"You've been unwell."
Arthur's words finally breaks the still silence that had entombed them since arriving in the chambers of the Small Council. They hang heavy in the air, innocent observation though they were.
Three of them sit around the Round Table equidistant from one another. Leon has his hands folded together, leaned forward. Gone is his normal small smile or determined grimace. In its place is a look of such driven attentiveness that it makes Merlin feels transparent. As if the Head Knight could read every minute movement, every small tic of a facial muscle.
Arthur, on the other hand, sits back in his chair. His hair is rumpled, his eyes bright, but for the moment they only hint at exhaustion. His mouth is set in a thin line, as it had been since he appeared in the hall of the dungeon to bring Merlin here.
Merlin sits in another chair, far from the other two on the opposite side of the table. Still in chains.
The king rubs his thumb ring–his mother's ring–across the hard wood of the armrest. Only that signals to Merlin that something has gotten through to the king. Something worries him, bothers him, about this whole situation. It takes a lot, after all, to make the man raised to be king fidget.
Merlin tears his gaze from Arthur's ring and arranges his face with careful precision. Despite the knot in his throat, the way his hands clench into fists on his thighs, the way his leg begs with tension dying to be released by the bouncing of a foot, he brings back his 'it's fine' face.
The 'it's fine' face has seen a lot, after all. And after all this time, it must be either very good or the people around him poorly perceptive. Jaw pushed slightly forward to allow for a slight clench, brow smoothed, eyes not narrowed nor widened. Mouth at rest. It's fine.
It's fine has been a prayer and a wish and a disguise and an excuse too many times to be anything but well-worn. Even when he feels the words actually roll off his tongue, the vowels and consonants weave loosely together to make something threadbare and sparse.
But enough. It's been enough before. It should be now. It's fine. It will be fine. I'll make sure of it.
"Sort of, your grace," Merlin replies finally.
Arthur doesn't react.
"How have you been unwell?" Leon asks.
Merlin finally glances toward him, but can't seem to keep his eyes off his king for very long. His eyes seem to simply gravitate back toward Arthur of their own accord. Arthur stares right back, jaw held tightly, eyes slightly narrowed. As uncomfortable as Arthur seems capable of looking.
"I haven't been sleeping well," Merlin says.
"What has been troubling your sleep?" Leon asks, catching Merlin's attention again.
"Dreams," Merlin replies. His voice dips into something gravely, and he clears his throat.
"Where were you the night that Timothy was killed?" Arthur asks.
Merlin's head jerks toward him once more. "What?"
"Where were you?"
"Sleeping. In bed."
"And someone can account for that?" Arthur asks.
Merlin's jaw works. "Gaius. He woke me."
Leon nods, once. "And what about the night Henry was killed?"
"Again. Asleep. Like a normal person. Up at the light of dawn running to get Arthur's breakfast."
Arthur sighs. "And this morning?"
"Gathering herbs, your grace," Merlin replies. "Or trying to."
"Ah," Leon interjects. "What herbs were you gathering? It's winter."
Merlin raises an eyebrow at him. "Chervil, rosemary, and thyme."
Leon gives him a short nod. The manservant turns his attention back to Arthur.
"Arthur–" Merlin starts.
"Did you know Timothy?" Arthur asks.
"No. I saw him around once or twice, but never spoke to him."
"Henry?"
"No."
"Heda and Amanda?"
"No, sire."
"Did you know Gretel?"
"Gretel?"
Leon interjects, "The woman from the courtyard."
"We already went over this. I had never seen her or her family before," Merlin sighs.
"Gabriel Smith?" Arthur asks.
"I don't even know the name, your grace."
The fire crackling lowly on the torches and in the fireplace becomes the only sound in the room. Merlin looks back and forth between Leon and Arthur, unwilling to break the silence first.
"Tell me about your dreams," Arthur says finally. "The ones that have been troubling you."
"They're just dreams," Merlin replies.
Leon leans forward slightly. "But you dreamed of Achlys?"
"No," Merlin says.
"What do you mean, 'No?'" Arthur asks. "You confirmed yourself at the meeting of the Round Table–"
"That I had seen Achlys before," Merlin confirms. "Yes. And I had, once before, on the morning you… interrupted what was going on."
