Pair Dadeni {Part One}

[ficofandalasia]

Chapter One
The last thing that she remembered was dying. It was a curious feeling, with blood dripping between her fingers and the very air around her becoming strangely soft, folding around her like fine linens. Then there was an impression of whiteness, and the drift of magic across her skin, before the world faded away from around her.

It had been many years since she had known deep sleep, and this was deeper still. Down into the depths of herself, cold and dark and lonely, and it was difficult to rouse the fire of her anger in the way that she had before. For a long time she let go, without the strength now to hold back the waves of what lay within her.

Somewhere, there was movement. Something might have covered her, might have shut out the sunlight, or it could simply have been night. The pain was dull and distant, and she couldn’t feel the magic that usually filled her. At least, though, the darkness was complete, and there were no dreams to disturb her.

Later, much later, she realised that she could feel her flesh once again. Her side throbbed, hot, but not so much as she remembered it being. She was lying on her back, her arms stretched out on either side of her, a heavy coverlet seeming to pin her down. She wondered whether that was just her own weakness, the weakness that soaked through her body like the heaviness of exhaustion. Mustering all of her strength, she flexed the fingers of her right hand just slightly, feeling them tighten infinitesimally before releasing them with a sigh. The sound of movement caught her attention, and she stiffened where she lay, reaching out of the darkness and into wakefulness with fear gripping at her chest.

She had carried a dagger before. Now she could feel only fabric next to her skin. Even her bracelet no longer lay on her wrist, and she felt bare without it.

“Lady Morgana,” said a voice. She opened her eyes to see white fabric above her. “You are awake.”

“I’m still working on alive.” Her voice cracked, but she found the words, even though running her tongue over her dry lips did nothing to help. “I must presume you do not want me dead.”

“On that, I am ambivalent. But of the magic users to whom I have spoken, there are few who did not name you as the most powerful of their kind. The last Priestess of the Old Religion.”

She remembered the words, faintly. There had been so many names. Morgana le Fey, for the longest of times; then she found herself Morgana Pendragon, and it had uprooted her world at the same time as it might just have offered her an answer to the riddles that had plagued her for so long. But much of the time she had refused both, and been simply Morgana, witch, sorceress. Those had been the simplest times.

She tried to draw her arms back into her body, only to feel soft ropes tighten around her wrists. A faint frown drew itself on her face, and she turned to look over her right side. The white band around her wrist might have been discreet, but it held her down more than well enough in her weakened state.

“Ah, yes. My apologies for treating a Princess so, but your reputation does, of course, precede you. And I would rather not have things turn nasty.”

Finally, her mind recovered enough for her to recognise the voice: King Olaf of Powys, for many years a very careful ally of Uther’s. Morgana turned her head so that she could look upon him, but was surprised by what she saw: Olaf sat on a chair beside the bed, slumped forwards with his elbows on his knees. It had not been that long since she had last seen him, but she was quite sure that there were new lines on his face, more grey in his hair.

“The bonds are old, and they are meant for magic-users. You will not be able to rise whilst I have this.” He held up his right hand, a matching white band wrapped around it and tied soundly. “I do not pretend to know how it works, simply that it will restrain you for now. I wish to speak to you civilly.”

“By tying me down? Civil indeed.” She could not help the bite that came into her voice. Anger flashed in Olaf’s eyes and for a moment she thought that she might have already overstepped the line that held her life in place, but he merely wrapped his hands tightly around each other and stared hard at her.

“You hardly left Camelot peacefully. I did not want bloodshed on my hands. No, my lady, I wish to come to an agreement with you. Despite the Five Kingdoms baying for your blood, I am willing to grant you sanctuary - and in return, I wish for you to use your magic for me.”

“You followed Uther in banning magic. But when it suits your own devices, you will use it still?”

He shrugged. “I doubt there is a father in the world who would not do the same.”

The words made her eyes narrow. Olaf was known above all else, even above his skill in war, for how protective he was of Vivian. His only daughter, as beautiful as the late Queen but far more spoilt and petulant; Vivian and Morgana had been of an age when they were growing up, but on the occasions when they had found themselves in each other’s company, they had barely been able to exchange words without Vivian making a fuss or, just as commonly, Morgana producing a wooden sword and proceeding to try to beat the silly chit with the flat of it.

“Vivian is unwell? By some magic?”

“I do not know,” he said flatly. “But I expect you to find out, and then I expect you to fix it. In return for your compliance… I have already had healers at your side, and I will continue to offer you the protection of my court.”

