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.

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Chapter Nine: Dreams

Merlin's dreams that night were not pleasant. Two hazy figures stood on either side of the window, but he could not get a clear look at them because of the lights. Eight faint lights in total, all radiating different colours, were in the room. They were spaced apart, some floating near the ceiling, some on his eye level. One was close to his eyes, an azure glow tinged with gold. Another was dark red, also streaked gold. The others were plain dark red, deep brown, purple, orange, bright green, and grey. The two closest to him –the grey and green ones– floated quite close together. A dark mass grew between them, however. As he looked at it, seeking to understand it, a sense of nausea swept over him. That mass was a sickness, but where or what is was he could not say.

When he opened his eyes, the lights vanished. The other six men in the room lay on the bunks. Arthur and the knights awakened when the ropes and gags beneath the beds unexpectedly sprang to life. In the now-familiar routine, all of them were secured to the bunks and silenced. Alder, who had not yet woken, only stirred in his sleep. He started to fight against the bonds, but did not completely wake up. The door opened to admit Renault.

"Peace and quiet! How lovely." His shark-like grin caused Merlin's gut to heave. He dropped off his cargo –one bucket– and looked around the room. "Now, where have you put them?" His eyes lighted on the buckets at the far end of the room, and the bag sitting next to them. His pupils glowed as he incanted, "Cuman." The objects flew over the prisoners' heads. Unfortunately, the piss bucket spilled some of its contents on them as it sailed by. Renault set it aside and refilled the bag with bread and the other bucket with water.

The ropes and gag were quite unnecessary to keep Merlin immobile and mute. Renault's very presence in the room was enough to keep him from moving or speaking. The terror that enveloped him was absolute. He could think of nothing else. His lungs screamed for air, but his mind paid no heed to their demands.

"I suppose this whole affair is a bit grandiose, isn't it?" The embers in Renault's eyes flared, and the ropes and gags fell away. Merlin was dimly aware of them slithering out the door and not back under the beds. He and the others were too busy hacking and gulping down much-needed air they had not realised they needed.

Before Renault left, he looked back at his captives. "You will not be here for much longer, I can assure you of that." He glanced at Alder, and his smirk grew into a sneer. "Not long at all." He swept out and closed the door.

Merlin looked at the boy. What had made that monster so pleased? Alder stopped thrashing around, his breath coming in ragged gasps.

"It's alright. He's gone," Merlin reassured him as he sat up slowly.

"The ropes," Alder glanced around, expecting them to spring out and tie him up. It must have been a trick of the light, how the irises of his eyes looked darker green.

"Gone out the door." They passed around the water. When Merlin handed the bowl to Alder, he noticed that the boy's hand trembled as he drew a sip of water.

"We have to get out of here." The words came from Arthur in a rough whisper. "We'll die if we stay."

"And how d'yeh think yeh'll get out?" Alder looked at him dully. "The door's certainly locked in one way or another. The walls are thick stone. The window's barred. How?"

"I don't know," Arthur admitted. "But I won't accept that there's absolutely no way out."

"Fine," Alder grumbled.

Merlin shifted and winced as the shackles around his legs bit into his flesh. He glanced down at them. The skin under the metal was rubbed raw. In all that had passed in the last three days, he had not noticed the infection spreading. The others' skin was only chafed under the shackles, not as raw and bleeding as his.

Arthur abruptly stood and shuffled to the door. He knocked on the edges, seeking a weak point. "Useless," Alder insisted. "He'd've thought of that." The king ignored him, continuing his slow examination of the door. Merlin and the others took the initiative and began their own meticulous searches. Even Alder pitched in, muttering about stubborn nobles who could not take 'no' for an answer as he checked the walls near the window.

No one knew how long they had been at it. Eventually Merlin, who had been crawling under the beds to inspect where the floor and wall met, made his way to the window. Alder was there, kneeling gingerly as he moved the rushes aside to check the floor there. Scowling, he blinked and rubbed his eyes.

"Damn straw," he hissed.

"Find anything?" Merlin asked absently, most of his attention focused on the wall.

"Plenty of straw. Maybe we could get out by burnin' the place down." Merlin gave the boy his full attention, searching his face to see if he was serious. "Kidding," Alder deadpanned.

"Right." He was not so sure, but decided not to press it. Elyan came over to the window and looked out. He took hold of the bars, as if he meant to rip them out of the stone. He wrenched them, but they refused to budge. He tried twisting them and his face lit up.

"Sire," he called softly. The king did not come running, but he arrived quickly. "The bars move." He gripped one of them and turned. It moved in the groove of the stone. "If we keep twisting and turning it, we could loosen it enough to yank it out."

"If we do that to all of the bars, would we fit out the window?"

Percival, the largest of the men imprisoned, looked at the window. "It'll be tight, but we could."

"Then let's get to work," Gwaine said, taking hold of the furthest bar. He and Elyan began to twist the metal.

"What about the shackles?" Leon asked. "Even if we do escape, we won't be able to move quickly."

"We can strike them off when we're far enough away," Merlin suggested. He did not bring up the fact that doing so could trigger Renault's spell on his shackles and forcibly remove Arthur's feet. He would work out how to get around that problem later.

"So, yeh found yer way out," Alder said.

"It's your way out as well," Arthur reminded him.

Alder planted his left hand on the bed and began to lever himself up. "I wouldn–" His hand slipped and he fell back to his knees. He choked back a pained cry.

