Fear (n.) from Old English Fær
Arthur warily stopped to let his eyes get used to the darkness. It was not as pitch-black in the prison as he had originally thought. The slow regaining of sight, however, did nothing to assuage his uneasiness. Something was wrong. Something was missing.
He almost facepalmed when he got it. Of course something was missing: the prisoners.
There was complete silence in the vast, dingy room. It was cold enough that the young royal could now just barely see his breath escape him in a fine mist like a dragon's flame. The dungeon was modest-sized, with about fifteen six-by-ten cells including both those sunk into the walls and cage-like structures that occupied most of the floor space. It was entirely contained in the one big room with a ceiling that started about three handbreadths above the cage roofs, which also surprised him: at home, the prison was a system of long hallways lined with cells. It was a smarter design, since it meant escaping prisoners or attackers could be easily trapped by the Lionguard, Camelot's most prestigious military-slash-police unit, in spaces with little maneuverability and no options. Like the large antechamber outside, it again didn't appear that the Esseti castle was very well planned out. How had Vortigern ever managed to trounce his father if he couldn't even build an effective fortress?
Trying to avoid the shivers sent down his spine by the creepy atmosphere of the still, silent cages, Arthur began to move slowly and silently through the room, mind whirling. Where had the convicts gone? Given his studies of the recent drought conditions, Vortigern Senior's lackluster and often counterproductive nudges toward economic recovery, and the brutality of Vortigern's military forces keeping "order" throughout the land, Arthur doubted there was simply a lack of crime. Had they all been executed? How many? Or had they been moved: was this a trap to catch Uther's son out and restart the war?
The last thought drained the remainder of the heat from his body, leaving him shivering and breathless. Not only did Arthur very much not wish to die, but he also dreaded his people, who he had been raised to protect, being hurt because of him. It was this ever-present fear that made him glad Morgana was the heiress apparent, not him.
With effort, Arthur schooled his thoughts. His whirlpool of paranoia wouldn't help anyone. What was there to do here if there were no prisoners? Had all this effort and the possible death of the guard been for nothing?
No, that couldn't be right. There wouldn't be six guards posted to watch over an empty room. If it was a trap, Vortigern would have made it easy for him and left only one or two. Finally, the fact that he could see while ten feet underground meant that there was a fire somewhere, and fuel was expensive. Even with a king's coffers, it wasn't something that could be wasted on an empty, dingy room. With one last nervous glance around the darkened room, he followed the source of the light.
This led him into another identical room, the entrance to which had been hidden by the floor cages, and then another. By the time he reached the third room, the flickering firelight was much brighter, reflecting off of swirls of what looked like iron ore in the stone walls. Arthur could just make out a torch at about face height on the wall in one of the far corners. Ignoring the eerie atmosphere, he advanced slowly but surely, moving on the balls of his feet like a cat so that his footsteps made no sound on the cold stone floors.
Against the bars of the free-standing cage in the right corner, farthest from the entrance, sat a hunched figure. Its knees were drawn up to its chest, arms clasped loosely around them. Its clothes, a greenish tunic and long brown pants, were not rags, but they were worn at the seams and looked to be of thin material, entirely unsuited for the freezing cold. All Arthur could make out of its features was a mop of black hair and large ears that stuck out a bit to the sides.
Something felt...wrong about this, but Arthur hadn't come all this way to be scared off like a timid housemaid by a bad feeling. Steeling his nerves, he initiated, "Hello?"
His voice echoed around the room. The figure in the cage did not move, and Arthur realized it was either asleep or pretending to be.
He tried again, louder. "Hello? You there. Madam? Sir?" He couldn't tell from what little he could see: the hair was short, but the legs were stick-skinny.
The figure stirred but did not lift its head. "The second one."
Arthur almost jumped: he hadn't really been expecting a response so soon. The voice was male and a bit raspy but otherwise pleasant, with an Esseti country accent from what he could tell from the short exchange. It spoke a little louder than necessary. It sounded very tired.