“And if I do not comply?” Though it had not been that long since she had considered Olaf’s court a cousin to Uther’s, there were few parts of her past life for which Morgana could truly say she held any lingering love.

Olaf gave her a pained look, clasping his hands together once again. When he spoke, it took no discerning ear to hear the reluctance in his voice, nor to see it where he broke with her gaze for a moment before looking back once again. “Then I will return you to Camelot,” he replied, “and let their law deal with you.”

A sneer curled her lip, though doubtless it would look more impressive from a position other than the one which she currently occupied. “You think that my brother would have the nerve to kill me?”

“You tried to kill him,” said Olaf quietly. “And even if there is compassion left in his heart for you, I doubt that all of his Kingdom would feel the same.”

To that, Morgana could find no response, and she turned her head away in what was meant to be a haughty toss but ended up being accompanied with a grunt of pain. As if in response to her sharp movement, a ripple of pain spread out from her neck, down across her body, and she was forced to close her eyes whilst the waves receded. By the time that her own heartbeat stopped pounding in her ears, she could hear the door to the room opening, and Olaf’s final words came from rather more of a distance.

“One of the servants will be in soon, to bring you something to eat. I appreciate that you will need some time to recover, but do not expect to abuse that time. The library of Camelot is not the only one which has retained many of its tomes on magic. I will speak to you further in a few days.”

Then the door closed with a heavy-sounding thud, and she was left alone with her thoughts once again.

It was not pleasant, to be trapped in her own head. Once, there had been a time when Morgana had thought wistfully of having time to think, fully and without interruption. Then the dreams had come, and deepened, and bought with them their dreadful knowledge, and slowly drawn her away. Now such a time was a far-off memory. She scowled at the far wall of the room, and tried to slip back into sleep for at least a short time longer.

It was less difficult than she had feared, and though her dreams were filled with the baying of the hunt and the copper-salt of blood, she had long grown used to such. By the time that she opened her eyes again she felt, if not refreshed, then at least less weary than she had before. She again made the mistake of shifting her weight, and pain washed over her, but it was less this time than before, and with a couple of deep breaths she was able to see past it. Her hands clenched into fists and drew back into her body sharply, and it was only when she could see clearly enough to realise such that she realised also that she was no longer tied down. Although the white bands still encircled her wrists - some sort of sateen, she noted dully - she could at least move them.

“You’re awake, then,” said a perfunctory voice. Morgana did not have time to turn her head, at least with the slowness that such an action would have required in her current state, before large soft arms were wrapped around her and she was drawn - hissing with pain, but still generally coherent - to a seated position. The woman did not say anything further as she pushed Morgana’s hair back off her face and plumped the pillows around her, every shift reverberating through Morgana’s bones and making her grit her teeth - though gently, for that action also threatened to pain her.

She shot the woman a glare, the sort that had made knights and councillors quail in their boots for fear of her tongue, not even her blade or her magic. This time, however, it did not have the desired response, and the woman simply hitched up the sheets to cover Morgana’s lap.

Even sitting felt like a great effort, every muscle in her torso seeming to strain just to hold her in place. She pressed her tongue between her teeth to control her breathing, and then the woman was drawing a chair up to the edge of the bed, and holding in her lap a wooden tray with a bowl of porridge, a metal cup and a flagon.

The woman scooped up a spoonful of the porridge, tapped it very gently on the edge of the bowl, and then proffered it up to Morgana’s lips. A sting of humiliation ran down her spine: she had never in her memory been fed like an infant. Now, though, she could not even have raised her arms from her lap, and she parted her lips as she realised that hunger as well as strain was cramping in her stomach. The porridge was milky, sweetened with honey, and she swore that the prickling in her eyes was not tears as she gulped down the mouthfuls offered to her.

She could not suppress the slight whimper that escaped her when, after what seemed like too short a time, no more was forthcoming. Even as a young girl in Uther’s household, she had been aware of the work that must go on to support her, and as she had become older she had made sure that she knew what to do that she might never find herself without a source of food. Only when the whole of Camelot had gone hungry - fool Arthur, fool hunters, she had dreamt of the unicorn dead on the forest floor - had she done so also. Yet now her stomach twisted, and she managed to raise her hands half up before the woman shook her head.

“You’ll make yourself sick,” she said flatly, instead decanting in swift movements the flagon into the cup, and placing it into Morgana’s hands instead. “Here, have some of this.”

