fic: Dragonscape - part 2

[lasermignon]

Dragonscape - part 2
master list


~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Not much is known about the blue sun, Assetir, apart from its name. Even less of its ninth planet, an unnamed gas giant. But the moon which orbited the gas giant is well-documented in contemporary chronicles. It was called Ealdor by its inhabitants. Its mass, its irregular shape, its composition bore evidence of a darker truth. Ealdor was not simply a moon; it was formed out of the remains of a dead Dragon.

It was the dwelling place of a small colony, inhabited by the descendants of human slaves who became liberated when the Sorcerers, crippled by the death of their Dragon, lost control over them. In this colony, but apart from the humans, also lived the Dragonlord Balinor who had, generations ago, escaped Camelot's servitude and found refuge with the survivors.

It is said that a Dragon cannot survive without a Dragonlord, which was possibly what had happened to Ealdor. The Great Dragon, being the greatest of them all, persevered. When it could no longer endure, it travelled to Assetir and made its call.

The Dragonlord, though, did not wish to return to the place of his suffering and the Dragon would not leave without him. And so it would have come to a stalemate if not for a boy born into the heritage of the Dragonlord and placed into the care of a human woman and - after her death many ten-cycles later - into her daughter's care. The daughter raised him as her own son and he was yet too young to know otherwise. But the boy grew into a young man and it was just in time that he grew up, for the Dragonlord summoned him and bade him to answer the Great Dragon's call in his stead.

No one, no matter their origins, can have foreknowledge of the place they would occupy in history. Not even the Great Dragon, who possesses all the knowledge of the universe, can tell exactly what the future will bring. When he decided to embark on his adventure, the boy could not yet know that upon arriving at the gates of Camelot he would find his calling. He would also find the person who was the other half of his soul. He was just a boy then, who was quite ignorant of the great destiny set before him.

His name: Merlin.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It began with a summons.

It did not seem like anything important at first. Merlin followed silently as Hunith lead him through corridors he had never been to before. They were not part of the warren which sprawled underneath the surface, connecting the five domes, and Merlin idly wondered why anyone would choose to live in a place ruled by constant darkness instead of wondering why they had been summoned.

Earlier, when he had arrived home after his shift on the fields, Hunith had been waiting for him. There was warm stew sitting on the stove but the table had been only partway set and when Merlin had asked if she needed help she shook her head and said they were going to eat after they got back. From where she didn't say.

Even now, her lips were pressed into a thin line as she clutched the glowtorch in one hand and her skirts in the other for the floor was littered with the wreckage of disuse and they had to watch their steps closely. Because he was constantly looking down, Merlin missed when the walls around him changed from the familiar roughly hewn dark rock to smooth grey porous material decorated with chiselled carvings but after he did notice, he could hardly take his eyes off it. The carvings were of scalloped spirals and whorls which forked erratically into smaller and smaller branches, yet looking at it as a whole, the pattern had a strange symmetry to it.

Merlin was so engrossed in his observations, putting one foot in front of the other mechanically, that he yet again failed to notice when they arrived at the end of the corridor and in front of an entrance: a tall opening in the wall with an arched top but no door.

He almost ran into Hunith and received a look of irritation from her over her shoulder. As always, though, it was imbued with fondness. But hidden among the fondness there was also a glimmer of resignation, and that started the alarm bells in Merlin's head.

"Mother?" he asked, instinctively lowering his voice. "Is something wrong?"

"Merlin, my boy." Hunith smoothed a rough palm over Merlin's cheekbone in the same way she always had done when Merlin had been small and had come home upset or with scrapes over his knees. "I always knew the day when you learnt the truth would come but I expected it to happen naturally. I do not know what prompted the summons but they seemed urgent and I do not like my speculations as to their cause."

"I don't understand." Merlin felt slow and stupid, especially standing in this place that he had not even known existed until half an hour ago, his senses captivated by all the wondrous, alien sights but his thoughts a swirling disarray of uncertainty and suspicion. He felt on the cusp of something momentous and terrible. Everything pointed towards the probability that his life was about to change as soon as he stepped through that archway and he did not like it.

"I don't either. Let's not waste more time with guessing," Hunith said but she did not look very keen on proceeding.

"Have you ever been here before?" Merlin asked to give them just one more second together in privacy.

"Once," Hunith said with a little huff. "The first time I met you," she added, which made little sense to Merlin. Did she give birth in the chamber behind the archway? She looked at Merlin but her eyes were distant, perhaps seeing images from her past. She shook her head and curled soft fingers around his arm and held on for a second before letting her hand drop. "Let's go."

The circular chamber behind the archway was carved into the same smooth, grey stone but the walls lacked any ornamentation. It was small, dark and dusty. A plinth stood in its middle, its surface piled high with an assortment of food: bread, dried vegetables, fruit and hard boiled eggs but no meat. Merlin recognised them as the offerings (sans the meat) he had helped put together just that morning. That was when he realised where they were: the Shrine where the Dragonlord lived.

He grabbed at Hunith's arm franticly, halting her steps.

"These are the chambers of the Dragonlord," he whispered and promptly felt foolish. The Dragonlord was the bogeyman with which mothers in the village used to frighten their children into good behaviour but Merlin was no longer a child. He should know better.

