gone out the previous night to talk to Kilgarrah - not about anything in particular, just to keep in touch. He missed the old dragon bitterly at times, as much as he missed Gaius and had missed Arthur. But how in the name of sanity had Cottia seen him?

She shrugged, peacefully unaware of the panic she had caused him. "A big golden dragon. It flew around above the forest for a while and then landed and I fell asleep before it left. I know I was awake," she said, mistaking his expression for doubt. "I went to tell you, but you were out."

"A big golden dragon," he repeated slowly. She had seen Kilgarrah. But how? How? He couldn't be seen by ordinary people. Merlin had made sure of that.

"It was beautiful," she said dreamily. "I didn't think dragons had claws on their wings, though. Bilbo didn't say anything about that." She added the last sentence accusingly.

"Maybe the dragons are different in Arda," Merlin suggested absently, giving her a searching look. She didn't look different. He had been sure that Cottia didn't have magic. For one thing, her coloring was all wrong. Most people with magic had black hair and blue or green eyes. He wasn't sure why, but it was something to do with the genetics. Morgause, with her blond hair and brown eyes, had been a singular anomaly.

But her behavior at the druid camp was suggestive, and now she had apparently seen Kilgarrah. Well, he couldn't say anything now. What if he was wrong? She'd shown no other signs of magic.

"There are very few dragons left," he said, trying for a conversational tone. "Most of them were hunted down and killed by Uther. That's why the royal crest is a dragon. He was proud of being the only king to be so successful in hunting dragons. After all, they're like portable flamethrowers with big teeth and claws. It takes a lot to kill one."

"That's awful!" she said indignantly. "I bet he cheated."

"Sort of," Merlin admitted. "He tricked the Dragonlords into helping him. But then he killed most of them too, so dragons and people who understand them are pretty much extinct."

"What's a Dragonlord?"

"Some people are born with the ability to speak to and command dragons. It runs in families. The power is passed down from father to son. They're brothers to the dragons - it's not really magic. It was close enough for Uther, though."

"That's cool." Cottia frowned. "Why was Uther so obsessed with getting rid of magic?"

"It's a long story," said Merlin, getting up. "But in a nutshell, he wanted an heir and couldn't have one, so he went to the High Priestess and asked for her help. His wife conceived a child, but according to the old religion, in order to create a life, a life must be taken. His wife died giving birth. So Uther was furious, because Nimueh - that was her name - hadn't told him it would happen."

"Whose name?"

"The High Priestess's. Anyway, Uther decided all magic was evil and set out to kill everyone who had it. It was called the Great Purge. Very few sorcerers or Dragonlords escaped."

Cottia was looking perplexed. "But he had an heir, didn't he? What about Arthur?"

"Arthur was the child that was born."

"What? So he keeps the ban on the thing that gave him life? That's rather hypocritical."

"Most people don't know he was born using magic, Cottia. You mustn't speak of it. And he does allow some sorcerers to practice in Camelot. Why do you think Alice is so successful at curing people? And there are a few others that he employs when he needs to, and he doesn't interfere with people using magic as long as they do it quietly and aren't malicious. Really, he treats it just like training soldiers for the army. There are always a few bad men who use their skills and weapons for evil regardless of how they're treated."

"But it's still - " Cottia began.

"Listen to me. Magic is not a toy. It's a dangerous force. Not using magic is the best thing to do with it if you've got it. Look around you. Magic is what destroyed this kingdom, put it to sleep for thousands of years, and splintered it off from your world. Arthur is right to be cautious. He needs to be cautious."

"I suppose. But I wish I could meet a dragon," she said wistfully. "Can they really talk?"

"How should I know?"

She looked startled. "I just wondered. You know lots of things."

"Oh. Well. Yes, they can talk to Dragonlords, and I suppose that if they're taught our language, they could speak to us too."

"Do you know where to find dragons?"

"No. They're very cautious. I suppose they live away from everyone in the mountains."

"Then why was that one here last night?"

"I have no idea," Merlin lied. "Maybe it was hunting."