She kept her hands wrapped around Morgana’s to assist in raising the glass, and the cool clean water washed over her palate like a blessing. She swallowed as much as she could, then coughed on a wayward trickle and felt water spill down over her chin. The cup was removed once again, and she wiped her mouth with the back of one shaking hand.

“There,” said the woman. “Now, I’ll leave this here,” she placed it on the low table beside the bed, “and someone will be back in a couple of hours.”

Morgana nodded, still almost overwhelmed, and allowed herself to be shifted back to a mostly-flat position once again. The room seemed to have shifted into better focus, and though the pain she felt had sharper edges, she could reach those edges with her mind and feel the finite nature of them. There was something beyond the pain; there would be something beyond the pain. She let her eyes drift closed again and, not quite awake, not quite asleep, waited for the next intrusion.

Interlude
Mist rolled down over the slopes of the hills. The moon was some days past new, a waxing crescent just visible amid the dripping diadems of stars that draped across the sky. The weather was cold; it was likely to turn to frost soon, Rheda thought as she hitched her cloak more tightly around her and hurried along the narrow path home. It was never too easy to be a midwife in these parts, but now winter was closing in fast and Cate had always been the sort of girl to spook easily, something which had only become worse over the course of her first pregnancy.

The path was turning to mud, and she wondered whether it would be worth getting the men to bring up gravel from some of the valleys to harden the way. A slight slip was worth a faint curse, nothing more, until a loud howl, like the largest hunting dog she had ever heard, made her cry out in shock herself and lose her footing on the unhelpful ground.

It had sounded as if it had been almost upon her. Gasping, her breath like a stream of little white clouds in the air, Rheda struggled to her feet again and looked around her, expecting to see the dog appearing out of nowhere. Again came the howling, a great long wail of a sound that set the hairs on the back of her arms standing on end and made her clench her jaw to stop her teeth from chattering. It was a little fainter this time, however, and she settled that wherever the dog was, it was getting further away.

“Some fool man letting the beast loose,” she muttered, peering at her cloak in the moonlight and none too impressed to see the amount of mud that was smeared upon it. “Hunting hounds in this land, indeed!” The most common creatures to be found on the hills were humans and sheep, and neither of those were for the hunting. “I hope he chases the damn thing into a morass tomorrow morn.”

Still grumbling to herself, she continued on up the slope, the ground becoming drier and the mist falling away as she climbed. There was something beautifully clear about the top of the hills even on nights like this, dimly green and smoothly rolling, when the air was heavy enough that the clouds could not even settle on them. The wind, however, picked up a little, plucking at stray strands of her hair and plastering her warm wool clothes more tightly against her; that was unusual, but not unthinkable, and all that it did was hurry her steps a little more.

She heard the baying a third time, now very faint indeed and with the tinny echo of distance, and gave a satisfied grunt. It must be moving quickly indeed if it disappeared from her hearing range so quickly.

White flickered on the edge of her vision.

Rheda’s head snapped round, but there was no white, no gleaming brightness, that she could see on the hilltops. Not even beneath the bright moon. She was about ready to acknowledge the night as too long, too arduous, when there was movement once again in the corner of her eye, and she felt herself begin to tremble as, slow and mournful, she heard singing on the cool, night air.

"Chwarae troi'n chwerw, wrth chwarae gyda thân."

The quiet on the hilltops was broken by the screaming.

Chapter Two
Olaf did not bother to knock on the door at the top of the tower, simply removing the key from his pocket and letting himself in. The walk through the castle and up the tower stairs had in itself been strenuous, and Morgana had needed to pause more than once to catch her breath. He had allowed her to do so, though with an unsmiling expression.

There was no protest as the door was opened; in fact, no reaction at all. Morgana scanned the room in a moment, mentally declared it to be nothing unusual in a bed chamber, and then allowed her eyes to fall upon the figure framed by the window, looking out through bars onto the land below.

“Vivian,” said Olaf, as Morgana was still looking at the bars and feeling horror slide slowly down her back at the sight of them. “I have bought you a visitor.”

Vivian looked round sharply, then raised her nose into the air and turned back to the window. “It is not Arthur.”

Embroidery sat untouched on Vivian’s lap, a golden dragon against a plain red background. Morgana wondered if she was copying it out of a book, or reproducing it from memory. Vivian’s fingers were red and raw, the nails cut short; there was a flighty look to her eyes, shadows beneath them. Though Morgana could not be sure, she thought that the princess might be thinner than the last time that they had met.