"Well spotted, my boy," Hunith answered with a wry smile. "Who else did you expect to be living down here?"

Merlin did not answer. Hunith took his silence as acquiescence and continued walking. She circled the plinth and stepped to the opposite wall where another entryway stood, concealed by darkness.

This new chamber looked much the same. The only difference between them was that instead of food piled on the plinth in its middle, a man lay there. Merlin thought he was dead as his chest didn't move at all. He soon realised his mistake; the man was only asleep and what he had at first taken to be the draught through the empty corridors creating sonorous, fluty harmonics was actually the man's snoring.

His clothes were similar to Merlin's but he wore at least three layers of them and no shoes. His beard was dark and scraggy, just like his hair. At first Merlin thought his skin was dark until he got a whiff of the chamber's stale air and realised he was just incredibly dirty.

There were tales told about the Dragonlord helping the village survive in the past and in other tales he was guarding Ealdor's bright future. Merlin didn't know if he believed in any of it. But now, looking at the motionless figure, it was impossible to remain entirely sceptic.

The Dragonlord's eyes opened slowly and the snoring did not stop but gradually faded away. Then he sat up on the plinth and turned around until he was facing them, legs hanging down the side.

For a second, he studied them inquisitively, and then his lips pulled into a smile. "Hunith," he said to Merlin's mother. "It's been a long time. You've changed."

She snorted. "It's called 'growing up'."

"You are indeed taller," the Dragonlord allowed. Then his gaze turned to Merlin, considering him with undisguised curiosity. "And…"

"Merlin," Hunith said. "Mother named him Merlin."

Merlin fought to hide his surprise at this new piece of information. His mother had never told him that he had been named by his grandmother. He still vaguely remembered her warm smile and laughing eyes but not much else. He had been still little when she had died.

"Merlin," the Dragonlord said cautiously, turning the name around in his mouth like tasting a new food and deciding he could get used to it. "You do not know who I am." That had not been a question, just a statement, and it carried no reproof, which in turn emboldened Merlin to prove him otherwise.

"You are the Dragonlord," he said. The blank stare on the man's face and the indulgent smile he received from Hunith made Merlin want to take back his words. The Dragonlord looked at Merlin, unblinking, for a long time, as though he expected him to find the right answer on his own.

"He is not yet an adult; he's not going to suddenly just remember." Hunith broke the silence. "I'm afraid you'll have to use your words, Balinor."

Of course the Dragonlord had a name. It should not have taken Merlin by surprise. Perhaps the surprise was more due to his mother using it so freely, as though the Dragonlord was just like any other man from the village. It seemed at once disrespectful and unnecessarily reckless.

"How do I say it, then?" the Dragonlord asked and Merlin was brought back from his preoccupation by the sheer uncertainty revealed by the question. It seemed such a strange notion that a being who had lived through centuries - perhaps even millennia - should seek the advice of a mortal woman. And that mortal woman - his mother! - gave that advice as though she were scolding a misbehaving child.

"Perhaps you ought to start with the reason why you summoned us here," Hunith said.

"I did not summon you." Balinor frowned. "I only summoned my son."

Merlin had the urge to look around him, which was ridiculous; even though the darkness was almost complete, he was certain he'd have heard if another person were in the chamber with them.

"Yes, I can see just how well that would've turned out." Hunith sounded amused.

"You can?" Balinor asked. Merlin was, once again, taken aback by the sincere surprise in the Dragonlord's voice.

"It matters not, my Lord," Hunith said and Balinor was perhaps the only one who missed - or did not care enough to notice - the sarcasm dripping from her words. "So the reason of your summons...?"

Suddenly, the Dragonlord became more animated, anxious almost. "...is that I am being summoned and I cannot go!"

"Summoned by whom? Go where?" Merlin suddenly found the words to ask and almost wished he had not for the Dragonlord's eyes turned on him and he jumped off his plinth.

"Come. Come, I'll show you," he said and then disappeared within the darkness which concealed the chamber's exit. The chamber to which the Dragonlord led Merlin and his mother was nothing like the previous two for it had a window that looked out at the infinite blackness of space.

Windows were not uncommon in Ealdor. Most of them were small and served to share the domes' light with the living chambers and the corridors. There were a few through which one could see the star-dotted darkness, but the villagers in Ealdor did not like to be exposed to such sights so the windows were usually covered. Merlin had never feared the sight. As a child he had often sat in front of them to view the sunrise or to count the distant stars, find the constellations whose names he had learnt in school.

In school they also taught that stars travelled in space at unimaginable speeds, the distances between them ever growing, that planets and asteroids revolved around suns and moons circled around planets. (Ealdor, indeed, was a moon itself, its rotation locked to its planet, and the crystal domes on the outer side of the moon, which was why the planet was never seen.) But looking through a window at the universe, most of that movement could not be seen. It just looked like a still image, well-composed in stark contrasts of dark and bright, but nothing in it seemed to move.

And a still image was what Merlin was seeing now as well, but the window through which he saw it was so large that it seemed to span the entire universe. It covered an entire half of the chamber's circular wall. Merlin had not imagined a window of this size could even exist for the only other transparent surface this large he knew of was the many-faceted crystal of the domes, which only let through sunlight at day and darkness at night.

