16. Part 1: Hallucinations

("Gwaine" and "The Witchfinder" from Kingdom Games: A Game of Two Kings)

On his knees in the clearing of the Labyrinth, Merlin watched Arthur and Gwaine approach; he looked exhausted by the battle they'd just waged against the other combatants locked in the maze til one survivor was proclaimed the victor, unnaturally still and quiet. Then again, he knelt beside his father's body; Balinor died to save Merlin's life, but it was so close, so soon, it was a shock even to Arthur. He couldn't begin to imagine what Merlin was feeling, or thinking.

Arthur's attention was caught by a small object, white against the blue of the sky, soaring up into the sun – he blinked, and the object was descending. Not a bird – a stone? Did someone have a slingshot?

"Merlin!" Arthur shouted in warning, pointing.

Merlin turned in time to freeze the object in midair for a single instant, a pouch with a tied-off mouth, of a size to fit comfortably in a man's hand.

One instant only, then it burst, spattering clear liquid all over Merlin.

Gwaine caught at Arthur's arm, whether in caution or dread, he didn't know. Merlin himself sat still in shock. Then coughed, and gasped, and clawed at his face.

"Merlin!" Arthur called. Gwaine held him back.

"You don't know what that stuff is, what it does," he hissed. "Be careful!" He drew his sword and dashed to the row nearest the direction the pouch had come flying from, checked around the corner, then disappeared.

Arthur moved forward to join his friend. Merlin scrubbed at the liquid wetting hair and hands and face, sputtering, but Arthur saw no acid burns, smelled no odor at all.

"You all right?" he asked, crouching down.

Merlin coughed, leaned to the side and spat, then blinked up at Arthur, hair and eyelashes spiky with the clinging liquid. His eyelids were pink from his rubbing. He blinked and rubbed again.

"Yeah, I'm okay," he responded quietly, his voice raspy and confused. He widened his eyes as if that would help him focus, looked down at his father lying in front of him. He shook his head, then knuckled his eyes again.

"Arthur!" Gwaine hailed him. Arthur straightened, moved away to meet the dark-haired warrior. "I caught a glimpse of him, that older man your king put in the contest. He ran from me, though, and I lost him."

"Aredian," Arthur said. "He's the judge of the sorcerer's court. He has no magic himself, but is very experienced in dealing with sorcery. He won't fight openly; he has no sword."

Gwaine gestured over to Merlin, struggling to his feet. "Is he okay? What was that stuff?"

Arthur shook his head, indicating his ignorance. Merlin swayed drunkenly, nuzzling his head into his forearm. He looked down at his father's body, then leaped back in such shock that he stumbled and fell.

"Merlin!" Arthur said, starting toward him.

Merlin gazed around wildly. "Arthur? Arthur!" he shouted, startling at absolutely nothing, flinching back from empty air. He scrambled to his knees, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. "Arthur!"

The young sorcerer raised both hands, palms out – and fireballs began to fly.

Faster than Arthur could see, the flaming projectiles formed and flashed, and no point around Merlin was safe. He turned his head, and flames shot, burning blackened smoking holes in the hedges all around. He was shouting, howling as though every enemy suddenly surrounded him.

"Come on, we gotta go before he blasts us!" Gwaine shouted, pulling him backward toward a leafy alley getaway. "He's gone mad! No telling what he's seeing!"

What he's seeing. That liquid. Arthur wrenched free from Gwaine's grip and advanced upon his friend, calling his name.

Merlin whirled around, his eyes wide but unfocused, holding one palm toward Arthur as if signaling him – warning him – to stop. "Arthur? Where are you?" he shouted, and his tone suddenly changed to one of venomous threat – "You, stop right where you are!"

"Merlin, it's me," Arthur said. He held out his hands as if his posture could calm and reassure the sorcerer. "It is me."

"Arthur?" Merlin glanced around, shivered, then suddenly ducked and rolled, roaring some words in the old language, and the hub was filled with swirling wind dashed with licking tongues of flame.