“I am a Pendragon, though,” Morgana replied, acid creeping into her voice. Olaf gave her a sideways glance that might have been a warning, but said nothing.

A moment passed, and then Vivian set down the embroidery and turned to look Morgana over, her eyes skimming from crown to floor and back again. “Yes, I heard that you took Camelot’s throne.”

“Twice.”

“Temporarily.” Vivian’s words were crisp, with a touch of acid to them. Morgana bit her tongue in anger at the tart words, but Olaf was not looking at her any more; he was looking, adoringly, in wonder and terror, towards Vivian. “That dress is an old one of mine. It doesn’t suit you.”

It did not indeed, but Morgana had learnt upon pressing for her old clothes that they had been burnt. If things turned out well, Olaf said, he would reward her enough that she could afford her own dresses; for now, she wore Vivian’s and put up with their being tight in the bodice and a little short in the skirt. Being placed in faint pastels and delicate embroidery had not done much to improve Morgana’s mood either, the leftovers of Vivian’s aesthetic preferences.

“I’m sure I’ll take that into account when choosing my clothes in the future,” she settled for. Vivian looked at her for a moment longer, then turned back to the window once again, lifting up her embroidery to admire it. Her hair was in loose waves over her shoulders - not just loose, Morgana would have said - but barely cared for. It did not much impair her appearance, but was so unlike Vivian that it was uncomfortable.

They lapsed into silence again, Morgana uncertain what to say or even whether she wanted to speak further at all, and Olaf drew and released a deep, silent breath. He put his hand on Morgana’s upper arm, but more gently than he had reached out to lead her before, and gently guided her out of the room once again. The door closed behind them, was locked, and Olaf placed the key into his pocket once again.

“That is the most that I have heard her talk in over a month,” he said. His voice sounded breathy, as if it was on the verge of cracking, and he did not seem to be able to drag his eyes away from the door. They glistened slightly. Morgana watched him with pursed lips and wary gaze, waiting for the next words that he might speak. Again, a hitch of breath, and then he turned back to her fully stern once again. “You knew Vivian when she was young. You know that this is not her.”

“It has been nigh four years since I saw her last,” Morgana replied. “And she surprised me then.”

“Her obsession with Prince Arthur.” Olaf’s eyes flashed dangerously, and not that many years ago Morgana would have shied away from him. “Too sudden, even for a young girl, with a young girl’s whims. Do you agree that it is sorcery?”

She could not help the sneer that bought a curl to her lip, the disdain that poured from her words. “Do you, like Uther, blame magic for anything that may go wrong in your Kingdom?”

“If it did good for the Kingdom, I would grant it recognition for that also,” he replied, folding his arms across his chest.

“Magic’s good deeds are hidden,” said Morgana. She felt her legs becoming weaker even as her anger burned, and she placed one hand against the wall to support herself. “All that you ever see is the ill that it brings.”

“And you have done such good for Camelot.” The words were bitter, accusatory, and in a flash she felt what she had done all over again: her moves against Arthur, against Uther, for her throne. Her throne. She thought of the druids massacred, of innocent blood spilt. “Your two reigns saw death and anarchy.”

“Uther’s reign saw more death than either of mine,” she said with narrowed eyes. “And less deserved ones.”

“In a century your reasons will be no more than his,” said Olaf, sternly, and the way that he sounded like a father made her angrier still. “Consider this your chance to have magic do good, and be recognised.” He gathered his cloak around him, and turned to leave. “The guards will return you to your chambers.”

The white bands around her wrists felt like manacles. When the weakness passed, she followed him down the stairs, and away from Vivian’s chamber-cell.

Little of her learning had been from books. Morgause had taught her in words, and in gestures of their hands, and in items passed from palm to palm and carrying the shared warmth of their touch. She had repeated words over and over until they felt familiar and welcome on her tongue, made potions that went wrong time after time and became blackened and spoilt before her eyes until she could correct them, drew a blade over her hands to pull forth the magic that was in her very blood.

She had not learnt magic from books.

Olaf had spoken truly when he had said that tomes of magic were still kept within the library of Powys, and now it seemed that every one of them in the Kingdom had been moved to the room in which Morgana found herself staying. No few of them were too large for her to move alone, and required that she have the guard watching her give his assistance. The writing in them was often cramped and contained many words that she did not recognise at first, until she said them aloud and could finally draw something close from her memory. It did not help that many of the spellings were so archaic that they might have come from the time before Albion was even unified.

