When Arthur and Gwen finally broke apart and had wiped at their eyes, the knights crowded around them to congratulate their queen.

"Thank you, gentlemen, for my rescue," she said affectionately.

"You didn't seem to need too much help!" Gwaine exclaimed, and they all laughed, relief making them giddy.

"Let's congratulate each other later," Leon suggested with a chuckle. "I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd like to get out of this tower."

"Agreed." Arthur turned back toward the door they had come in through.

"No—there's another way," Gwen said, stopping him with a hand on his arm. "Morgana used it to get us up here." She walked over to the far wall and pushed aside a tapestry. Behind was a door leading to a long stair.

"Oh, God," Percival groaned from the back of the group.

"You'd rather go back across the Death-Floor?" Leon asked, pulling Percival's arm more securely over his shoulder.

"Never mind," Percival said quickly.

"This doesn't lead to the front entrance," Arthur observed as Gwen led them to the bottom of the stair.

"No; we came in the back way."

"I am not looking forward to going back through the desert. Or the impenetrable forest," Elyan murmured.

"Oh, Morgana mentioned the forest," Gwen said as they stepped out of the tower—into the cool of evening. Rather than the endless plain they had crossed to reach the tower, they were in a forest. Not an impenetrable one, but a perfectly normal, and rather familiar, forest.

The knights looked around in confusion. "This isn't far from where we left the horses," Gwaine said dazedly.

Arthur laughed in delight. "Morgana certainly knows how to make a shortcut! Let's make camp here and fetch the horses in the morning," he decided.

The knights made camp and gathered firewood themselves as Merlin at last saw to Percival's leg. "You need to stay off of it as much as possible, and keep it clean," he declared. "The biggest danger right now is the risk of infection."

"Supper's ready," Leon announced, and Percival moved to stand.

"No, no," Gwaine said, holding him back. "You heard what Merlin said." He grinned. "Don't worry; we'll be your ladies in waiting."

"Here," Merlin said, reaching to fetch him some food.

"No, no," Leon said, swatting his hand away. "After your fantastic performance today, you deserve a little break." He served up Percival's food himself.

"Performance?" Gwen asked from her seat across the fire as Gwaine and Leon passed around the supper. Arthur sat with his arm around her, smiling with contentment at the scene.

"Merlin managed to navigate through the impenetrable forest on his own, in just a couple of hours," Elyan explained. "We had been wandering lost in it for a day."

"How did he achieve this great feat?" she wanted to know.

"Sense of smell, if you can believe it," Arthur answered.

"I'm amazed that washing your dirty socks didn't destroy that years ago," Gwaine quipped with a teasing grin. Everyone laughed, Arthur included.

"Careful how you talk about your liege lord's socks," Arthur warned him. "You might be ordered to wash them yourself!"

Gwaine gave a dramatic shudder. "No, thank you. I scrubbed all the knights' boots once, remember?"

"Yes. You were terrible at it."

"It was bootless, eh?" Elyan grinned. The knights gave a unanimous groan.

"Save us from your brother's puns!" Percival begged Guinevere.

"I don't mind them. I'm immune."

"How?"

"Long years of exposure. Like Mithridates," Arthur explained, laughing.

"Same with her husband's socks!" Leon exclaimed.

"Or maybe it's the bracelet," Gwen suggested. "Oh, you needn't look so uncomfortable," she added as the knights exchanged looks. "I don't mind talking about the tower."

"Are you sure?" Arthur said. "Because you needn't talk about it if you don't want to—"

"No, no," she said, waving away his concern. "I was a little frightened at first," she admitted. "But the bracelet made everything easier."

"How did you come by it?" Elyan wanted to know.

"There was a table in her room—the room she kept the crystal in. It was covered in a jumble of her things. Most of them were gifts—from the old days. Things from you, and your father, and even me," she added to Arthur. "I would have thought she would have thrown them all away long ago."

"Reminders of her hatred for us," Arthur said quietly.

"Perhaps," Gwen said, not quite sounding convinced. "In any case, I recognized the bracelet and remembered that it had kept away her nightmares. I had some inkling it would be useful, so I put it on and pulled my sleeve down over it. She didn't see it when she took me up to the room she kept me in. There were some sort of—ugly roots hanging from the ceiling, covering in a dripping, black mud."

"Mandrakes," Merlin said, and they all turned to look at him. "Something Morgana said," he explained, turning pink. "She mentioned mandrake roots. Gaius told me once that they were sometimes used in rituals in the Old Religion to cause terrifying hallucinations."

"Bad dreams," Arthur said slowly. "So that bracelet protected you from them!"

Gwen nodded. "When I had been in the upper room for awhile I took off the bracelet to get a better look at it in the moonlight. The moment I removed it, I heard horrible screaming sounds. I put it back on again, and they—stopped." She shook her head. "So I sat and thought about it. Clearly Morgana was using some sort of magic to try to frighten me. So every time she came to the upper room to see me, I pretended to be more and more frightened. I disarranged my hair, I screamed… I even took off my bracelet once or twice more." The other exclaimed at this. "I know, it was risky. But I needed to make my reactions seem real. It worked." She shuddered. "The next time I took it off, I saw of vision of Elyan. He said he had come to rescue me—only then he began laughing. It was horrible—mocking, madness…" She shook herself. "But I had only to remember that when I wanted to look frightened." She shrugged. "It fooled Morgana."

"I'll say it did," Arthur agreed, hugging her closer to him. "She's so puffed up in her own conceit, she didn't consider that you might have outwitted her. But you proved yourself a worthy adversary."

"Especially when you went after her with a knife!" Elyan said with a grin.

"She provoked me!" Gwen laughed.

"Only you would feel the need of an excuse," Arthur teased.

Merlin grinned as he watched his friends laugh and tease one another. Gwaine had been right; using magic to get them through the forest had been worth the risk. He glanced up at Gwaine and caught his eye accidentally. Gwaine, who had been laughing at a comment Percival had made, pressed his lips into a slightly strained smile, and Merlin returned it. He should apologize for snapping at him—but it could wait until morning.

TBC


AN: This fic has passed 50,000 words. That means it's now the length of a short novel!