Arthur held a hand to him. "You alright?"

Alder scowled at the hand offered to him. It was no trick of the light. His irises –once emerald– were now criss-crossed with tendrils of silver and black. "Am I alright?" He took shuddering breaths and gasps as he spoke. "I been kidnapped, chained to a wall, beaten, a monster exposed everythin' about me for his pleasure, and now we're waitin' here till he gets 'round to killing the lot of us. So, no, I am not alright!" He got up, stumbled back toward the door, and pulled himself on to the bed, seemingly exhausted by moving the fifteen or so feet from window to door. Arthur started after him, but Merlin put a hand on his arm.

"Let him be."

"Merlin…" There was a warning in Arthur's voice, but the manservant paid it no mind.

"Arthur, he's hurting. Look, I'll talk to him." The king reluctantly agreed and let him pass. He approached carefully, not sure if Alder would lash out in anger again.

"Alder?" Even in the dim light, he could see the streaks in the boy's eyes.

"Sorry I yelled," he mumbled.

"Don't worry about it." He scooped some water from the bucket and gave the bowl to the boy. Alder reached for it, dragging his left arm as he moved. He drank gratefully and appeared to notice his arm for the first time. Instead of moving on its own, he was forced to pick the arm up with his right and bodily move it back. "How long has it been like that?" Merlin asked.

"Started to lose feelin' in it last night," Alder admitted. "I did not want to be more of a bother than I have already been."

"You haven't been a bother," Percival, usually silent and distant, said as he came to sit on Alder's other side.

"I am the reason that all of you are here. If I had not–" He suddenly began to cough and hack as if he was drowning. Merlin braced him as he struggled. When he could speak again, he said, "Some archer I'll be if I can't e'en hold a bow."

Merlin frowned. "What?"

"What 'what'?" Alder asked, just as confused as him. "I can't move my left arm, I told yeh that."

"But you were saying that you were the reason we're here."

"No, I didn't." As he said this, Alder's face fell. "It's happenin' again."

"The blackouts?"

The boy nodded miserably. "But it is my fault yeh're here. If I hadn' dropped my bag, yeh wouldn' have taken so much time talkin'. Yeh'd've heard them comin'. Yeh'd've had a chance to fight back."

"It wouldn't have made a difference," Merlin said. "Renault attacked us from a distance, with magic. There was nothing any of us could have done." Alder looked directly at him, hearing the unspoken acknowledgment: Merlin, as powerful as he was, could not have prevented their capture. Even he could be taken by surprise and then held under control by the massive amount of power Renault had at his command. "But we can do something about it now," he reassured the boy. "We can escape."

"And what can yeh do for my arm? What can yeh do 'bout what Renault did?" Merlin had no answer. "Thought as much," Alder said, but there was no complaint in his voice. No accusation that, as a physician, Merlin should have been able to do something.

Merlin turned away, not wanting the boy to see the pain and helplessness he felt. There truly was nothing he could do. His magic was bound, and the only treatment he could give was what he could contrive with cloth and water. And if he could not even heal Alder's arm, then he was unquestionably powerless against Renault's assault against them.

Percival heard his unexpressed surrender. "Maybe we can't do anything about your arm." He put a hand the size of a ham on Alder's shoulder. "But we are here for you."

Alder slumped and bowed his head. "But he–" His voice was thick.

"He hurt you. He hurt all of us. But we are here with you. We have a chance to get out of here. You are not alone." Alder bowed his head even further, a tear or two dripping from his face. Merlin felt close to tears himself. So that was the secret. Renault had made all of them feel alone and hopeless. But they were not. He had hurt them, but he could not completely destroy them or their hope. He had not won.

Weak and exhausted, Alder dropped off to sleep, but Percival and Merlin continued to sit with him. Arthur joined them after he had done a shift on turning the bars. "How is he?" he asked as he sat down heavily. Percival stood up to take his turn, leaving the two of them to talk.

"Sick," Merlin said. "And I don't know what it is." The despondency in his tone must have convinced Arthur that it was no use asking more questions about it. "But it goes deeper."

"What do you mean?"

"He feels–" he looked for the right word. "–violated." He saw the flash of pain on Arthur's face. "I know, we all do. But look at us. Look at them." He indicated the knights. They quietly swapped quips and jokes as they worked. "They –we– have each other. We have something to give us hope. He's alone."

"He's a sorcerer, an enemy of Camelot" Arthur said as if he were reminding himself.

Something in Merlin snapped. "So what?!" Arthur looked up, surprised that Merlin spoke so sharply. Some corner of Merlin's mind also listened in astonishment at the anger in his own voice. Alder stirred at the sound. "Is he any less of a man than you because he practises magic? Does he deserve what Renault did to him?"

The king looked into the manservant's smouldering eyes. "No one deserves that."

"Not even an 'enemy of Camelot'?" He drove the argument home.

"Not even," Arthur repeated.

Alder suddenly began choking. "Don'–make me–laugh," he struggled to say. "It hurts." Even though he was in pain, a tight smile played on his blanched face.

"Then don't laugh," Merlin admonished him, but only half-heartedly. "What's so funny?"

"That havin' the smallest talent at magic makes yeh an all-powerful sorcerer." The boy shook his head tiredly. "That, if you have magic, you are automatically bent on destroying Camelot without question," he managed to say before falling asleep once more.

"He has an odd sense of humour," Gwaine declared.

"But he speaks the truth," Arthur responded.

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