20. Part 1: Lost
("Famine and Drought" from The Emrys Strain)
A scream woke him, rising and falling, increasing in volume and intensity until the sound pressed painfully in on his eardrums. He covered his head with his arms. Red and blue lights flashed, the brightness agonizing on already sensitive eyes.
He heard himself whimper, felt the surfaces below and behind him as hard and cold and damp.
The screaming slowly faded into the distance, taking the disorienting strobe effect of the light with it. He uncoiled stiffly, and opened his eyes.
The world was a swirl of dirty orange and blue-black. He found it hard to distinguish between up and down – though that wouldn't matter unless he was falling, he supposed.
He put out his arms, hoping that touch could help to make sense of his perceptions, and his whole body groaned in protest. He stilled his muscles. At least, he wasn't aware of sending any further intentional signals for his body to move, though everything seemed to be rocking around him anyway. It wasn't a threatening motion, but it did leave him dizzy in a stomach-churning way.
There was a light, far in the distance. He wondered if that was the light he was meant to follow – go into the light, he thought, but didn't move to rise.
He blinked up at it; sparks flew around the light, like moths on a summer night, like sidhe fairies dancing over the surface of a lake. He tried to concentrate, to slow time to see them, and couldn't. Instead he turned his head to the side and vomited saliva and bile.
Then it seemed to make sense to move away from the new puddle on the hard damp surface. He managed to squirm a short distance before exhaustion overtook him. His head hurt, where it lay on a hard surface.
Or maybe the hard surface laid on him. Hard to tell. Get it?
Maybe he'd been hit in the head. It seemed to him that he might have enjoyed a quiet, cool, dark night otherwise. That was it. He'd been mugged. Hit over the head so hard his brains were scrambled. With cheese and parsley.
But there was some reason why the thought of him being mugged was laughable. Why? What made him different from everyone else who'd ever been mugged?
That light was sparking again. Sparkling with sparks – sparkly – sparkles. Another idea occurred to him, and he tried to impose his will on them, through them, form them into an image of something – someone – a being old and scaly and cranky, but powerful and wise. He could use some advice right now. He could use someone to talk to.
"You hidin' from the cops?"
He scrambled instinctively into a sitting position, a few rapids blinks sufficient to focus on the face not so far from him, the whiteness of the eyes and teeth enough to orient his perceptions until his brain could fill in the tentative details of the face, the body – the child sitting on the concrete stairs, in the dead dark of late night or early morning, watching him.
Huddled in a heap on a sidewalk, in a corner formed where one brick wall met another. It was cold, and wet, and foul.
"What?" he said thickly.
"You hidin' from the cops?" the boy repeated patiently, as though this were a reasonable explanation, an everyday occurrence. "You a junkie, right? You just got a beatin' from your dealer, right, 'cause you owe 'im money? An' now you're hidin' from the cops."
His mind was working very slowly, half or even quarter-speed. He considered each sentence the child had uttered separately. Cops. No, he'd have no reason to avoid them. None he knew of. Though he had no impulse to seek them out, either. He would neither avoid nor seek contact, he decided.
Next, he was a junkie. He looked down at himself. He was wearing blue-green medical scrubs, worn and dingy rather than starchy-clean, his bare arms orange with cold and the glow of the streetlights. There were tiny vein-cuts in the bends of his elbows, and dark bruises around them. Did that make him a junkie? He didn't know. Didn't remember. It didn't feel true that he would trust anyone who dealt in illegal substances enough to introduce such things to his body.
Hell, he didn't even drink that much at a time, because of the risks of losing control. The risk that he would – what? He wasn't sure. Maybe he was a mean drunk. Drunk would explain… He looked up from his arms, wrapping them around his chest and fastening his gaze to the child's face once again.
"What happened?" he said. "How did I get here?" But, where was here? Wasn't that more important? Or who am I…
"White van drove up, n'hour ago," the child said. "Down the block there–" he pointed.
Dizzily, he tried to follow the intent of the small forefinger, but the orange light spun and obscured the rest of the black, rather than revealing anything.
"Side door opened, some-oddy booted you out," the boy said. "Van drove off again. You kind of crawled a ways, and then you kind of took a nap, maybe. Until a minute ago, when the cops came past."
"You've been sitting out here for an hour?" he asked.
"So?"
"So it's night – and it's cold – and you're, like, five years old." He blinked, willing the edges of his vision to stop spinning like a kaleidoscope.