And through this window, Merlin could see myriads of stars, more than he had ever seen before at once. But even though they were precious every time he looked at them, the stars were not what drew his attention. It was the sight of
a thin crescent of light, which stretched through two thirds of the window's height, framing a black, circular shadow, which blotted out the stars.

At first Merlin did not know what he was seeing, but then the crescent grew thicker while the shadow thinned, and as the bright disc of the sun slowly rose to view, Merlin saw that the shadow was the giant planet underneath Ealdor and the crescent the sunrise painting its surface a brilliant, marbled blue.

A fine latticework of very faint, white rings ran around the large body of the planet, and though they seemed solid, Merlin knew that they were made up of small rocks and ice. Then the Dragonlord pointed at a tiny speck of dust floating near the thin halo that surrounded the planet's dark side and said, "There! You see it? There!"

Merlin saw. But it was not with his eyes. Where his eyes let him only see him an unremarkable piece of rock, some other sense which he had not previously known he possessed allowed him to see in other ways. A presence tugged on an indefinable part of Merlin's soul.

He had no words to describe the sensation, nor could he define the sense that provided it. He only got a glimpse of the thing that lurked in the darkness of space but the impression was so strong and clear in his mind that for a terrible second, it was everything he felt and there was nothing outside it. All his other senses deserted him. His heart stuttered to a halt in his chest and his blood froze in his veins. And that impression was only a small part of it: an entity so vast and old as to be unfathomable in its entirety to something as insignificant and small as the human brain.

Merlin reeled back, gasping for breath, and shook his head. The sensation went away but it left behind a soft murmur clinging to the back of his mind, comprised of melody and emotions, almost like a chant, which Merlin could only just make out when he concentrated on it. He tried not to, though, as he had no desire to suffer another assault on his senses.

"What was that?" he asked. "What happened?"

His only answer was a triumphant shout, and then Balinor turned to Hunith, grinning. "See! I might not need any of your words after all!"

But Hunith was not paying him attention. She was by Merlin's side within a second, catching him by the arms and steadying him. Then she looked into his eyes until she was satisfied he had come to no harm.

"Yes, you do," she said when she finally let him go and turned her ire on the Dragonlord. "If my son gets hurt because you-"

"He is not your son," Balinor corrected her, looking as baffled as Merlin felt at this declaration.

At that, Hunith lifted her chin and looked down her nose in a way that always made grown men in the village beat retreat rather than start arguing with her. "I was the one who raised him," she said, "and that makes him as much my son as if he were my flesh and blood."

But that could not be right, could it?

"What do you mean, not your flesh and blood?" Merlin asked.

"Oh, Merlin." Hunith pressed a warm, motherly palm against his face. "Even if you no longer remember, I thought you'd have figured it out by now."

And of course he had. It just didn't seem real. This morning, he had a mother. And now? What did he have? Hunith, it seemed, was still able to read his mind just like when he had been small, for then she said, "You had me from the first moment I set my eyes on you when you were just a baby and I was barely half a rotation old. You were my boy, even then. And that's never going to change. You'll always have me." But then, mothers were often accused of reading their children's minds. That thought made Merlin grin.

She answered with her own wry smile and then directed her next words to the Dragonlord.

"And now you need to give some explanations. What is that thing outside and what does it have to do with Merlin?"

"It's not a thing." Merlin was surprised to hear the words escape his mouth. "It is alive."

"So it's a Dragon?" Hunith stated more than asked. Merlin had not thought of that explanation but of course she was right. What else would it be?

"It is the Great Dragon." The name didn't mean anything to Merlin, but the Dragonlord started looking panicked again. "It came for me. It wants me back. Only, I cannot go, you understand." And then he finished with a truly absurd conclusion. "Which is why Merlin will have to go in my stead."

"No." Hunith said and it sounded final. "You are not going to send my Merlin somewhere even you are too afraid to go."

"It's not that I'm afraid… well, I am but not of the present. I'm afraid of the past I'd have to relive if I saw that place again," the Dragonlord hurried to reassure, although his words failed in that regard. "The Great Dragon is not my enemy; it was very understanding. We had an agreement and it let me go. Even gave me enough time to prepare."

"So you promised to go back and now you'd go back on your word?" Hunith bristled.

"I-not quite." Balinor scratched his beard; Merlin couldn't tell if he was stalling or just itched from all that dirt. "I promised a replacement."

"And that would be Merlin?"

"Of course it's Merlin," the Dragonlord huffed, looking increasingly impatient. "I've explained everything you needed to know about him and his future when I gave him to you to raise. I don't know why you're acting as though you had had no idea."

"You might have explained it to my mother. I'm a human, Balinor; I don’t have access to her memories. You might try to remember that."

"How ineffective." He looked mildly disturbed by the concept.

And that was Merlin finally found his voice. "This makes no sense!" he protested. "Why would you think I'd be a good replacement for a Dragonlord?" He frowned as he had just realised something. "Wait, if I'm your son, does that mean I'm also a Dragonlord?"

Balinor's lips pulled into an eager smile as though he had already forgotten his previous anxiety.

