Title: More Than It Seems
Author: Minch
Summary: Merlin, Arthur, and the knights are captured. However, their abductor is not interested in the King of Camelot or even Emrys. He only wants the stranger imprisoned with them. What is that stranger's secret, and what does their abductor so desperately want from him?
Rating: T, because I am not going to be nice to these guys in this fic.
Spoilers: Occurs in between Series Four and Series Five.
Disclaimer: I hold absolutely no claim to ownership of Merlin. It belongs to BBC and Shine, Ltd. I'm just someone with a boundless imagination who happens to love the show.
Author's note: I'm borrowing jargon from Tamora Pierce's books. (Don't judge; they're good books.) I'll put a list of the spells I used at the beginning of the last chapter.
Replies to anonymous reviews:
Simply me- Glad you liked the last chapter!
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Chapter Three: Questions
It may have been five minutes or five hours since Arthur was taken. In his panic and worry, Merlin's mind no longer registered the passage of time. He decided that enough time had passed that he would go and find Arthur. Alder's presence in the cell with him was forgotten completely.
He concentrated on the shackles binding him to the wall. In his mind, he saw the image of an open chain. He felt his magic flare inside like a candle being lit.
There was a bright flash as pain struck his skull like a blacksmith's hammer striking a sword, followed by darkness.
A hand lightly slapping his face brought him back. "Come on now," Alder murmured to him. "Yeh had enough sleep already." He returned to his side of the cell in an awkward three-limbed crawl, hampered by the broken arm bound to his chest. The hammer returned to beating out a steady rhythm of pain on Merlin's head. He pressed his hands to his temples and moaned quietly, not trusting himself to speak.
When he felt that he could think coherently, he looked over at Alder. The boy leaned against the wall, not looking in his direction at all. He had not noticed that Merlin had tried to use magic. Merlin looked down at the chain again. This time, he did not incant a spell. Instead he examined it with his magic.
Like all objects, the chain was material. It was solid, and he could feel the shackles press against his ankles. Something in it prickled Merlin's magic sense. He looked closer. There was the problem–a chain within the physical chain. This invisible chain bound one's magic while the solid chain bound one's body. It did not just keep him from breaking the solid one; it kept him from using any kind of magic. That was a problem. Without his magic, he knew that he was all but useless.
Even if a bad headache was his only reward, he would have to attempt breaking the chain open again. He was about to try when he heard footsteps outside, and the creak of the door of the next cell opening. "Fordyttan," the same woman –Rowena, probably– said.
"Arthur? Arthur!" Gwaine shouted. "Ar–" He was cut off. There were muffled yells and the sound of chains thrashing about.
"If the two of you keep that up, you will suffocate yourselves." Rowena's voice was straightforward and severe. Apparently, neither Leon nor Gwaine stopped flailing. "Alright. It's no hair off my head if you're unconscious when Lord Renault does his investigation." She ordered, in the language of the Old Religion, for someone to stand up. The door closed behind her and the sound of the lashing chains faded.
"Arthur?" Merlin quietly called through the crack in the wall. "Arthur, can you hear me?"
"Merlin." Arthur sounded exhausted. His voice was hoarse, as if he had been screaming. "Merlin, where are you?"
Merlin's heart leapt into his throat. "In the cell next to yours," he quickly supplied. "What happened?"
"She took Gwaine and Leon." Arthur said at length.
"I–" Merlin paused, unsure of how to ask. "I meant with Renault."
"He– It was–" In the more than seven years Merlin had known Arthur, he had never heard him stammer and hesitate like this. "He cut my hands," Arthur started again. "First my right hand. He explained that each hand holds certain things or something like that. But when he cut me, it was like–like he knew."
"Knew what?"
"I saw Camelot, Gwen, the knights, my father. I saw myself fighting Annis's champion and sparing him. I saw Gwaine and me riding in the woods and you coming up out of the bog, covered in mud. But, whatever I saw, somehow he saw it all, too. When he cut my left hand, I–" Arthur paused, as if to steel himself. "One thing I saw then was Arianna."
"Who's Arianna?" Merlin asked.
"She was a kitchen maid. She worked in Camelot years ago. We were boys, Leon and I," Arthur remembered. His voice sounded hollow. "She was taking a tray up to a visiting lord. We bullied her into giving us the tarts and made her swear not to tell. Whoever the guest was, he was furious with her."