Arthur honestly wasn't sure where to go from here. "Why were you imprisoned" seemed a bit forward. Luckily, the prisoner took the choice out of his hands. "So who are you, and what do you want? I'm guessing you didn't come all the way down here for small talk." Now that the boy (man?) had spoken more, Arthur could detect a hint of something else in the accent that he couldn't place. The boy (Arthur decided no man could be that skinny) seemed to hold his s's and bite out his hard consonants, like the c in come, and at the same time his vowels had a slight lilt to themthat Arthur couldn't connect with any foreign dignitary who had visited his father's court. Maybe it was just an odd individual speech pattern.
Arthur felt it wise not to give too much away. "An interested party, looking for a way to undermine a certain monarch. I'm guessing you hold no love for Vortigern."
The figure finally raised its head. "Gee, you think?" Arthur's breath caught in his throat.
The boy had no eyes. It wasn't that he had the milky white eyes of a blind beggar or even red gouges under his lids; he literally had none of the structures of an eye: no lids, no lashes, nothing. Instead, his face from the tops of his cheekbones to just under his eyebrows was a mess of scar tissue, with oozing red or yellow areas and angry pink parts where it had not fully healed, even if the brown, scabby parts indicated that it was an old injury. It looked like an artist had painted him, then smudged a finger violently in a line across his face, smearing the paint in angry, messy lines. Arthur, who had seen plenty of battle wounds, thought he might be sick.
Yes, he actually would be sick. Arthur turned to the side and dry heaved, but he managed to keep down his lunch. When he turned back, the boy's hair had fallen over his face somewhat, making it easier to regard him more.
The blind boy looked to be around his age and was deathly pale. Odd, dark brown lines about an inch thick started in the centers of his sharp cheekbones where the scarring stopped, dropped down both cheeks like tear trails, and then wound back, following the contours of his face, to curve around his jaw just below the ears and trace his jugular veins down his neck before they turned sharply on his collarbones to meet at the base of his throat in a wide, curved v shape like a diving gull. Arthur couldn't quite tell from here, but it looked like they branched off at the jugulars and also continued around the back of the neck.
Arthur was shaken from his thoughts by a sardonic voice. "Done staring? You're still there, right?"
Arthur collected himself. All in all, it wasn't actually the worst disfigurement he had ever seen; it had just taken him by surprise, especially with the eerie sense of other-ness worst in this room. "Uh, still here. What's–what's your name?"
Unexpectedly, the boy in the cage's mouth broke into a dazzling grin. "Wait, really?" In one fluid motion he leapt to his feet. "Merlin. I'm–my name is Merlin." He walked to the side of the cage closest to Arthur and put his hand forward, although not through the bars, a few feet to Arthur's left.
Arthur stared at it for a moment before realizing it was outstretched for a handshake. Tentatively, he reached in and shook it, managing not to recoil in surprise when he felt an odd grip and realized the boy was missing his pinky finger above the first knuckle. Arthur had seen many with digits and even limbs stolen by frostbite. This was not frostbite.
After the handshake was broken, Arthur stepped back a few paces, and an awkward silence descended. Merlin's almost puppy-like eagerness slowly receded with his smile. Arthur finally broke the silence. "So...about why I'm here."
The sightless boy nodded seriously, facing a couple of inches to Arthur's right. "You said you were an enemy of Vortigern?"
Arthur winced at his elevated volume. He knew the door was closed, but the dungeons echoed like everywhere else in this bloody castle, and if someone did decide to come down here…. "Could you keep it down? I don't want to be caught here!"
Merlin winced, the muscles of his jaw visibly tightening, and stage-whispered, "Sorry. Sometimes they come down here with...they throw off my hearing. So I don't get too perceptive." His facial muscles scrunched up a little, and the other boy saw one hand twitch.
Yikes. Arthur adopted the medium volume he used to talk to his half-deaf former nurse. "Yes, I'm an enemy of Vortigern. I'm looking for information on his military capabilities. There's something going on, something...unnatural," the royal fished.