"'Son' is not really the right word," he said. "I did not design you to follow the human pattern in regard to separate sexes." He seemed to be strongly pondering something. "However, the word 'progeny' and its synonyms in human language sound so impersonal…" He must have noticed the pallor that seeped into Merlin's skin following his words for he quickly changed the topic. "But, yes, you are a Dragonlord. That was definitely in the design. So, you see? You are perfectly suited to replace me."

By this time, he had walked to a part of the wall that was no longer a window but was still covered in darkness as the only illumination inside the chamber was provided by the sunlight's reflection from the planet's thick atmosphere. Merlin noticed there was a doorway there, too, which seemingly led into the frozen vacuum of space. But in that weak light, Merlin saw a thin, dark line trailing from the colony to the dark chunk of rock that was the Great Dragon.

Balinor gestured at the dark entrance, smiling almost proudly.

"Well? What do you say, Merlin? The Great Dragon is waiting for you. Isn't it exciting?"

Merlin involuntarily drew closer, his steps guided by curiosity. He couldn't deny it. More than that, there was a subtle but ever-growing temptation to go which originated in the hum that had taken root at the back of his mind. The Dragon's song in his mind swelled, calling to him. He knew if he let it, it could overpower his common sense which told him he should be better prepared before he went.

Or he should not go at all; why would he leave his home and his mother for a place that was at best unknown and at worst hostile?

Yet it was a Dragon, and there must have been some truth in the stories told about Dragonlords. The mere knowledge of the Dragon's existence was enough to fill his mind with endless fascination. But the fact that it was so close - that it was calling to him, that it wanted him - him and not Balinor - that there was already a connection between them: it made the fascination quickly grow into a compulsion he couldn't seem to shake.

"Wait! Merlin, stop right there! What are you doing? And you, Balinor! You can't just send him off without any information and expect him to just… divine everything on his own." The shrillness of Hunith's voice brought Merlin back to his senses.

"Why not?" Balinor asked. "That is our way."

"Well, too bad. You gave Merlin to my mother to teach him the human way. And the human way is all that he knows yet." She sounded calmer now but perhaps only due to the solid grip she maintained on Merlin's arm. "So I'll take him home, pack him a bag and feed him, and we'll come back tomorrow. And tomorrow, you'll tell him everything he needs to know before he sets foot into that thing because I know I cannot stop him."

This latter was said with such resignation that for a second, Merlin forgot his excitement and wanted to promise his mother that he'd stay with her, that he would never leave. But then his thoughts once again were captured by the promise of things to come.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Ealdor was not a place where much travelling was done. The village consisted of five crystal domes under which food was grown and the corridors that connected them below the surface, where the living quarters of the families were dug into the hard rock. The entire village was not bigger than a man (or a boy in Merlin's case) could run through from one end to the other within a couple of hours, or run around, if he so wished, in half a day. There had never been a need to pack for a trip longer than a sleepover at Will's, never mind a journey as long as Merlin was about to take.

Hunith had fashioned a travelling pack of sorts out of old blankets, but when Merlin asked her what to pack into it, she could only shrug and say, "whatever you'd need at home, too". So Merlin packed clothes to wear and more blankets to sleep on, and the rest of the bag was filled with food that'd keep. Even though Merlin protested, Hunith packed her unused bar of soap. (Merlin planned on putting it back and taking the leftover one, but later he forgot.)

And then they ate the cold stew and went to bed, though neither of them slept much. Merlin was lost to his daydreams about what it was going to be like to step though that hole in the wall of Balinor's room and walk down that long tunnel into an alien world. He sometimes heard his mother turn in her bed, unable to sleep from worry, and then he felt bad for being the cause of that worry. But the guilt he felt wasn't enough to take away the wonder over the Dragon's existence.

The next morning, they woke up at dawn. Merlin had found sleep at last, though it had been neither deep nor for long. His dreams had been saturated by whispers of temptation from the presence which had taken residence in the back of his mind. He wanted to set out for the Dragonlord's chambers right away, but Hunith persuaded him to take time for breakfast and then to wash up a little before he went, and then she reminded Merlin that it would be bad manners if he didn't even say good-bye to his best friend, so Merlin did that first. Will did not understand why he had to go - and especially where he'd go. Merlin finally gave up on explaining and just said the Dragonlord needed him and then endured Will's mocking laughter with equanimity. He'd be soon gone anyway (though Will believed he'd be back just as soon) so he let Will have his mirth at Merlin's cost. It mattered little.

Sitting in the windowed chamber with the universe as his background, Balinor explained everything he could about what it meant to be a Dragonlord - precious little, as the Dragonlord was not skilled at making explanations. They inevitably boiled down to two things: rely on instinct and their ancestors' memories. Merlin retained even less from it as his thoughts were far away from that little dark room.

"Although, you should seek Gaius," Balinor suddenly remembered - to Merlin it seemed that his inherited memories were much more readily available than recalling things he had actually lived through. "She's no dragonlord, of course, but she has some knowledge and always had a way with words. Should everything else fail, she may be able to guide you."