Gwaine was probably long gone. He couldn't blame the man, really, their acquaintance had been made less than an hour ago, and allegiances would shift in this sort of violent competition.

"Merlin," he tried again. "Please stop – there's no one here but us!"

Merlin snarled and reached behind him to shoot another fireball – his eyes glared golden at Arthur. "Don't come any closer!" he warned with a hitch of terror in his voice.

"Merlin, can you hear me? Do you trust me?" Arthur commanded, "Close your eyes."

Merlin obeyed. The labyrinth went still around them. No wind, no flame. No sound. The sorcerer, still on his knees, shoulders hunched, shivered and panted. His outstretched hands twitched as though anxious to keep fighting.

"You hear me, don't you?" Arthur said, sliding his feet slowly forward. "You know it's me. You trust me. I'm right here."

"Arthur, be careful," Merlin said desperately. "All around us-"

"There's nothing," Arthur soothed. "There's no one."

"There's–" His head jerked to the side, but he kept his eyes obediently shut. "But I saw…"

Arthur knelt before his friend. "Keep your eyes shut," he said, and glanced around them to be sure they weren't about to be ambushed. "There must have been something in that pouch to make you see things."

Merlin sank back on his haunches, his arms dropping to his sides. "There's really nothing there?" he whispered. "No one?"

"Just us," Arthur said, striving for cheer in his tone. He rummaged in his pack for his roll of bandages, shook it out, wadded it up, then poured water over it and began to scrub at Merlin's face.

"I caught it in the air," Merlin said. "But the minute my magic touched it…it burst apart."

Leave it to someone like Aredian to think of that. Arthur tipped Merlin's chin up and squeezed water into the hollows of his eyes.

"I'm not sure this is going to help," he said.

Merlin coughed again. "I'm sorry," he said, his voice hoarse. "I didn't hurt you, did I?"

"Open your eyes," Arthur ordered. "Slowly, carefully, and tell me what you see."

Merlin looked at him, the blue of his irises faded slightly, red-rimmed, his pupils unnaturally dilated. He recoiled from Arthur, then jerked to the left, falling over with the violence of the movement. The look on his face – whatever he saw, it was terrifying. Arthur tackled him, covering his eyes with his hand.

"Okay, never mind," he said. "I'm going to wrap this bandage around your eyes, you can just keep them shut."

Merlin nodded, swallowed dryly. "Arthur." His whisper was hoarse. "If I can't see, I can't fight. I'm going to be useless to you, slow you down…"

"Then it's lucky we're not in a hurry to get anywhere, isn't it?" Arthur said, winding the bandage and tying it, unintentionally tangling Merlin's black hair in the knot.

Movement distracted him, and he looked up to see Gwaine at the entrance to one of the aisles.

As the other warrior's boot-heel scuffed faintly, and Merlin's head began to turn, Gwaine said cheerfully, "That was quite mad, wasn't–"

Merlin's hand rose as fast as thought, and Arthur lunged to knock it aside. Gwaine was flung back against the hedge-wall.
"That's Gwaine," Arthur said to Merlin. "He's not an enemy. Not at the moment."

"Yeah, not ever, with you, mate," Gwaine quipped, pushing himself upright, collecting his cynical amusement back from shock. He widened his eyes at Arthur, since Merlin couldn't see his expression.

"I'm sorry," Merlin said in Gwaine's direction, his voice raspy.

"Here, drink something," Arthur said, putting a water-skin into Merlin's hands, guiding his fingers to the spout. "Then let's put a few twists and turns between ourselves and this place," he proposed, standing and reaching to pull Merlin up by his elbow.

"My father," Merlin said, in the same quiet, rough voice, turning to where his father lay, though he could no longer see him. He cleared his throat, coughed, and spat.

"We won't go far," Arthur promised. "I'll return, and ready the pyre." He glanced at Gwaine, to gauge the other's intent, wondering if he could trust him to stay with Merlin. Wondering if he should tell him to take a hike – and keep going.