"I'm eight," the boy said defensively. "My mom's at work, an' my brother went out, an' I cou'n't sleep. Are you hungry?"
He thought about it. Thought about his middle, then inside of his middle, and the pinch of hunger resolved from the general ache and soreness.
"Yeah," he said, surprised.
"Okay, be right back." The boy loomed briefly as he jumped up.
He jerked back so fast he banged his head on the brick. "Ow," he muttered as the boy pounded up the concrete stairs and slammed through a door.
Another siren screamed, somewhere in the near distance, over the intruding thrum of late-night traffic. He put out his arms, fingers and palms scraping over rough brick – and he could taste the dust – and pushed himself up to balance precariously on weak and wobbling legs. Below the cuffs of the scrubs, there was a pair of battered sneakers on his feet, without – he plucked at his pant-legs – without socks.
He fumbled for any pockets in the garments. All empty. No such luck as a wallet, to check for his name. Or address. Not even a half-empty packet of cigarettes or a lighter. But if he'd been mugged… or he owed his dealer money…
Stumbling forward two steps, he sank down on the concrete stairway. It was cold, but his skin was damp. Clammy. He wanted to be warmer on the outside, cooler on the inside, like… like sitting in a hot tub with an icy rum-and-Coke.
"Peanut butter," someone said.
No, that didn't go with a hot tub and a drink. Maybe a dark-haired girl with a deep-red bikini and… he smelled pizza.
"Peanut butter," someone said.
He opened his eyes as the child laid a sandwich in his outstretched hand. "Hope you're not a lergict," the boy said, biting into a second sandwich.
His hand remembered how to lift food to his mouth, and his stomach woke – but felt unsure whether to protest or cheer. The peanut butter stuck in his mouth.
"Here," the boy said around a mouthful of peanut butter and bread, handing him a bottle, then reaching over to twist the cap off, breaking the seal. " 'S just choc'late milk," he said.
He sipped, he swallowed, he chugged til he choked.
"Slow down, man," the child criticized. "My brother'll be pissed if you puke on our stairs."
He set the plastic bottle down beside him, and the sandwich on his knee. His neck hurt, all the way up his skull. He didn't want to add another bout of vomiting to his ill-feeling.
"Thank you," he managed breathlessly.
"Hey, you have nice manners for a junkie," the boy said. "Nobody says thank you in this neighborhood. My brother says–" He broke off, squinting suspiciously. "You don't know my brother, do you?"
"I don't know," he said honestly.
"Well, I wish I didn't," the boy said, suddenly bitter and vicious. "I hate 'im."
"You shouldn't," he responded, frowning, finishing his sandwich slowly. "You're lucky to have a brother. I had a brother, once." He studied the boy next to him, peering through the haze of orange sparkles that clouded his vision. "He's about your age – my older brother." No, that didn't make sense – this boy was smaller and younger than he was. When had that happened? He remembered wishing he could be bigger and taller and older than his brother, but wishes never come true.
"What happened to your brother?" the boy said.
"He's gone now."
"He left you? Like my brother left me?"
"I – guess." He tried to remember. Yes, his brother was definitely gone, that must mean he'd left. "But just because brothers sometimes have to leave, doesn't mean they don't love you anymore."
"What was his name?" the boy asked, then crammed the last of his sandwich into his mouth and wrapped his arms around his knees.
"Will. William, like my father."
The boy snorted. "I don't got no father. My brother says you gotta have friends, they're like brothers – you got any friends?"
He didn't answer. He didn't remember. Yes, at least one. Everyone needed at least one friend, didn't they? Everyone deserved at least one?
"Maybe not, huh?" the boy said sympathetically. "Friends don't let friends get chucked outta vans, I think."
"Wasn't their fault," he said immediately, defensively. He licked his fingers, though they tasted like engine grease, and swallowed the last of the chocolate milk.
"You feel better?" the boy said. "You going home now?"
"Probably should, don't you think?" he said. "I should go home, and you should go to bed?"
The boy said, "Where d'ya live?"
"Washington," he said. Washington? Yes, that was right. He pointed, sure of the direction of home.
"D.C.'s south of here." The boy pointed at right angles to the indicated direction. "it's kind of a long way, if you're gonna try an' walk."
"No, Seattle," he said. "Seattle, Washington. That way." The direction still felt right. "Home is that way." He felt more sure of that statement than anything else that had fluttered through his mind or past his lips that night.
"Washington state?" the boy said. "That's even more a long way. It'll take you, like, two years to get there, walking."