Gaius was the name of the person who had helped Balinor make his escape, once the Great Dragon had let him go, but apart from that, Balinor wasn't able to tell much about her, not even to describe how she looked. In fact, he seemed thoroughly baffled by that question when Merlin asked it, eventually settling on saying she looked like a human.

"Are you sure she's still alive?" Hunith asked.

"Why not? She was younger than me. Although she was half-human, so who knows?"

"They might have punished her after you were gone," Hunith reasoned but the Dragonlord dismissed her concerns.

"Oh, no. Gaius is much shrewder than to get caught like that. She is a master of disguises. She likes to appear old, like this!" Balinor cried and then, quite to Merlin's bafflement and astonishment, his face began to wrinkle, the skin growing thinner and translucent, and the hair on his head and over his chin went grey and brittle and seemed to grow longer. At the end of this transformation, Balinor looked like an elderly man.

He was huffing and puffing, as though whatever he was doing required a great exertion on his part. Only a few heartbeats later, he gave it up and collapsed into an exhausted heap, looking his usual self once again.

"Are you all right?" Merlin asked.

"I could keep it up longer; it'd only require a bit of practice," Balinor insisted. "I don't use those muscles much. Not much point, here."

After that, both Merlin and Balinor grew increasingly more uninterested in continuing their conversation. There was not much point to it, as Balinor was less and less able to yield useful information. The only force that kept them going for a while longer was Hunith's insistence; but soon she, too, accepted the futility of her efforts and stopped making them. And then it was time to go.

Merlin climbed into the tunnel, feeling a mix of excitement and apprehension. From the window, the long, winding tube of dark rock bridging the nothingness of space between Ealdor and the Dragon looked awfully thin and fragile. At once, Merlin was filled with dread that the tunnel would split open and disgorge him into the vacuum. There was a second before he stepped foot in it when he seriously considered not going. As though it could sense his growing apprehension, the Dragon's call amplified, filling up his mind and dwarfing every other thought in it.

He kissed his mother in parting and then offered his hand to Balinor, which resulted in awkwardness, for Balinor must have forgotten himself and slipped not a hand but a feeler into it. Merlin blushed but pretended nothing was wrong, and then he had to keep himself from outright laughing when he saw his mother bury her face in her palms.

The insides of the tunnel were very narrow and dark, but apart from that, it could have been any corridor in Ealdor. The walls were the same rock which he was used to seeing at home. The ceiling was very low; in fact it was the exact same height as Merlin himself, and he had to duck down if he did not want to get hairs torn out and his scalp scratched up, for none of the surfaces were smooth.

After a few steps the going became steeper. Although the floor before him looked perfectly even, it felt as though something was pulling him back, and he had to lean forward to keep his balance. At the same time, he began feeling lighter and his muscles stronger; only when he hit his head on the low ceiling from taking a step which should not have propelled him forward that strongly did he recognise what was happening. In Ealdor, there were places long out of use where the weight of one's body suddenly diminished to almost nothing. Will had once found such a place, a long, straight corridor somewhere at the north end of Ealdor. It was lit through a large, translucent crystal wall at one end, but it stood empty because no one would want to live there. Most people were frightened by not being able to feel one's ties to solid ground, but it seemed like the most wondrous thing for two boys in search of an afternoon's amusement. Well worth even the thrashing that they had received from their mothers when they were found.

Somehow, the same sensation elicited terror rather than enjoyment now that Merlin was older. The closed confines of the narrow space probably did not help to preserve his courage either, and for the second time, Merlin considered turning back, but in the end, he grit his teeth together and persevered. Soon his body weighed nothing at all, and he no longer felt the ground under his boots. He continued through the tunnel by floating through the air, dragging himself forward by his hands. He learnt very quickly not to use too much force and to keep his legs together and not try to use them at all if he did not want to shoot out into some unexpected direction and knock his head against the wall. Even after that he continued collecting new scratches and scrapes from brushing hard against rough walls when he was not able to break his momentum in time, and pulled muscles for even trying. Despite the fact that there was no gravity holding him back, he was more exhausted than if he had covered the same distance in a hard run uphill. On the other hand, having to concentrate on every little movement, there was no more space for fear left among his thoughts.

He could not have said how long it took him to negotiate his way through the tunnel; it certainly had felt like an eternity. After even the calluses on his palm, received through years of field work, had rubbed so thin that the tips of his fingers ached even from a simple touch on the rough rock, he felt something change. At first it was only a small tug, pulling him forward and into the wall right before a sharp turn in the tunnel. He pulled himself past the bend, wondering idly why it felt harder to do than the one before it but he wrote it off on being at the end of his endurance. It was a mistake. He rounded the corner and the next thing he knew he was falling. It was slow at first, so he had just enough time to start panicking when he was not able to find a hold by which to slow his descent. Then "forward" became "down" and he plummetted down a narrow shaft riddled with sharp edges and turns until gravity began to pull him towards the side of the tunnel which he had labelled as the ground, and his drop turned into a quick, rough slide down an uneven chute towards a growing pinprick of light.

The end came when he slammed into a wall next to an opening. When he felt he could move again, he saw that it was a gap barely large enough for him to crawl through on all fours. He wasted no time; he was so glad to see the end of the tunnel, he did not even care that he added a few more scrapes to his existing ones due to his haste to finally get out of there.