"When you were tearing apart your room looking for evidence of an enchantment, you mean," Arthur says.
Merlin swallows a flinch. "Yes, sire. But I saw him. I didn't dream him. I thought I had, maybe, because one moment I couldn't move, and there was someone… a something in my room. But then my eyes opened–I swear, they had already been open, but they opened again–and I saw only Gaius waking me."
"What happened before Achlys came?" Arthur asks. "In these dreams."
"They're more…" Merlin begins, then trails off, looking at some point on the wall before Arthur. He's quiet for a beat before finishing, "Memories than dreams."
"Memories?" Leon repeats.
"Yes," Merlin says.
"Memories that have had you shuffling around like you're haunted?" Arthur questions, some impatience slipping into his tone. "I find that hard to believe."
"How so, my lord?" Merlin grinds out between gritted teeth.
Arthur waves a hand in the air. "You're… You're Merlin. A servant. Sure, you've seen some scary things, but nothing comes to my mind that would make you so ill."
"Is that right?" Merlin asks, voice low.
Arthur narrows his eyes. "Yes, Merlin. Something else is going on here that you aren't telling me. And it's important. Right now, it's important."
"You don't think I have memories that haunt me, Arthur?" Merlin seethes. He knows, he can feel, that his carefully impassive mask is slipping in favor of anger, but he can't help it.
"I mean, really," Arthur says. "You live in the castle. You're a servant of the royal household, and you were a peasant before that. What can you have seen to torture you so? What else have you been dreaming about?"
"Oh, fuck off, Arthur," Merlin snaps. "Even you aren't that unbelievably dense."
"Excuse me?" Arthur asks, raising an eyebrow. "I'll remind you, Merlin, that you are talking to–"
"The King of Bloody Camelot," Merlin snaps. "Yeah. Servant of the royal household. How many times have you personally been attacked on patrol or while hunting? How many times have you gone into battle? How many times have you been ambushed, betrayed, attacked, by creatures and people, magical or not? How many times did you look just over your shoulder while fighting for your life and saw me doing the same, without armor or weapon or training?
"Servant. That's right," Merlin spits, tone more derisive and angry than either Leon or Arthur have ever heard it. "I've lived in Camelot through the invasions, the curses, the plagues and dragon attacks. I've been apprenticed to the royal physician for that time, too. I've seen not my people, as you think of them, but my friends, my neighbors, slaughtered and dead in the streets. I've treated their wounds and comforted their families. I've cured their illnesses and held their hands as, when I couldn't save them, and they passed, living out their last miserable moments with only me for comfort.
"With the death of every knight and every person in this town, I feel it. And more times than I care to admit, it feels more and more like only I am left to mourn them."
"What do you mean?" Arthur asks, his voice teetering between disapproving and disbelieving.
"Do you know how long it's been since someone has talked to me about Will? You remember him, the one who took an arrow for you in Ealdor, the one I watched die, and then burned, and the one whose family I chased after when they left the funeral pyre to comfort them and bear their anger and betrayal? Do you remember him?
"How long has it been since someone lit a candle in Lancelot's memory, hm? How many times since he passed have any of you spoken of him? He was a fine knight, and the best friend, and a good man, and no one speaks of him unless I bring him up.
"Even Balinor, the man who your father betrayed, who had tried to come back to save Camelot–I was the one who returned to bury him, I was the one to mark his grave. You never spoke of him after that day, but he died in my arms, this last vestige of a different world.
"You mentioned being a peasant boy in Ealdor, Arthur. But you don't know what that means, not really. To live in a place so small and on the edge of things that no one would look or care if men like Kanen came through regularly. There were only a spare few who would collect a body from the fields where they collapsed, or had enough strength to dig graves in the icy dirt after another child died from want of food and warmth.
"And there are more. More people that I can't–I can't name. People who have died, and suffered, and I had to watch. And it feels like… it feels like if I didn't take on some of the misery of grieving them, no one else would. No one else would remember them. And it haunts me, and it's a good thing, because otherwise they will die in a much more meaningful way. They will be forgotten. And I can't bear that."