"Oh, I don't think it's that far," he said. "But I should get going. I'm always late, as it is." He pushed himself up from the concrete stairs and found his legs slightly more stable than before. Weak and shaky, but no longer inclined to fold up beneath him.
"Take it easy, man," the kid said.
"Thanks," he answered, beginning to creep down the street, nervous as an old man on ice. "Be nice to your brother."
"Yes, mom," the boy said with exaggerated cooperativeness, and a laugh in his voice.
It was slow going. He found himself resting more than once, on his knees or on his butt or lying facedown on the pavement like it was a bed, with no memory of deciding to abandon his plan of remaining upright.
Once he tripped and fell headfirst into a chain-link fence, which triggered a reaction of bewildering sounds – a dog barking, a cat squalling, people shouting, the fence clanging as he tried to stand. The noise jittered around in his skull like pebbles in a soup can, casting confetti into his other senses until he tasted purple stars and smelled bitter cranberries.
Once he blinked up at a harshly brilliant streetlight only to have sun-rays come thundering down around him, a little drop of light glittering on each yellow grass stem in the abandoned lot where he lay, like an impossible tangle of Christmas lights.
He rolled and pushed himself to his feet. Across the street was a Shell station with a convenience store. The traffic blurred and rushed past him, this way and that, but he waited patiently, crouched on the sidewalk, until he saw no movement in his vision.
A song bloomed in his mind, and as he waited, he listened, intrigued.
The long and winding road….that leads to your door/ Will never disappear/ I've seen that road before… it always leads me here… leads me to your door.
He crossed the street and lurched between the gas pumps, opened the door to a silvery tinkling sound that sent splinters through his vision and a bitter taste flooding his mouth. The colors were bright, the packages smelly. He clenched his fists in his pocket and wandered the aisles, trying to focus his vision, his mouth watering with the salty sound of chips and pretzels and sticks of beef jerky. The soda fountain hummed invitingly.
Many times I've been alone and many times I've cried/ Anyway you'll never know… the many ways I've tried…
"Hey, guy, buy something or – or, go on about your business," the clerk commanded.
Check the pockets of the blue-green scrubs. Still empty. He shuffled slowly to the door and put his back against it to open it, not looking toward the cash register station.
He walked until the sidewalk turned a dim gray in front of him again, then turned into a laundry mat to sprawl in discomfort across a row of four hard plastic chairs. He dozed to the warmth of the clothes dryers and the sound of the machines, startling when a door was banged open, soothed again when someone's conversation washed over him.
"Hey, we're closing!" someone shouted, and he raised his arms instinctively to protect himself before the words made sense. Someone muttered, "Damn addicts," as he pushed through that door into the night.
And still they lead me back… to the long… winding road…
He walked until he stumbled into a parked car, which reacted with a shriek of exposed modesty, screaming and flashing him as he tried to apologize and shush the vehicle, and more voices yelled and threatened until he staggered into darkness more quiet.
All around, traffic hummed and rumbled like blood coursing through the city's veins. Several times he tried to follow that current, only to be pulled back to an invisible track. This way is home. He peered at signs, trying to see if maybe there weren't more visible signals to explain this to him. Wrong way. One way. Stop.
This way is home. This way.
He crossed a railroad track and stood at a curve in the road just down from a traffic light, watching it blink red-green-yellow-red for minutes. Or hours. It was a very fast street – no, it was a street where the cars were very fast. He waited and waited, and then, when the sky was black and the stars old friends, he walked.
Down the street, around a corner, up a hill. The streetlight shone down on a row of cars at the curb. When he reached the end of the row, he stepped up to the curb, onto the grass. There was a sidewalk path half-hidden, overgrown.
Don't leave me waiting here… lead me to your door…
He cocked his head, studying the path, then followed it.
At the end of the walk was a white-rock garden and a tan-stucco wall, a darker brown door and a blue mat. Without thinking, he bent to lift a corner of the mat, and a golden key shone in the streetlight.
He fit the key into the lock, and turned the door handle. Stepping inside, he remembered to close and lock the door behind him. Overhead, a dog woofed a quiet and abbreviated warning.
Just beside him was the ugliest couch he'd ever seen. And it was beautiful. He turned, knelt on the arm of it, and crawled forward til his whole length was sprawled in comfort, and the crown of his head butted against the opposite armrest.
To market, to market, to buy a fat hog… home again, home again… He fell asleep.
20. Part 2: Lost
("Who Owns Magic" from Revelations)
"Gaius!"