"Well," Gwaine said, offering a wide grin. "Seems like you two have got yourselves in a bit of a pickle, haven't you?"

"You should get out of here while you have the chance," Arthur told him. "Merlin and I, we have a tendency to attract this kind of trouble." Merlin made a sound equal parts laugh and sob.

"You're probably right," Gwaine agreed cheerfully. "Your chances look between slim and none – but I guess I kind of like the look of those odds." Arthur gave him a skeptical look, and the warrior's expression intensified. He said, "I am through dancing to Cenred's tune. His gal Morgause would be a plague and a half on our kingdoms. Are you going to be a good king? I dunno. Are you going to be alive in a week, a day, an hour? I dunno. Am I?" He shrugged. "Same answer. But there's – something – I see in the two of you."

"You know what that is?" Merlin rasped, perfectly serious.

"What?" Gwaine said.

Merlin put out his hand, patted at the air until he felt Gwaine's sleeve, then gripped his arm. He grinned, though the smile without the light in his eyes was considerably dimmed, it was a smile.

"We're idiots," Merlin told Gwaine.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

Arthur, swore, then rushed into the dead-end alley where they'd left Merlin.

Merlin was crumpled on his side.

Gwaine repeated the obscenity to himself, resting his hand on the hilt of his sword. If someone had found and killed the boy in their brief absence, Arthur would turn on him in fury–

Arthur's whole body expressed his sigh of relief. "Merlin," he called softly, shaking the boy's shoulder. "Wake up."

The boy moved, raised his head, and the prince helped him to sit up properly.

"Merlin, you idiot, you fainted like a girl," Arthur chided affectionately.

"Sorry," Merlin mumbled huskily. "I just got so dizzy…" He raised his hand to the bandage covering his eyes.

"Shall we see what you can see?" Arthur said, untying the cloth. Merlin blinked, squinted up at Gwaine, and flinched.

"Come now," Gwaine teased, "I'm not that ugly – unless the ladies lie."

Merlin squeezed his eyes shut. "Arthur, please swear to me that Gwaine is not vomiting purple toads." His voice was dry and strained.

Arthur sighed, reaching for the water-skin next to the sorcerer's knee. "Gwaine is not vomiting purple toads," he said.

The prince held up the water-skin for Gwaine to see that it was empty, raising his eyebrows. Gwaine shrugged. It was rather too much for Merlin to have consumed, especially considering how long they might have to stay in the labyrinth. Arthur took his own, dribbled more water over the bandage before replacing it over Merlin's eyes and tying it with infinite care and gentleness.

"Is that better?" he said. Merlin nodded. "Come on, then."

He pulled the sorcerer to his feet and steadied him, placing the boy's hand on his shoulder for guidance, and with Gwaine in the rear once again, they walked – or weaved unsteadily, in Merlin's case – out of their temporary shelter, back into the labyrinth.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

Merlin curled his fingertips over the edge of the bandage, pulled it down over his nose. Then he opened his eyes - it was a blur of darkness. No, no, no – belladonna was not supposed to cause permanent blindness! He blinked, widened his eyes, scrubbed at them vigorously.

"What do you see?" Gwaine asked in a curious whisper.

"Nothing," he admitted hollowly, letting his hands fall into his lap.

Gwaine chuckled. "Not yet dawn, Merlin," he told him. "Give it an hour, then you'll be able to see – whatever it is you can see."

Whatever it is… he shuddered, remembering. He'd looked down at his father, seeing not peaceful stillness or a dark saturation of blood, but the filthy pale swollenness of a long-submerged corpse, opening milky-white eyes and blackened lips to scream and whisper in silence.