Merlin feels himself running out of fire. He casts his gaze down to his hands, still clasped in his lap.
"That's what I have been dreaming of, sire. All the sorrow and misery and death that I have known in this life. And twice now, after I wake from those memories, I have felt Achlys."
Leon and Arthur are quiet. Then, Arthur clears his throat. When Merlin looks at him again, the king's eyes are shining. His Adam's apple bobs slightly before he speaks.
"What happens when Achlys comes to you?" Arthur asks finally.
"I can't move," Merlin tells him. "I can't do anything but lie there and watch its shadow on the wall."
"Has it spoken to you?" Arthur asks.
"Yes," Merlin answers.
"What does it say?" Arthur presses.
Merlin hefts a shoulder. He looks at Arthur's face–more open and trusting that he's seen it in a long time–and sighs. "It said… It said it knows me. That it has known me my whole life. And that it's close now."
"Close?" Arthur repeats.
Merlin nods his head.
The three of them lapse into silence again. Merlin looks at Arthur.
"This Gabriel… what happened to him?"
Arthur studies Merlin carefully, then says, "He was found by the man he lives next door to, screaming and clawing at his eyes. Then, apparently, he went stock-still, and said your name. His neighbor tried to get through to him, take him to Gaius, but Gabriel, apparently, refused to move. Then he said, 'Please.'
"A drop of blood began at his neck, which made the man who lived next door run for help," Arthur says, voice tight. "By the time he came back with a city guard, Gabriel had written that message on the wall with his own blood. His head was nearly entirely separated from his body."
Merlin collapses back in his chair. "And you arrested me? Even with a witness who never said I was there?"
"He cried sorcery," Arthur explained, voice gruff yet soft. "Rumors had already begun to spread. If I didn't have you arrested…"
"People might say he was enchanted by you, and your name would never be properly cleared," Leon finishes, apologetic.
"Why not tell me that to begin with?" Merlin grouses. "Why go through with the whole interview, with not telling me what's going on?"
"I–" Arthur says, then cuts himself off, pressing his lips into a line. Merlin can practically see the argument the king has in his own head before finally saying, "I wanted some straight answers out of you for once, too. It was not entirely a selfless act."
"No," Merlin muses. "Throwing me in the dungeons rarely is."
Arthur's head comes back in a gesture mightily close to a flinch. Then, a small, cautious smile spreads over his face.
"No," Arthur finally replies. "I suppose not. I am sorry, by the way."
Merlin waves a hand in the air. "Even kings bow to protocol, I suppose."
Arthur laughs. "Quite."
Merlin gives him a small smile. Then, as he thinks, it falls back into that grim, confident line.
"So what now?" Merlin asks the king and the head knight. "All you have is my word."
"It's enough for us to clear you," Leon assures him. "But as for the people…"
"We need to find out what this Achlys is," Arthur declares. "I'm sure it had something to do with these strange deaths."
"And how do we do that?" Merlin asks.
Arthur smiles, self-satisfied and, if Merlin didn't know any better, a bit mocking. "A hunting trip."
Merlin blinks a few times.
"You can't possibly be using this as an excuse to go hunting."
"Oh, but I am," Arthur replies.
Leon shifts in his seat, throwing a glance toward Arthur. Arthur returns the look, stern, but Leon opens his mouth to speak anyway.
"Not really," Leon tells him.
Arthur sighs. "No. In the event this creature appears again, you would have no way of alerting us until it was already gone. It was luck that Mordred saw something last time and acted on instinct. But on hunts, we all sleep near each other and someone is always on watch."
"If it appeared again," Merlin says slowly, "someone would see it and alert the others even if I'm not able to."
"Right," Arthur says, pleased that Merlin grasps the logic of the plan.
"It would be easier and attract less attention than stationing a guard outside your room," Leon adds. "We wouldn't want anyone to get an incorrect impression. Showing that the king still trusts you enough to take you hunting will help dispel rumors of sorcery as well."
"It also gets us out of Camelot," Merlin continues, looking at Arthur with surprise.
Arthur nods and says, "So if there's another death…"
"We would have proof it's not related to me and this creature," Merlin finishes. "But if there's a death among the knights while we were gone, we would have proof it's connected to me, and another friend would die."