On the other side of the gap, though, there was light, brighter than his glowtorch, which he had lost during this unexpected last leg of his journey, was able to produce. But, unlike the cold blue daylight that shone through the crystal domes of his home, it bathed his face and the insides of his closed eyelids in a warm, golden glow.

When he finally opened his eyes, it was to a sight he could not have imagined even if the Dragonlord had seen it fit to forewarn him.

He was tired and had expected to find people and shelter when he arrived. He saw neither. Instead, all he saw was the colour gold. Above his head, he could see no protective blue dome - just a dull, golden emptiness. There were no towering crystal walls to guide and limit his vision. Instead, a tall wall of featureless rock rose behind his back to join the golden landscape before him to the gold sky above; its dark ribbon stretched in both ways into the distance until its ends disappeared within the uniformity of the landscape.

He wandered around in a daze for what felt like days, feeling more and more lost. The golden fields seemed infinite. There was a particularly shaped mound here or what looked like a dried-out riverbed there, but the same landmarks repeated over and over - just different enough to know he wasn't walking in circles, but not distinctive enough to remember. The earth was covered with plants whose colours alternated between various shades of gold - from pale yellow to dark, burnished ochre. The horizon was invisible to Merlin's strained vision.

But as beautiful everything looked, soon Merlin realised that gold was the colour of death. The grasses and shrubs were all withered. Some of their leaves bore scorch marks. The earth around their roots rolled like dust. There was not one drop of water to be found.

Merlin followed a path that looked like a road - little used as it was almost overgrown with now-dead grasses. He planned on resting when it got dark, but it never did. The sky remained the same glowing golden - nothing hinted at the passing of time. So he just walked until he could no longer walk, then he spread out his blanket over a soft patch of yellow grass next to the road and closed his tired eyes.

Sleep would not come, no matter how exhausted he was. The brightness penetrated his eyelids and tugged him back from the brink of sleep several times. In the end he pulled a corner of the blanket over his head and buried his face in the dark, stifling fabric. His sleep was not quite as restful as he had hoped. The temperature was high and he was too hot when he woke up. He could not tell how much he had slept; it did not seem enough but he knew he wouldn't be able to fall asleep again, so he packed up the blanket.

He went behind a shrub to relieve himself and as he did so, he felt both exposed and ridiculous; he could have done it out in the open, there was no one to see him. He had smiled at his mother when she had insisted on packing him lunch. For the long walk, she had said. Merlin let her, but he had not eaten any of the food. Now he was glad of her foresight, and particularly for the bottle of water she packed with it. After eating half the meat pie (although he remained still hungry, he forced himself to put the other half away for later) and drinking enough water to wash it down with, he continued on his way.

There was no visible landmark to guide him towards his goal but something inside him seemed to know the right direction. That same something did not let him despair, even though his situation seemed quite hopeless if he viewed it with a rational mind. He had seen no sign yet to suggest he was not walking into his death, that there was anything waiting for him at the end of his journey other than this dreary grassland, and he doubted he'd be able to find the entrance to the tunnel if he decided to go back. Strangely, that thought did not even occur to him. Something drew to him into a direction which did not seem any different from any of the other directions, and the only way he knew to explain it was the Dragon. Even though his connection to it was tentative, barely there to feel, it filled Merlin with certainty.

By the time he began to feel the hunger again, there was a subtle change in the landscape before him: the yellow of dead grasses was dotted with darker colours. It was still too distant to make out, but Merlin thought he saw a flat rock face rising from the horizon. If he climbed up on its top, he'd be able to look around better. He decided to continue walking and only stop to eat once he reached the divide, but it proved farther away than he had expected and so he took out the last remaining half of his pie and ate it on the road.

His eyes were directed on the road as it disappeared under his boots as his eyes were still unused to the ever-present glare. Thus when he looked up next, he was surprised to see a line of trees darkening the land instead of the expected cliff. It was a forest, Merlin noted with delighted surprise. Ealdor was too small to have such forests grow in it but the children's tales were full of them. Until now Merlin had believed them to only exist in fables. But now he was going to see a real one from close up for the road lead directly into the forest and Merlin saw no reason to leave it now.

When he reached the forest, Merlin saw that while the leaves on top of the trees were the accustomed dry yellow, the underside of the foliage was lush and green. It only let part of the light through. The spaces between the tree trunks were cloaked in shadows, cooling the air significantly and giving Merlin's eyes respite from the brightness of the golden skies. The undergrowth was thick and untamed, hard to wade through. The road narrowed to a mere trail half-grown in with vegetation, but Merlin could tell it was in use as it had been recently cleared as the weeds had only started growing back; the long-awaited first sign of human occupation.

Merlin followed the path to a brook. He did not waste any time to drink his fill and refill his empty bottle. He just finished corking the mouth when he noticed a movement from the corner of his eye. It was so unexpected that he jumped up right away in the hope of finally meeting the people who lived here. What he saw instead was another thing of which he had only heard in fairy tales.

