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: (and there are several unsigned reviews)
Guest- Well, aren't you a little ray of sunshine. Anyway, you bring up more good points. My offer to continue our discussion via PM still stands. There, I can explain my decisions to your satisfaction.
Another guest- Glad you like my story!
Yet another guest- Thanks!
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Chapter Seven: Kindnesses
Merlin hurried as quickly as he could without spilling the water. He set it aside and knelt beside Alder. He could not see how badly the boy was hurt in the dim light. However, his knees were drawn up to his chest, and his breath came in short and painful wheezes.
"Alder." He laid a careful hand on his shoulder. Alder drew a sharp breath and shrank away from his touch before relaxing.
"Merlin," he exhaled.
"I can help, but I need you to sit up against the wall," Merlin told him. The boy nodded and shifted carefully with Merlin's assistance. In a distant corner of his mind, he noted that Renault had left the room. No, he reprimanded himself. Don't think of that monster. Think of Alder. He is the one who needs help now.
Alder now sat in the light of the torch, and Merlin did not like what he saw. His clothes, in ratty condition to begin with, were more torn and dirty than ever. Through the tears in his shirt, hideous bruises were turning from red to purple. The cuts in his head and left hand bled sluggishly.
First things first, he had to clean the blood from Alder's face. He soaked a rag in the water and gently began dabbing the red away. Both winced as the beginnings of a black eye surfaced from under the blood.
"I told 'em, I got nothin'," Alder repeated quietly.
"I know." Merlin decided it would be alright for him to talk. To keep him distracted.
"Renault got here afore–afore anythin' bad happened."
"I know." The fury he felt raging through him did not transmit to his hands, he made sure of that. There was no need for Alder to suffer any more than he already had.
"Why pick on me? I'm a nobody fletcher. Always have been, always will be."
"You're not nobody." He pressed a clean rag to the slash on the boy's brow. Alder cringed, but did not push him away.
"I'm a bastard. Ma's in a border village, Da's off in Huntaburgh. He's seen her once, 'bout twenty year ago. Gave her a ring and promised to come back." He grimaced. "Didn' even know he had a son."
Merlin could not bring himself to say that he already knew, that Alder had spoken his memories aloud. He wondered how much he had said. In any case, his suspicion about the lord who employed Alder's family was confirmed. He was certainly not minor; Huntaburgh was Lot's castle. The lord was none other than Lot himself.
"I didn't know my father either," he admitted. It seemed like a good thing to say.
"Then you know the starin', the whispers."
"Yeah. Feeling like you're an outcast." Now for the tricky part: Alder's left hand. Whether the magic of Renault's investigation still hung around or not, Merlin did not want to know. Never touching the dried blood with his hands, he cleaned the cut and bound it up. Thankfully, not one strange image or sound came to him.
Renault came back into the room. "Come with me," he commanded.
"Where?" Merlin felt bold enough to ask.
"Somewhere safe," was all Renault said.
"He's still hurt. I need to finish treating him."
"Do not tax my patience," Renault said. His eyes glowed and the shackles tightened.
Merlin could not think. He should fight this monster. He should stand up and destroy him. But the pain was too much. He could not fight, could not fight, could not fight…
The pain stopped abruptly. "Now," Renault repeated. Quaking slightly, Merlin got to his feet and gently helped Alder rise. He kept a hand on his shoulder as they followed Renault out into the corridor. But, instead of going back into their cell, he led them to the stairwell.
Merlin momentarily froze. He's taking us back to his study, he thought in a panic. But instead of going up, Renault began going down. He fought to regain control of his shaky breath and palpitating heart.
The stairs were narrow and uneven. There was not enough room for two to walk side by side, so Merlin went in front of the boy. Some ways down, they came to a doubly deep stair. It was a simple and effective trap. Someone running down the stairs would not see it, especially if that someone was trying to escape. They would fall headlong, mostly likely breaking their neck. Carefully, the three of them stepped down. They continued on without mishap.
Renault led them down for much longer than Rowena had taken them up. Alder's breathing grew laboured. Renault finally stepped off into another corridor, one with considerably better light. The door he directed them through was as imposing as the one that led to his study upstairs. This new room had at one time been a storage room, as evident by the four large wooden shelves that lined the walls. The shelves were stacked two high and were empty now, apart from thin blankets. They were meant to be beds, Merlin realised.