And then, more had come, all around. Dead, drowned faces, dripping like fountains, dragging their limbs toward him, glowing with a sickly blue-green luminescence, closing in… And one, more horrific than the rest, because of the link that told him – that corpse was Arthur's. The golden hair and blue eyes were bleached and pouring foul water, reaching webbed fingers – and he couldn't strike back. He shuddered again. Ye gods, if he had acted upon the hallucination…

"Pendragon," Gwaine hissed. Merlin heard a shuffle of motion, the soft clink of Arthur's armor. "Dawn approaches."

Arthur grunted, then groaned, and the sound was so familiar, Merlin couldn't help smiling. The few times the prince had still been sleeping when Merlin had entered the bedchamber with his breakfast tray, he always woke in the same way. "Merlin," Arthur rasped.

"Rise and shine," Merlin whispered back.

16. Part 1: Hallucinations

("Solution" from Possibility)

The last thing Merlin remembered was wiping the table in Arthur's chamber. Eyeing the wide bare surface and feeling so tired. Even the hard wood looked inviting, he thought he'd try it… just once… just for a moment…

And then someone was calling his name and shaking his shoulder and his chest hurt and his hips hurt as though he'd been lying on that table for hours. He shuffled his feet a little to get his bearings – they felt odd, too, probably the blood had drained down his legs – and positioned his arms for better support.

"What?" he said, irritated at being woken, at being found shirking his duties without a good excuse.

"If you were cold, why didn't you just put your jacket back on, instead of lighting a blazing fire? And if you were tired…"

Merlin flattened his palms on the tabletop, pushing himself up - but then turning to slouch his weight in a sitting position on that piece of the prince's furniture, rather than trying to stand. He squinted in the direction of the prince's voice and saw a shadow move in front of a faint light far away.

"I'm not cold," he said crossly. "And I lit the fire –" and the candles, but they'd obviously burned down; he wasn't going to call Arthur's attention to that – "because it's so dark in here, which is probably why I felt tired, how late is it?"

Believing his impression that the prince was across the room, Merlin jumped when a hand touched him, tried to pull away from the prince's grip of his shoulder and – chin, of all things.

"It's only afternoon," Arthur said, "not yet near dark. There's something wrong with your eyes."

"What's wrong with my eyes?" he said, squinting at the pale blob of the prince's face in the dimness.

"Look at me," Arthur commanded – Merlin scoffed; he was already doing that. "Now look at the candle."

A tiny far pinprick of light. Merlin tried to focus.

"There's something wrong with your eyes," Arthur said again. "And if you're not cold… come on, I'm taking you to Gaius."

"Oh, why?" Merlin whined. He hated to mention any physical infirmity to the old man – Gaius made it seem like every bruise and sniffle was somehow Merlin's fault – and especially after this morning.

"Because my room really does need cleaning, and you're useless if you can't even see what you're doing."

Merlin felt Arthur's arms, his body, trying to gather and guide him, and he resisted. He was tired and maybe a bit frightened at what the magic-removing potion Gaius had concocted was doing to him, deep down, but he didn't want Arthur. Didn't want to show this part of himself to the prince, after Arthur had proposed the potion as the solution to the legal complication Merlin's confession of magic had presented.

Maybe he'd relax in Gaius' embrace, but he didn't know the old man very much better – instinctively he wished for his mother.

But Arthur was at least as stubborn as he, and stronger. His hand at Merlin's elbow, the prince marched him out the door – down hallways, down one set of stairs and up another – exactly as if he was under arrest. Merlin did wonder… until he smelled the familiar pungency of the physician's chambers.

"What is it, what's wrong?" Gaius said immediately, too close, and Merlin flinched from him, too, without meaning it.

Arthur's hand pushed him, and he obeyed, glad to find at least the stool under his backside when he landed – gripped the edge of the seat to keep from losing it.

"He's breathing strangely and there's something wrong with his eyes and you can see for yourself his lips and fingernails are blue."

Merlin immediately raised his hands for his own inspection, but couldn't see them clearly in the eternal twilight that seemed to have settled over the whole citadel. Gaius took them, though, and Merlin submitted somewhat grumpily to his guardian's examination.