The animal looked similar to the stout little ponies they kept in Ealdor for their milk and their fleece, but taller and bulkier. Its back came up to Merlin's chest. Its coat was short-haired and so pure white it seemed to sparkle in the beams of light that penetrated the gaps in the foliage. Its eyes were large and dark, shrouded by a lustrous fringe as the creature bowed its head and looked up at him. They seemed to contain immense wisdom as they followed Merlin's movements without a hint of fear.

Merlin couldn't help but take step closer and reach out a hand in wonder, feeling awed and hypnotised by its beauty. He was certain the creature in front of him could be no other but the legendary Rhinoceros!

He heard the twang of a string, followed by a brief, sharp whistle and then a fleshy thump. The creature screamed in pain, its neck straining as it fell on its side. Thick blood oozed from a wound where a bolt had embedded itself between the ribs. Merlin dropped on his knees. His eyes were wide and fear made him short of breath. He put his palm on the gracefully elongated head, watched as the wisdom of those eyes became clouded with pain and then extinguished by death.

A jubilant hoot broke him out of the shock. Merlin looked up and saw a boy about his own age, blond hair shining, cheeks flushed with triumph. The boy possessed a beauty very different to that of the creature he had just killed, but it was a beauty of equal measure: warm, golden and vivacious as opposed to the pale, statuesque perfection of the creature whose life he had just taken. Merlin perceived nothing of this beauty, for he could not take his eyes off the metallic device in the boy's hand. He had no doubts in his mind that the mechanism was the weapon which had ended the life of something precious.

"A unicorn!" the boy shouted to someone behind his back.

"Are you the one who killed it?" The accusation left Merlin's lips before he could think it through. His voice was scratchy and tight. "What has it ever done to you?"

The boy glanced at Merlin with a nonplussed expression as though he had only now noticed his presence. His eyes were the clear blue of sunlight shining through crystal and though initially they were widened with surprise, they became just as hard as crystal as the meaning of Merlin's words penetrated his mind.

"You ought to show more gratitude to someone who just saved your life, friend," he said, eyes narrowed, his voice slid into a deep register which seemed incongruous when compared to his youth. It was the voice of an adult, of someone who was used to taking responsibility for others' lives.

Merlin could tell his words had been taken as an insult, exactly as he had intended them to be taken, but their meaning surprised him enough to forget to gloat.

"Oh, sure," he retorted, incredulous. "I could see it's got a vicious streak a mile wide. And huge, sharp teeth!" Incredulous was an expression in which Merlin had much practice, usually in connection with Will, whose behaviour tended to lean towards outrageous. "And," he added, "you're no friend of mine; I'd never have a friend who could be such an ass--!"

"Nor I one who could be so stupid," the boy injected with a supercilious smirk. His blue eyes widened, with challenge this time, and lit up with delight. He was seemingly no longer bothered by Merlin's previous insult as now he seemed to have taken their confrontation as a game, successfully reducing Merlin to unattractive sputtering.

"--and you certainly are no friend of this poor creature. What did this Rhinoceros ever do to you?"

The boy threw his head back in laughter.

"It's a unicorn," he corrected. "Which you'd know, but you probably failed to notice that huge, sharp horn on its forehead. Easy to miss if you can only see its point." The teasing tone suddenly turned serious. "Be glad I was here. I've seen a beast like this spear a man with one lunge."

"But why would it want to kill me?" Merlin asked. "I had done nothing to it." His hearing picked up the noise of footsteps; looking behind the boy's back, he saw several men crunching through the undergrowth as they neared their location.

"It's quite territorial." The boy shrugged and then drew aside to let the men pass. They gathered around the carcass. A few of them pulled long, sharp knives from their belts, making quick work of gutting the carcass. Others went into the woods to gather some strong, straight branches. Merlin observed the activity with a marked lack of understanding.

"That was still no reason to kill it. You could have just stayed away."

And then it was the boy's turn to look incredulous and Merlin felt he might be in the wrong this time, but his pride would not let him acknowledge it.

"I did not kill it for sport", the boy said. "I killed it because of people like you who come to Camelot expecting to be fed. You and your likes believe that our stores are filled to the brim just because we had some warning of the Blight. Well, let me tell you, that is not the case. Hence the need to hunt."

Thusly chastened, Merlin muttered, "…you could have just said so from the beginning."

He reckoned to hunt meant to kill wild animals for food. Ealdor did not have any of those. Resources were too scarce to allow anything but livestock and people to deplete them.

"And I don't expect you to feed me," he added, because he felt the need to defend his pride. Merlin's stomach chose that moment to remind him that, pride or not, it had been kept on half-rations for a whole day.

"Oh, so you mean you have food." There was a knowing grin on the boy's lips, and despite the fact that it was clearly there to mock him, Merlin had to acknowledge that it made him look charming, just because it gave back something of the youthfulness of his countenance, which seemed to have been lost to duty.

Merlin noticed he was staring and the sudden embarrassment over that realisation took his breath away and made his pulse race.

"Well, no," he admitted, looking away, licking his lips that felt suddenly dry. His ears prickled with heat but he couldn’t tell if it was due to getting caught in a lie or his unexpected fascination with the boy's features, quite possibly a mix of the two. The boy took a step forward, deftly navigating the bustle that was taking place around the unicorn's body.