Arthur shifts in his seat. "We know the approximate pattern these deaths have taken. Horrible visions, the enucleation–"
"Big word," Merlin says, as if he can't help himself. "Been doing some reading?"
"Speaking with Gaius," Arthur explains. "It means–"
"I know what it means," Merlin tells him. "I have been doing some reading."
"Right," Arthur responds, unsure how to take that comment. "Visions, removal of the eyes, the please, and, finally, a mysterious wound appearing somewhere on the body that takes one to two candle marks to fully kill the victim."
"If they don't kill themselves in the meantime," Merlin supplies, thinking of Timothy's body swinging from the rafters, wrists cut horribly. "What if… What if I left Camelot? Just for a week or so. If another person dies, I can't be implicated, but none of our friends are at risk either. You won't be at risk, Arthur."
"I can't take that chance," Arthur replies. "We need to figure out what's happening, and it seems to be linked to you. Anyway, you have a terrible history of getting into trouble when let loose on the world on your own."
"I do not," Merlin argues.
Arthur shakes his head. "The woods are too dangerous, and you have less than ideal levels of self-preservation and survival knowledge."
Merlin snorts at this. "If this thing called Achlys really is responsible for all this… all this death, and you think I'm going on a little secluded 'hunting trip' with you and my best friends, you're more of a dollopheaded prat than I originally accounted for."
"And if you think that I'm just going to allow you to be haunted by this Achlys and to stand by while my people die horribly, then you're more of an idiot than I ever thought," Arthur returns.
Merlin stares at him.
"You're really going to make me do this, aren't you?" Merlin asks.
"It's not just an order," Arthur tells him. "I'm asking you to do this, Merlin. I will beg if I must. Things cannot continue on the ways they have been."
Arthur does not elaborate further. Merlin looks at him for a while longer, then ducks his head. Arthur nods.
"We leave at first light," Arthur informs his manservant. He sounds almost relieved. "Let Leon take those things off you and go to your chambers to prepare."
"Yes, sire," Merlin replies.
He stands and goes to Leon, who takes a key from the ring on his belt and unlocks the shackles. Merlin leaves quietly, disregarding a bow to his king or the head knight. The door shuts behind him.
Leon and Arthur sit in silence for a long while before Leon finally breaks it.
"You were a little hard on him, don't you think, sire?"
Arthur shakes his head. "I haven't heard him that animated or honest in longer than I care to admit, Sir Leon. He needed a push."
"And you really think," Leon gently presses, "that having him followed isn't a step too far? Don't you trust him?"
"Of course I trust him, Leon," Arthur snaps. "More than anyone, perhaps."
"Then why have him followed?" Leon asks.
"Because I trust that the idiot will place the well-being of his friends over his own," Arthur replies. "He's going to leave the city by himself tonight, you mark my words. Merlin will never knowingly do something to put someone else in danger, stranger or friend. If he thinks it's dangerous to stay in Camelot, he thinks it's dangerous to be with us as well. He's leaving alone tonight before we can leave together on the morrow."
Leon sighs. "I fear you're right, Arthur. I just wish you weren't."
"You and I both, Leon," Arthur replies.
When Merlin gets to Gaius's chambers, the older physician pushes him right back out. Merlin goes to argue, but sees the raised eyebrow and more-serious-than-usual mien on his mentor's face and is silent once more. Gaius directs him up the stairs to one of the more disused hallways. The two are quiet for a moment, listening for anyone else roaming the halls.
All is quiet.
"What is it?" Merlin asks.
"I believe I have found what it is, my boy," Gaius tells him.
Merlin's eyes widen. "Achlys? You know what it is?"
"Not for certain," Gaius replies. His face is grim, his voice low. "But if it is what I think it is… we have much larger worries than these deaths."
"What do you mean?" Merlin asks, all semblance of fatigue pushed from his body.
Gaius breathes out heavily. "The name Achlys does not appear in any of my books. What does, however, are descriptions of… of something. A creature made of mist with glowing red eyes, surrounded by pain and grief and horribleness."
"What is it?" Merlin presses.
"There is no name for it," Gaius tells him. "The closest translation I could come across kept jumping between terms. Demon, spirit, omen, symbol."