To his delight, Merlin visibly tensed and backed slightly away from the bars. So it was magic! That had been his and his father's preferred theory. And this mysterious prisoner definitely knew something.
Up close, Arthur could see that the dark brown lines on the young man's face were not actually solid lines, but smaller tattooed, primitive-looking line symbols, most including sharp angles and dots, interlocking and arranged in lines. Arthur was not stupid. A picture began to form in his mind, one he did not like, and he took another step away from the bars. "Would you happen to know anything about that, Merlin?"
The other boy was almost back to the other end of the cell now. "...Maybe I do. But, of course, you can't expect me to trust you just like that. I've given you my name. Won't you give me yours?"
This request set all of the alarm bells that had been ringing in Arthur's head since he had first seen the six guards into a frenzy. Names had power. And besides, even if he was wrong, it would be a disaster if Merlin told a jailer he had been visited by someone named Arthur asking for information to hurt Vortigern. However, if he wanted information, he had to give the other boy something. He thought fast. "Name's Victor."
The other boy's head tilted to the side. "You're lying."
The eyeless face snapped toward him abnormally fast. Arthur forgot to breathe. The eerie feeling of other-ness that had been making him, against all logic, want to run since he'd first entered the room had dissipated upon Merlin's first smile, but now it returned in tidal waves that twisted Arthur's stomach and left him gasping for air. He needed to get out now. He had to get out get out getoutgetoutgetoutgetoutgetoutGET OUT–
These weren't his thoughts. Ignoring his instincts screamingat him, Arthur grunted and painfully straightened up from where he hadn't even realized he'd twisted over his stomach to glare at the thing in the cage. "Merlin" was pacing back and forth, practically growling his words. Arthur caught the tail end of a sentence and realized the thing with the appearance of a boy had been talking the entire time since the tsunamis of panic had hit. "–some poor schmuck who's new to the guard, aren't you? They bully you into this? Or maybe you're just like them. Probably. I suppose you were going to offer to let me out? Got to hand it to you, your premise was a bit more creative than the last one. But you can't fool me, not anymore. Keep talking. I could end you, you know. Why don't you come through this door, tough guy? Let's see just how strong you are against a little blind boy. They here too? Cenred! Isobel! Rufus! I know your names now. You know what I can do with your names…"
Arthur turned and started to slowly walk away as the thing in the cage kept rambling, alternating between a rage-filled growl and an eerie singsong that set the hairs on the back of Arthur's neck on end. He would not show that the thing was affecting him. He was stronger than that. His stomach clenched again, painfully, and the urge to run threatened to overwhelm him, but he continued his stately saunter. The thing in the cage behind him–and it killed him to turn his back–was still pacing, dragging a chain behind it over the stone floor from a manacle attached to its ankle. Iron. The creature hadn't been able to put a hand through the bars of cold iron. But Arthur had. Arthur had touched it. He wanted to throw up. Not only was he absolutely positive Merlin was magical and very dangerous, but he was reasonably sure the "boy" had been responsible for the deaths of hundreds of his father's men. He had seen some of the bodies. Many had been unrecognizable as human.
Over the sorcerer's echoing shouts and his own thoughts as he tried desperately to control himself, Arthur almost missed the sound of a door clanking open, yells of surprise and anger, and the thud of running feet. The guards must have heard the commotion. Arthur ducked behind a cage into a dark corner against the wall to let them pass, again pulling up his dark cloak. Honestly, this was a lucky break: his original exit plan had been to count on the element of surprise and simply run past them, depending on their heavy armor and his athleticism to keep him in the lead until he could give them the slip, but now he could simply walk out while the guards were distracted. The sorcerer had done him a favor! He clung to this thought to try to steady his panicked breathing and racing heartbeat. He tried to laugh to drown out the fear, but it came out as a low croak. The guards raced past without a second glance, some markedly more reluctant than others. Only now did Arthur allow himself to sprint, telling himself it was to avoid the guards and not because of the thing in the cell behind him, which had gone silent. The fear spiked painfully, then began to ebb. Arthur sprinted out of the dungeons like the hounds of Hell were on his trail.