"Pupils contracted and nonresponsive," Gaius muttered, "heart-rate slowed… What does it feel like when you breathe, Merlin?"

"Feels like my lungs are made of leather," he admitted. "I thought, because I had to fill the water-bucket, and then we did training in the sun… I thought my eyes would adjust, when we went inside, only they didn't, and then I thought maybe… it was just getting late?"

"Your body is not getting enough air."

That seemed silly; he was obviously breathing, wasn't he?

Merlin flinched again at the sudden sensation of fingers unlacing his shirt, but the round instrument Gaius laid to the skin of his chest in preparation to listen to his lungs wasn't then completely unexpected.

He turned his face to Arthur, a lingering, shifting shadow among shadows. "I forgot my…"

…

" –rlin!" Gaius insisted.

"Jacket, in your room." Merlin blinked. His cheek stung, and Arthur was inexplicably kneeling next to him, instantly ten feet closer.

"What happened?" Arthur demanded. "What was that? What happened?"

Merlin wasn't sure if the prince was asking him, or Gaius. "What?"

"You were saying something, and then you – stopped," Gaius said. He sounded worried; he was somehow seated just next to Merlin on the edge of a bench that a moment ago had been in the opposite corner.

"I said, I forgot my jacket in your room," Merlin said.

Arthur disregarded him. "Is this because of that potion?" he said, turned toward the physician.

"I think it's likely," Gaius responded. "We'll have to hope that–"

…

Perhaps more candles lit in this room would improve his vision. Arthur had wanted it clean when he got back, after all.

He reached for his magic; it slithered from his grasp like a reflection in water, all shimmering promise and shattered reality.

Quite like destiny, maybe.

…

"Merlin!"

Arthur's hands on his shoulders, and his neck sore like he'd been shaken, and Gaius talking too quickly.

"No, sire, that won't help either, the fit is involuntary!"

Fit? he tried to say. Tried to turn his head to face Gaius, but it wobbled. And – strange sensation – his hands and feet seemed to have disappeared. Blue fingernails, he remembered – he wondered if it was true of his toes, only… Probably it was improper to bare his feet before the prince…

Who was in Gaius' chambers, for some reason.

"Arthur?" he said. "What are you doing here?"

The prince just stared at him, as if he was the one out of place.

"Give him a minute," Gaius said. "The disorientation should fade. He'll remember."

Merlin cocked his head at his guardian, puzzling why Arthur should be disoriented, and what it was that he'd remember… something about magic… and judgment…

Oh. The prince knew – Merlin's heart leaped and he gasped too suddenly and choked – the potion, and Arthur had said–

"Anything you can do?"

"Perhaps a… salt in water or… but it was several hours… just don't know."

Merlin realized that the prince and the physician had retreated slightly to discuss… oh, him, probably.

He blinked and even in the twilight gloom noticed that one of Gaius' little glass dose-bottles had fallen to the floor just to the side of his boot. He bent to pick it up – make himself useful while he wasn't part of their important conversation – but his fingertips with their blue nails brushed only each other, as it shimmered and slipped from his grasp.

Just like his magic.

The effect was a bit fascinating. He tried again, and then again, with no more success but he wasn't worried and it seemed to make sense that he should keep trying until–

…

"–Are you doing, Merlin?"

Arthur's hand on his shoulder again, holding him upright – why was he trying to touch the floor?

He focused as his fingers twitched, but the floor was bare, so he leaned away from the pressure of the prince's hand. "What?"

"Perhaps it would be best to get him into bed?" he heard Gaius say.

It was dark. It was probably night. And late, he thought, perhaps that was why he didn't seem to be thinking clearly, and couldn't remember how he'd spent his day. Busy, he thought, to feel so tired now.

Why had he been busy? Oh, the plague… the afanc in the cistern… "Arthur! Did we kill it?"

The confession to the council… the magic… the prince knew.

But Arthur's hands were gentle, lifting him and guiding him. "It's okay, Merlin, you'll be okay."