"Sire. Was… there something you needed?"
"No… yes. No, I just wanted to… remind you of the council meeting, this afternoon."
"I was not aware that I'd missed any in the past… but thank you, my lord, for thinking of an old man's failing memory. It's a good thing I don't have a job where I'd need… Is there something I can help you find, sire?"
"Hm? No, no, just…"
"He's not back yet, Arthur. You know I'd send word – he'd come himself to tell you."
"To brag on his success finding one lost farmer. And staying out of trouble in the meantime… Gaius, do you think he's in trouble? I know he said a month, but… It's almost five weeks, now, and no word like he promised."
"Merlin does tend to lose track of time, sire."
"Merlin does tend to keep his promises, Gaius. I've had Gwaine hinting around me all week and Gwen being very pensive, and the others…"
"He is capable of taking care of himself, Arthur–"
"Is he?"
"But if it eases your mind to send someone like Gwaine, at least to Ealdor. Then, by all means."
"Yes. Right. Well, I'll see you at the meeting, then."
"Of course, sire."
…..*….. …..*….. …..*…..
Merlin is taken by surprise.
It's happened before, often enough. Arthur thinks he has a tendency to be naïve. Merlin trusts that giving people the benefit of the doubt is the right thing. And so he'll probably be taken by surprise again in the future.
Or maybe not ever again.
This time, as he's preparing camp, setting the wood for a small fire. And no mount to whicker or stamp nervously or swivel its ears in warning, because he told Arthur a horse would only draw the wrong attention, where he was going – into Cenred's territory, to investigate the disappearance of one of his mother's friends from Ealdor.
The attention of a bandit with a cudgel, say.
The involvement of a club is unexpected, while his brain is still occupied with the snapping sound of a tiny twig underfoot at some distance. The blow is hard and fast, and unconsciousness instantaneous.
Maybe it fractures his skull. Maybe it damages the brain underneath.
When he comes to, his vision is blurry. He feels sick to his stomach, and disjointed. Flickering, wavering fires-light – no daylight – he's underground, surrounded by stone. No – just the hand-hewn stone of a castle or watchtower or… tomb. Or something.
He can't move properly, and finds his wrists at least bound with twine in front of him. He cannot push himself upward to sitting, though he tries, there simply is no balance. The world whirls.
And he succumbs to the darkness.
When he wakes again, it is to a shocking splash of cold water, a figure looming in the blurry dim, and a voice that literally hurts his ears. He cringes, trying to understand without listening.
Enough words carry meaning deeply enough for him to realize what he already knew. He is captive to the whim of this man, who says more than once, I am your owner now. Initially it comforts him that no one mentions Arthur. No one knows who he is. No one will torture him to demand information he cannot give. He need only wait, for…
Slavery is a confused suggestion in the back of his mind. If it isn't to be interrogation.
Clarity returns in increments, hindered by sudden and overwhelming headaches – from which he always returns to awareness cringing in a corner and whimpering. The mere thought of magic sends him hurtling into the darkness again, and the climb back is long and hard. So he decides not to think about magic for a while. Only if he's dying anyway, maybe.
He finds food on the stone floor when he gets to hands and knees to hitch himself around in exploring his prison. Not on a plate, but scattered bits and pieces. Crumbs and chunks of hard stale bread, moldy on the bottom where they've lain on the damp filthy stone of the floor, bones with scraps of meat dried to them. He finds he's hungry enough to risk the mold, and gnaw the bones.
The only water he gets is tossed over him, once in a while. He has to be ready for it, catch it in his hands, suck it from his clothing – lick it off the floor, if he doesn't want to die.
And he doesn't want to die. He wants to escape.
The headaches clear a bit, and he finds the walls of his cell are wooden planks, solid but ill-fitting, and arrayed in a circle around him, with space – his fingers tell him – for a door. He works himself to his feet and finds this wall chest-high – but narrow. With his feet tied together – his boots are gone and his socks and his shirt – he doesn't have the purchase or the strength to get himself over, even by jumping.
Trying to hurl himself over the wall causes more headaches, and the dim space beyond the wall blurs as he slides to the floor.
Light is brought.
And along with it, loud, coarse laughter that makes him cringe involuntarily. Men fill the space around him, shouting and jeering til the words blend together and their eyes gleam and roll maniacally and their faces and hair sweat and Merlin reaches for his magic, though it is far and dim. A struggle, like reaching into a fish-trap (he remembers from his peasant childhood) – easy enough to reach in, nearly impossible to draw out.