The suddenness of Vivian’s ardour, and of Arthur’s for that matter, suggested that Olaf was right, and that magic was to blame. Spells that could cause love, obsession, desire… she had expected them to be rare. To meddle with the heart was not something that she expected to be easy to do even with magic. But then again, she had seen Uther in the grasps of a troll by the work of magic, and now it was laid before her again.

As far as she could tell, they numbered in the hundreds. At the beginning, she had made notes on each one as she found them, then begun to use strips of ribbon as bookmarks, and finally had found herself growling faintly with frustration at each new one that appeared. It seemed, as well, that each one was barely different from the last, and yet each was terribly different to undo, if indeed they could be undone at all.

She doubted, however, that Olaf would accept that for an answer. At the end of the third day of searching through book after book, Morgana had one of the chairs moved to where she could look out over the rolling land to the north. It had been raining, lightly but almost constantly, for the last two days, and the land was faintly grey but mostly green as far as she could see, not flat but so much of it made up of plateaued hilltops that she could see the scattered farming hamlets that spread out across the top of them, and not the larger villages that rested in the valleys below.

It was peaceful here, despite her hours spent with the great piles of books. For the first time in many months she did not have to sleep with a dagger beneath her pillow, although half of the reason for that was probably that she was still not much sleeping at all. They had refused to return her bracelet to her, and her wrist felt bare without it. But still, she had found herself without fear for her life, and without someone whispering hatred in her ear - Morgause, Cenred, Agravaine - her dreams were, if ongoing, less tied up with death and fire. Easier to forgive her magic for.

She wondered if she could draw out her ‘research’ into what might ail Vivian, perhaps even find somewhere in these books a way to undo the enchantment that Olaf had bought with which to bind her wrists. She had not even done magic since the day that it had failed her in the halls of Camelot, and there was a whisper in her mind - dark, smug, sly - that she could not be sure that it would still answer in the way that it once had. Another enchantment to be undone - but to undo magic without magic’s use? Preposterous.

Morgana picked up one of the smaller tomes, one more of healing, with herbs and poultices amid the incantations. She did not know why Olaf had sent it to her; perhaps he had simply despaired and sent her every book to do with healing as well. A slip of ribbon marked the page for heartsease, and she turned to it. For all she knew, the answer could be that simple.

It was not, she told herself, that she was much worried for Vivian, or even particularly liked the girl. One act of disenchantment in exchange for freedom, however, was not to be passed over, and in the meantime she knew that she was too weak to fight for her freedom, her injuries not yet fully healed.

From the window, the guard watched her with wary eyes. He had probably been told that she was a witch, a sorceress; the word ‘priestess’ would not have been used for him. Yet for anyone other than Uther, than Arthur, than Gaius, than Merlin and Guinevere their close chattel, she offered healing, solace, guidance. She was first and foremost a priestess, after all. Now, though, it felt like everything that had once marked her had been taken away; in borrowed clothes and braided hair, surrounded by heavy books, she turned her attention back to her task.

Chapter Three
There were many books, it transpired, and it seemed that each book contained many spells to snare the heart. More worrying, however, was how powerful many of them seemed to be. Part of her, a small dark angry part, whispered how easy it would be to make the world love her and want her to rule; an even smaller part added that it would be just as easy to make Arthur love her enough to hand her the throne. But the thought of the falsehood disgusted her, reminded her too much of Uther’s lies and omissions, and she put it aside with the book that she had at the time been holding.

She had felt her strength recovering, day by day, enough that she could walk easily and move around the room under her own volition, as well as - to her unending relief - feed herself without assistance. Though there was only one guard watching her each day, it seemed at least to her eye that Olaf was sending increasingly competent and well-armed ones. They kept theirs hand by their swords at all times, as if they thought she was going to snatch it away from them. The bands on her wrists were immovable, by muttered words of magic or sharp tugs, or even once a knife slipped beneath the fabric. Inviolable, it seemed, at least for now. They must have been made by a strong magic-user indeed, long ago or far away or both.

Every other day, at nightfall, Olaf came to her to ask what she had found. A hundred possibilities and no certainties, she had taken to replying, and though he would probe a little with his words he did not know enough of magic to press too far. Night was falling again as he entered, without prior announcement or pause.