"What happened to her?" Merlin asked, although he was not sure he wanted to know.
For a moment, Arthur did not speak. "He had her flogged and dismissed from the castle's service," he almost whispered.
"Did she ever tell?"
"No." His voice was filled with shame. "I never saw her again, and we never told anyone what we had done."
"What else did you see?" Merlin asked gently.
"Merlin, I'm tired. Please, just let me sleep."
The pleading note in Arthur's voice scared Merlin. "Alright," he said.
Merlin sat back against the wall, trying to keep his own fright from showing. He had never heard of the magic Renault was using, to show someone past events. But it was powerful magic nonetheless.
It would not do to think about it now, so he turned his mind to other problems. Namely, the chain. Gently this time, he dipped into his reserves of magic. In his mind's eye, he willed a thin sheet of power to flow out and envelop the shackles. The force of the invisible chains pressed against his magic, but he refused to stop.
Little by little, he released his hold on the magic. The pressure of the magical restraint started to build, pressing on his mind. Nevertheless, he would not let up. He could not fail Arthur and Camelot. He had to get them out of this place.
The blacksmith's hammer suddenly struck down again, but he managed to hang on to consciousness this time. He closed his eyes and rubbed his head, bearing the pain as best he could.
When he opened his eyes, he found Alder was staring at him with ill-concealed curiosity, curiosity that Merlin felt about him in return. "What?"
"Yeh're with the King o' Camelot."
"Yes, I believe we established that." He did not like where Alder was taking this.
"And yeh got magic." he whispered that last word as if it were forbidden.
"Yes."
"Yet yeh be in his service."
"Yes."
"Why?"
"Because things will be different one day. One day, we won't have to hide anymore."
Alder snorted rudely. "And we'll both live t' see that day, I'm sure," he said sarcastically.
"If you don't mind my asking, what exactly were you doing when we, ah, ran into each other?" Two could play this game. Merlin had answered some tricky questions, so it was only fair that he could ask some of Alder.
The boy looked at the manservant with a scrutinising scowl before answering. "Fletchin'."
Merlin frowned in return. Gathering feathers to glue to arrows was a plausible reason to be up in a tree in the middle of the forest, but that did not explain everything.
Alder seemed to read his mind. "My kin are bowyers."
"Where?" Bowyers were usually in the service of a noble, someone who had the money to finance the costly and time-consuming process of making bows.
"Just a small-time lord in Essetir," Alder said. He refused to meet Merlin's eyes.
It was a lie, he knew, but he decided not to press the issue. He had enough to think about without teasing a straight answer from the boy.
For one, obviously, what was Renault doing? The 'investigation' the woman had spoken of when she took Gwaine and Leon was what he had done to Arthur, Merlin was sure of that much. It had something to do with the left and right hands. In the Old Religion, the right hand was the hand of good, order, truth. The left hand, conversely, was the hand of evil, disorder, secrets. Did this investigation have anything to do with that? Even if it did, Merlin did not understand it. Even if he was Emrys, he did not know all of the ways of the Old Religion.
For another, what did Renault even wanted from them? He said that they had something that belonged to him, that he was looking for it. Was he a madman? Probably. Was he dangerous? Definitely.
The last question in the series of questions was Alder. He said he was a fletcher, in the service of a minor noble in Essetir. Merlin's gut said that Alder's lord was distinctly not minor, but he could not say for certain whom the lord was. What had Alder been doing on Camelot's lands? Getting lost was a fair excuse, but getting that lost?
Merlin was tempted to hold his head as before. There were too many questions, too many assumptions, not enough answers.
He heard murmuring through the wall. Arthur was talking with someone. "Gwaine? Leon?" He called as loudly as he dared.
"They're here," Arthur assured him.
"How are they?"
"The same." The same as me was the unspoken answer. "Leon heard that sorceress take Percival and Elyan."
"What the hell does he want?" Gwaine asked quietly, so quietly Merlin could barely hear him. "What could he have learned from cutting our hands open?"
Merlin had no answer, but an ominous thought was growing in his mind: Arthur had been taken first, followed by Gwaine and Leon, followed by Percival and Elyan. That only left him and Alder.
Whatever Renault was doing, he would soon know for himself.
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Check back 12 September around 15:00 UTC for Chapter Four
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