"Those are very different things," Merlin responds, a tad bit reproachful.
"Yes," Gaius says, stressing the word. "No one seems to know what this being is. But it is preceded by dreams, and followed by death."
"But what is it?" Merlin presses. "Where does it come from?"
"The most reliable of texts I came across was an essay asking that same question," Gaius tells him. "It posits…"
"Just tell me," Merlin says, and even to himself it sounds as if he is begging.
Gaius exhales again, then fixes Merlin with a stare and says, "It posits that this creature is an instrument of Oblivion."
"Oblivion?" Merlin repeats, his brow furrowing.
"A being that predates anything we know," Gaius says. "A Master of All Things."
"A master of gods?" Merlin asks, casting his memory back to his tense conversation with Kilgharrah.
"A Master of All Things," Gaius repeats grimly. "It predates Creation."
"Surely not," Merlin responds. The hair on the back of his neck rises of its own accord.
Gaius nods. "Oblivion is that to which all things fade, eventually. People, civilizations, countries. Worlds. It is what happens when not even the memory of something or someone exists."
"And Achlys…"
"Achlys comes from Oblivion," Gaius answers. "Please, please take to heart, my boy, that this is not for certain."
"Can it be killed?" Merlin asks, voice and posture tight.
A long, tense moment of silence passes.
"Well?" Merlin asks. "Can it?"
Gaius sighs. "Other, similar creatures have been chronicled through a short history I was able to find. In each story, the creatures appears about a nameless hero, leaving death and suffering in its wake. And then it offers the hero a choice. All accounts simply end with that. A choice."
"Which heroes?" Merlin asks absently, grasping for something to make sense of in Gaius's explanation.
A shrug, then, a small and defeated thing. "There are never any names."
"So we do not know for sure what this thing is, or what it wants, or how it can be killed," Merlin repeats, voice rising a bit. He runs a hand through his hair, feeling keenly the absence where the weight of a manacle should be.
How funny that an absence should be almost be heavier than the thing itself. Like the silence after something always going in the background switches off. Or the reliance on a friend after the friend is gone.
"We know," Gaius says finally, "that this could be very bad, indeed."
"Why?" Merlin asks, the question coming out partly strangled by the panic rising in his throat. "It could only mean that Camelot–Arthur, Gwen, all the knights, everything I've worked for, slipping into Oblivion. Going past memory itself and fading into… into nothing. Nameless heroes without and ending to their story."
Merlin barks out a laugh then. It is more bitter than one of Gaius's potions, more sharp-edged than one of Arthur's expertly honed blades.
"Merlin," Gaius says, his voice low. He places an old, bent, and strong hand on Merlin's forearm. The physical touch is grounding, and Merlin's face falls from a bitter, twisted smile into something more serious and earnest.
"This Achlys," Gaius tells him, "this creature who does not have a name in my books… If it is here and calling for you, then it is not Arthur, the queen, or the Round Table I am worried for."
Merlin pat's Gaius's hand, then removes it from his arm.
"There's no reason to worry for me, Gaius," Merlin tells him. "I'll handle it."
"This time, my boy," Gaius says, voice quavering in an uncharacteristic show of vulnerability and care, "this time I don't know if even you can."
Merlin pulls Gaius into a hug then. The physician's arms encircle his ward, strong and steady against the suddenly shuddering chest of Merlin. But when they pull apart, Gaius only sees Merlin's impeccable Emrys face. It's the same expression Merlin wears when determined to do something stupid and self-sacrificing in the name of safety. The same expression Merlin wore moments before saving the lives of those he holds dear, going directly against Gaius's advice about self-preservation and caution.
It's serious. Carved from stone. Implacable.
"Don't," Gaius says.
And he leaves it at that. A quiet, last entreaty.
"Please don't, my boy," Gaius says.
Merlin gives Gaius a small, sad smile.
"I must," Merlin tells him. He gives Gaius a brief kiss on his forehead, squeezes his mentor's arm, and goes down the steps.
When he leaves the castle a candle mark later, thinking himself alone but some figure called Achlys following him through the shadows, he does not pause long enough to notice the cloaked figure following through the streets behind him.