His crown was upon his brow; he must have come directly from the council chambers. Removing his gloves, he threw them down upon the desk at which she worked and took the seat opposite her, looking at her intently. She had taken to marking the depth of the shadows beneath his eyes, knowing that when they were deeper and he was wearier he would have less patience for her. Today they looked barely paler than bruises; he would want explanations, but brief ones.

“Have you any news other than that which you give me each time?” he asked, barely giving her time to draw breath. The fingers of her right hand twitched angrily - as Queen of Camelot she had been his equal, and rightly so when Arthur was younger than she - but she refrained from comment before she could be sure that it would be civil.

She turned some of the parchment she had written on towards him; he gave it a glance, but nothing more. “I am working on finding order among the chaos. The spells which could be to blame seem to fall into groups, similar in both their casting and their undoing. It should allow me to determine into which group Vivian’s enchantment falls.”

“You believe so?”

“Whatever it was, it was cast swiftly, and by someone of no great magical power. If Arthur was enchanted with the same spell, which seems only likely, then it is clearly possible to break it. That removes many possibilities.”

Olaf nodded slowly, but his eyes were not focused on the parchment towards which he gazed. His eyes did not even flicker when she drew the sheets back towards herself again, settling them into a neat pile on her right side. A moment passed in which Morgana found herself watching him intently, waiting for a word or action which seemed almost prepared, but then his shoulders rose and he looked up, pulling himself together in one stern movement.

Finally he met her gaze, flicking one hand towards the papers that surrounded her as if in contempt. “I wish for you to talk to Vivian again. She may not allow you to examine her, but doubtless one with your skills will be able to glean information in any case.”

“Talk to Vivian?” Morgana raised her eyebrows, regarding Olaf as if he had suggested she ask the castle wall for guidance. “Surely you have already asked her if she knows anything.”

“Of course I have,” he said. Anger flashed in his eyes and he clenched his fists, but she did not waver. She had seen worse tempers than Olaf could summon. “My physicians have asked her. Her maids and servants have asked her. She cares not, knows not, does not even seem to understand that she is under a spell. Talking of Arthur meets with tears or dizzy daydreams. Her words to you were the most normal that I have seen her speak in many a month, and I would-”

He got no further as a messenger appeared at the door, bedraggled and wearing the clothes of a foot soldier, pale despite the sweat that ran down him in rivulets. “Your Majesty,” he gasped, not even waiting for acknowledgement. “There has been another attack-”

“Silence!” Olaf barked, rising to his feet with a screech of wood on stone. The messenger was leaning against the doorway, and only now did the two guards who had presumably been flanking him manage to catch up and appear in the doorway. “This is not a matter for an audience.”

Morgana treated him to her most withering stare, but sadly he did not turn around to have the opportunity to appreciate it.

“There are no bandits in the land that could be of enough import to come bursting in so. Go to the council chambers, and count yourself lucky if I greet you there.”

Though the messenger still panted for breath, his face was ashen, and he shook enough for it to be visible across the room and by firelight. “Your Majesty, it was no bandit.” He clutched at his chest with his other hand, slumping more against the doorframe. “There is a beast abroad on the hills.”

The words were strained, and barely had he finished them before he collapsed to the floor, dropping as if the bones had vanished from his body. Morgana felt her heart jump into her throat, and there was a beat’s pause before the two guards managed to react and dropped to assist him, rolling him over onto his side. One of them held a hand over the messenger’s mouth for a moment, then looked to Olaf. “He’s breathing.”

“Get him to the physician,” Olaf replied. He had not moved from where he stood, though his posture had stiffened and tension rolled off him. He started towards the doorway as the two guards moved around, trying to work out how best to carry the unconscious man between them. Just before he reached them, he stopped and turned, raising a warning hand to point towards Morgana. “And you saw none of this. It does not concern you.”

Until he spoke the words, she had not even thought of how it might.

She should not have been surprised, the next morning, when a second guard joined the first after her breakfast and announced that she was to talk to the Lady Vivian that day. Her sharp question of whether the Lady Vivian knew of this went unanswered, but they allowed her at least to gather some parchment, a quill and inkstone before they escorted her through the castle.

This time she knew where she was going, and did not follow behind like some meek servant but walked abreast with the guards. When they came to doorways, they even had to step back. Such a small thing should not have brought a smirk back to her lips, but she could not much help it; there had been few victories, however small, to be had in recent weeks.