One man enters his circular wooden cell, a fat man with rotten teeth and no hair on his head, clad in leather breeches and bracers, and carrying a knife. Merlin struggles when the man reaches him, but he only cuts the twine at his wrists and ankles.
Merlin drags himself to his feet, rubbing the bruised, chafed flesh and watching the fat man and all the others jostling each other in rows around his ring. His head hurts, but he warily plans for surreptitious magic – it might be best to try when he is alone, especially if it doesn't work, or immediately, but–
What are they doing, now?
The crowd stills a moment, all attention on a man with sleek dark hair down to his shoulders, and too many teeth showing between dark beard and mustache. He speaks of rules and odds – and Merlin recognizes his voice for the Owner – and it seems Merlin is to fight the fat man.
He is tremblingly nervous – he knows exactly what he's not capable of – but fairly sure he can evade and trick and outlast. He remembers a certain man named Jarl, Arthur taking his place to fight Gwaine, and a sudden fire that puts an end to everything but freedom and his own secrets.
The man who calls himself the Owner finishes with a flourish, and the crowd roars. The fat man gathers himself eagerly, bunching meaty fists and plowing forward to plant them in Merlin's face or body.
He ducks, though it makes the world spin briefly, and aims magic at the fat man's feet, intending to trip him up as he lunges forward with his target abruptly missing. Maybe the fat man will knock himself out, hitting his head on the wooden walls.
But the magic.
Whooshes right out of Merlin in a rush – curving away from the fat man, back toward the surprised Owner. (Water through the sharpened reeds of the fish-trap.)
Who is holding a strange rod negligently in his hands. Stone-ivory-bone, wrapped with wire of an uncertain metal, copper-silver-gold, in an intricate pattern. It glows briefly of blue, then gold–
And the silence is deafening. The Owner looks at Merlin in realization, and Merlin panics.
Tries to snatch the rod, push back the fat man and the Owner, flare the torches at the back and top of the wall, drop the candelabra suspended over his cell, any-damn-something –
The rod glows, and Merlin's magic vanishes. (Oil on water.)
The Owner laughs in disbelief.
Magic, he says, and the word is echoed through the chamber, through Merlin's blood thundering frantically around his veins. Everyone chants, over and over, Magic.
The Owner cackles in unrestrained glee.
And the fat man's fist slams into the side of Merlin's face, so hard he tumbles down to the floor and to darkness, not even thinking to put out his hands to stop himself.
He awakens to the slosh of water, scrambling for every drop that lingers within reach, til he realizes he's not alone. The Owner crouches next to him, with too many teeth and that strange rod.
I can't use magic, the Owner explains, delighted to do so. And this, can't store it. Just gathers any used in its vicinity, channeling it back to the earth.
Merlin's magic bursts out of him almost unintentionally, attacking the man, screaming for freedom – and disappears into the cool unconcerned glow of the rod.
The Owner is no longer delighted. Even a fool would realize what Merlin just tried, and the Owner is, tragically, not a fool. Let's play a new game, he suggests. Let's see if a person can expend all their magic – or whether it comes back, like energy or health.
Merlin tells him to go to hell.
The Owner hits him very hard, with the rod.
He wakens again to a bucketful of water – and a crowd of strange rough men jeering as he tries to get some of it inside his body.
The Owner shows too many teeth, and taps the rod in his fingers suggestively. Merlin claws his way unsteadily to his feet and determines that he will not lose any more magic to the strange artifact – and turns into the fists of a very tall dark-skinned man.
He manages to avoid some of the blows the man throws – he's fast and efficient and brutal; Percival, without hesitation or compassion or morals – but does not manage anything that could be termed self-defense. The dark-skinned man pursues him around the wooden-walled area, fists and boots, on his feet, then on his knees, then Merlin curls into a protective ball, exhausted and confused and humiliated and angry and-
It doesn't stop. The man hangs onto the arena wall – under his grip it shudders against Merlin's bruised back – and boots Merlin again and again and Merlin's sobbing and gagging and pain pain pain pain–
magic.
He feels it leave him in a rush, and the kicking stops and through the throbbing agony he hopes–
But the rod's glow is fading, and the Owner is showing pleased teeth and the crowd is hollering and coin is changing hands. The dark-skinned man heaves his fists into the air and accepts his acclaim, turning in a circle and roaring back at the others, exultant.
Merlin bleeds and aches and passes out.