"Your new home!" Renault announced it like it was a fabulous gift. To Merlin and Alder, it was certainly a few steps up from the cell where they had been kept before. In spite of this, the two looked at their captor guardedly. Such gifts did not come freely. "Now don't look so suspicious. I'm actually doing you a favour. But remember my warning." It may have been Merlin's imagination, but his chains felt not quite as loose as they had been.
Renault left the room and closed the door. If he put a spell on the door, it was too thick for them to hear.
Merlin helped Alder to sit carefully on the lower shelf just to the right of the door. "He's up to something," the boy remarked.
"I should look at your bruises," Merlin said. He tried to roll up one of Alder's sleeves when the boy gently pushed his hands away. The black eye had swollen up so that he could no longer see out of that eye.
"I'm fine. Jus' knackered."
"You're wounded–" Merlin started.
"Not you, too. Please, just don't." It went against Merlin's instinct to give up, but the pain he saw in Alder's face was akin to what he felt when Renault stripped all privacy from him, when he was forced to share his darkest secrets. It was the pain he had heard in Arthur's voice.
Arthur! What had become of him? Merlin felt panic rising in his chest. He turned away and moved to the other end of the room. He suddenly grasped the significance of the eight 'beds.' Arthur and the others would soon be there.
He began inspecting the room in more detail. It was narrow and long. Even with two bunk beds on each side of the room, there was enough space at the opposite end of the room for another. A barred window near the ceiling at this end told him that the room was only just below ground. Thick underbrush grew less than a yard away from the window. Fresh hay covered the floor.
He went back and pulled himself on to the bunk at the foot of Alder's shelf. Neither of them spoke for a time. Soon he grew restless and had to start pacing, if 'pacing' was the right word for the shuffle allowed to him by the shackles.
"What 'bout yer father?" Alder asked as he trundled by. He had carefully lain down on his shelf under the blanket.
Merlin paused a moment in order to invent a suitable answer, one that would not raise too many more questions. "He loved my mother, but he had leave."
"Had to?" The emphasis was scornful, and Alder knew as soon as he said it that he was out of line.
"Uther would have killed him and Mother if he stayed!" Merlin fired back. "Whether Ealdor was in Essetir or not made no difference to him."
"So yeh got yer magic from him," Alder surmised after a few moments' silence.
Merlin realised too late that this boy was remarkably observant to have picked that detail up so quickly. He would have to be careful how much he told him. "And your father?"
"Met 'im two year ago," he said shortly. "I had to leave my village, or they'd've killed me, like Uther would've yer father." He looked directly at Merlin, conveying wordlessly that he was sorry for his words. His one good eye began to droop closed.
"You had to leave because of your magic?"
"Nah. I'm bloody useless at it. I can start a hearth fire or put one out, sure, but nothin' more than that. Still, even if everyone knew that, they still didn' trust me, 'specially not after the mound…" His voice trailed off. Merlin let him sleep.
He kept pacing. Now that Alder was asleep, there was no distraction to keep the shadows at bay. The shadows that Renault's assault cast on him and the shadows that the attack made surface. There were places in his heart that he did not care to spend too much time thinking about because, in those places, there was nothing good.
Unbidden, a long-forgotten memory sprang forth in his mind. He stood on the edge of a cliff in a large cavern. A strong wind buffeted him, almost blowing out the torch he carried. The wind of a dragon's wings beating the air as he took off. "Wait!" he called. "Where does it say my destiny includes murder?"
He found himself lying on the floor, shaking. Out of the corner of his eye, he thought he could see that reflection from the dark mirror, that man he became more like every time he killed someone. And he had once balked at murder! How hollow those words sounded now. How many people had he killed because they stood in the way? How had he allowed himself to become so cold, so heartless?
He knew that his destiny demanded it. It was a weight, crushing the air out of him, squeezing the life and joy out of his existence. But he also knew, burden though it was, he would never willingly give it up. Someone had to keep an eye on the dollop-head.
Pacing would not get them out of the dungeon. Although, if he paced long enough, he might wear a groove in the floor and then…Merlin shook his head. When his reflections wandered to be being that far-fetched, it was time to stop. He did so, and stretched out on his bunk, surprised at how tired he actually was.
His last waking thought was that Arthur would be coming soon. Whether he could use his magic or not, they would work out a way to escape. They had to. He knew that they were doomed if they stayed.
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