Even the tower stairs did not trouble her, though she did not presume to remove the key from the wall and unlock the door herself. Were she now to fight the guards, she thought idly, she might even best one of them, and with his sword hold off another. The weakness of her right side, however, did plenty to make a fight seem undesirable, and she nodded acknowledgement to the guard who opened the door and stepped aside to allow her entrance.

The room had changed. Not greatly, and not obviously, but after a moment Morgana realised that the flowers in the vases around the room were wilted, and the fire had burnt itself almost completely out. It left the room clammy and unpleasant, and she turned to the guards imperiously.

“Stoke up the fire. But crack open one of the windows, let in some air. Lady Vivian cannot be comfortable in here.”

In truth, she could already feel the atmosphere of the room giving her a headache, and had no desire to let it manage to do so. The men reluctantly moved to do as she said, and Morgana turned back to the bed, and to Vivian.

Vivian looked paler than she had before, and though her hair had clearly been curled recently it hung limp and almost lifeless over her shoulders. The pretty white nightgown she was wearing was starting to look worn around the edges, and there was a hole in one sleeve, but Vivian did not seem to notice as she cradled a wilted white flower in her lap, plucking the petals one by one and shredding them between her nails.

“No embroidering today then, Vivian?” said Morgana, and though she could hardly be expected to manage brightness in her words she was herself surprised at how brittle they sounded.

Vivian looked up, glanced once from Morgana’s head to her feet and back again, and turned back to the unfortunate flower. “No,” she replied. “Father says he won’t allow me to send it to Arthur, so there’s no point.”

She did not say how long ago the order had been given, and Morgana did not question it. It had been almost a month since she had seen Vivian last, and at the very least the Princess was skilled in embroidery. How that would befit a Queen, Morgana did not know, but she supposed there was probably some roundabout logic to it. She caught the eye of one of the guards and nodded to a chair by the wall; he moved it to Vivian’s bedside with only a moment’s hesitation and a faint distrustful look. Well, at least it was an improvement.

Morgana settled into the seat, placing the items she had carried on Vivian’s bedside table. Vivian seemed to have finished destroying the flower, and was now picking up shreds of the petals and letting them fall back into her lap. Uninterrupted, Morgana looked over her ‘patient’, but found no signs of glamour or artefacts. Vivian was not wearing any jewellery, and unless she had been wearing the nightdress beneath her gown for these past years would not have been wearing an enchantment on her skin.

“Did Arthur ever give you anything?” she said, thinking of the charms of which she had read. “To remember him by?”

Vivian gave a doleful little whimper that set Morgana’s teeth on edge. “No, alas, I have nothing by which to remember my love.” She wrapped her arms around herself, closing her eyes. “Nothing save for this nightgown, which I wore when we declared our love for each other.”

“No… lock of hair? No trinkets?”

At these words, Vivian burst into sobs - controlled, ladylike ones of course, directed into the sleeve of her nightgown. Morgana sighed and allowed her to sniffle delicately, waiting rather than interrupting, and sure enough the moment passed soon enough, and Vivian dabbed at her eyes with her fingertips though there were no signs of tears there.

“When you and I were children, about the only thing that we could agree on was how annoying Arthur was,” said Morgana, crossing her knees and smoothing down her gown over them. “Save for that hairpin you once tried to take from me.”

“It would have suited me better,” Vivian replied, the words so swift that they must have been tossed out without a thought. She twisted the hem of her nightgown between her fingers and pouted slightly. “But it doesn’t matter. I have seen the true Arthur, and we are in love, and one day we will be reunited.”

Morgana had heard from Olaf that Camelot now had a Queen enthroned alongside its King. She had pretended not to be as furiously angry as she felt, and had nodded acknowledgement before changing the topic at hand, and only later had vented her fury in screams into her pillow. She had dared not break those things which did not belong to her, and had no magic with which to release the pent-up energy of her rage.

A pity. She and Gwen had been friends once, more so than one might expect from a lady and her maidservant. Had fate permitted it, Morgana would have put Gwen upon her council, made her Queen’s advisor. But like a flower, she had turned towards Arthur’s golden sun, and Morgana was left alone.

The thoughts had overwhelmed her when Vivian suddenly spun, wide-eyed, and half-crawled, half-threw herself across the bed towards Morgana. Morgana made to rise, but Vivian clasped their hands together and whispered fiercely: “You should help me! That way Arthur and I can rule Powys, and you could have Camelot again! And he’ll have a Kingdom, so he won’t want to take yours back!”

For a moment, it was tempting. So tempting. But so outrageous, so patently ridiculous, were the words that Morgana almost laughed. “That isn’t how the world works, Vivian,” she said instead. “Arthur would never leave Camelot.”

Vivian released Morgana’s hands, sitting back on her heels and pouting once again. Frankly, Morgana would not have been surprised were Vivian to offer to give up Powys instead, and she continued before the opportunity to do so could arise. It would not do to even let the idea get into Vivian’s head, not to mention how angry Olaf would become.

“Nor Guinevere. You know that he is wed, surely?”

She could not have anticipated the reaction that she received. Vivian looked at her for a long moment, lips parted and eyes wide in shock, then anger blazed in her eyes and she screamed, balling her hands into fists and looking up at the ceiling. In her pause for breath she turned back to Morgana and, with a second scream, made as if to spring upon her. Morgana jumped to her feet; one of the guards lunged between them and grabbed hold of the struggling Vivian, whilst the other took hold of Morgana’s arm and dragged her from the room.

“No!” Vivian was crying by then, finally having found words rather than just noise. “No! Arthur is mine! I am his! We will be together! You’re lying, you’re lying, you’re-”

Anything further became muffled as the door was closed, then broke off into a chilling wail that crept from the nape of Morgana’s neck all the way down her spine. She realised that she was shaking and clinging to the arm of the guard that stood by her, and turned her face away from the door and the sobs - real sobs this time, guttural and choked - that emanated from beyond it. A moment or two later, the second guard emerged, clutching the parchment and other items that Morgana had carried in, his face flushed and eyes dark.

He pushed them into her hands, then turned to lock the door behind them, without saying a word. He did not need to. As soon as she trusted herself not to stumble, Morgana turned to go down the steps of the tower once again, leaving behind her the room but not the echoes of the desperate tears within it.

Interlude
“Faran, please, don’t go.”

“Please, mother…” he turned and pried her fingers off his arm, but with a kindly smile. “There are plenty of us. Tom’s going, and Merton, and Earle, and-”

“It’s not them I’m worrying for,” she said fiercely “Their mothers can do that. I’m here to worry about you, Faran.”

She reached up to brush his cheek with one hand, and for a moment he felt his resolve falter. He was only sixteen, even if he was the eldest and had been working like an adult since his father had died. But all of the men of the village were turning out to search the moors that night, and he did not want to be the only one to hide in his mother’s apron as if he was a child again.

“There’s two women gone missing now,” he said in reply. Their voices were both hushed, Faran’s brother and sisters asleep just in the back room. “Arianrod was only thirteen. We have to try and find them, mother,” he said.

“Roe did not disappear,” Edlynn replied. She did not need to remind him what they had found that morning. He had been recognised by the rich red of his hair, and that alone. “And I couldn’t…”

For a moment he was a child again as he wrapped his arms around her and squeezed her tightly. When Rheda had gone missing it was one thing: an accident, perhaps, a fall that left her waiting to be found, for all the strange sounds on the moors. But then there had been that second foggy, frosty night, and the howls on the hills again, and Arianrod had disappeared with screams from barely beyond her own yard. Her brother had only been searching for her when he, too, had vanished… until the sun rose once again.

Faran planted a quick kiss to his mother’s brow. “We’ll not be too long. I’m going with the group that are walking the paths out to the farms and back, that’s all. Stay inside tonight, and keep the candles burning.”

Trembling, she nodded as he unwrapped his arms from her and picked up his cloak to sling across his shoulders. The nights were fast becoming cold, and even the sheep in the shelter adjoining the house did not do much to bring it warmth. They were quieter than usual as well, their eyes always bright and staring in the candlelight.

“I’ll be back before this candle burns down, okay?” He picked up the short candle on the sill for a moment for her inspection, then set it back down again. There was not much of the white tallow left, just enough for a few hours. Although he wanted to embrace her a second time, he restrained himself, laying his hand on her shoulder. He wasn’t quite sure when he had grown taller than she. “I love you, mother. Remember that.”

She was still shaking slightly as she nodded, but now there was a pride in her eyes and a slight smile on her lips as she patted his hand and watched him go. The door banged shut behind him in the wind, and the candles flickered for a moment, but if Edlynn listened closely she could hear the men in the centre of the village, calling everyone together for the search.

The sound of the wind around the house was like howling coming from the very sky. Shivering, Edlynn turned to tend to the embers of the fire, and wait for the candles to burn down.

AO3 | Paper Legends | LJ Masterpost
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

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