"Here, have some cheese." He held out a hand towards Merlin, presenting him with a yellowish clump. But when Merlin stretched forward to take it, he swiftly pulled it back out of reach. "Ah-ah. Your name first. Since you don't take kindly to being called 'friend'."

"It's Merlin," Merlin muttered but the surliness was only half meant by now, the other half faked, badly at that, judging from the grin on the boy's face that only got wider as he slapped the cheese into Merlin's palm.

"Pleased to meet you, Merlin. I'm Arthur," he said but he didn't let go yet. The skin of his fingertips that touched Merlin's palm over the cheese felt warm and unexpectedly rough, but not unpleasant.

"Sire, should we roast the meat here?" The question interrupted a silence that had stretched between them for too long for Merlin to be able to pretend it was only casual, especially as their eyes had remained locked on each other's the entire time. Merlin had momentarily even forgotten that he was hungry.

The boy, Arthur, quickly wrenched away his gaze and his hand, looking somewhat flustered as well, which made Merlin feel better about his own embarrassment.

"We aren’t that far away; let's take it back to Camelot," Arthur answered. He had to clear his throat first, as the first word had, mortifyingly, sounded like a squeak.

The men were good about pretending they did not hear anything unusual, though several of them were listening to the interaction and wore small, fond, but nonetheless amused smiles. Nonetheless

Arthur's orders were not questioned. The men began to seal up the cut that had been made on the unicorn's belly in order to remove the intestines. The blood had been gathered in two leather sacks, which they tied up and threw between the ribs. Then they bored holes into the skin on both sides of the cut and tied the two halves together with the help of a few strong leather straps. Then they tied the legs at the knees and fastened a bundle of the collected branches to the ties on each end, so that four men could carry the weight comfortably distributed between them.

"Wait, have you checked the body?" Arthur asked, as if only remembering something important now. He was pointedly not looking at Merlin, for which Merlin couldn’t blame him. "Remember what Gaius said, we have to leave it if it's losing clumps of its hair or bleeding from its mouth, ears or beneath its tail."

Merlin was only half-listening, absent-mindedly munching on the hard cheese, until a word Arthur said penetrated the fog of exhaustion that blanketed his perception.

"Did you just say Gaius? You know Gaius?"

He jumped up from his perch on the moss-covered trunk of a fallen tree and found himself once again in the focus of Arthur's attention. There was some staring again until someone cleared their throat, then Arthur jumped, his cheeks flushed.

"Everyone knows Gaius," one of the men said while Arthur adopted an overly serious expression and nodded, looking very fascinated by the nearest tree.

"Clearly, even someone like you, who has never even seen a unicorn, does," Arthur added, and the joke was so bad that Merlin found himself grinning over how bad it was, and the heavy air of discomfort lifted at once.

"Can I go with you, then?" Merlin said. "I mean, are you going in his direction, and if yes, can I go with?"

Arthur's look implied that the question had cast serious doubts over Merlin's sanity. "Where else would you go?"

Where else, indeed. "Is that a yes, then?" Merlin was wary of standing out too much with his ignorance. He tried to make the question sound more like banter than an honest inquiry. Judging by the twist of Arthur's face, he succeeded.

"Do you honestly expect me to say no?"

"It seemed like the polite thing to ask."

And so the banter started up again.

"It would have been polite to say thank you for the food I gave you."

"Wouldn't want to be too polite; someone might take it the wrong way…"

Arthur took a different path out of the forest than the one which led Merlin here, Merlin walking by his side and the men with the carcass behind them. Merlin was not really paying them attention for his own was entirely focussed on Arthur. He sometimes heard them quietly talking among themselves but more frequently they just listened in to the game of mocking neither Merlin - nor, it seemed, Arthur - could help participating in.

It was not a long walk but their burden made it slow and ponderous. Merlin took his turn carrying one end of a shaft, with Arthur on the other side as they were close to the same height. He found himself frequently stealing glances to the other side, and just as frequently he found his eyes meeting another pair of blues which were then quickly snatched away.

They stopped to eat and rest just before the forest ended, and then continued along the road. Past the forest, the face of the land changed, tilled fields replaced the meadows, though the plants that grew from them were just as desiccated as everywhere else Merlin had travelled through. What could have caused such wholesale devastation? Merlin wanted to ask but he feared not knowing would inevitably mark him as an outsider. In Ealdor, even when they were closest to their sun, and spending time in the domes during daylight had ill effects on humans, the plants never suffered.

He forgot the question altogether at the sight that greeted him when they clambered over the next hill: the grand town of Camelot.

Or, at least, it looked grand from afar. The closer they got, the more obvious that the town had suffered great damage recently. The neatly thatched roofs he saw from the hilltop sat on top of collapsed walls. Some of the damage had already been cleared away and new buildings were being built but there were entire areas that had been left in ruins and they did not look as though they would be rebuilt any time soon. Merlin guessed the death toll must have been severe. The main road was split in two by a deep chasm which was half-filled in with wreckage. But the castle of Camelot, which Arthur had to point out to him or else Merlin would have confused it with a large, pale, jutting rock in whose shadow the town had been built, was truly a sight to behold. At second glance, the rock did not look natural - but neither did it look man-made. It looked like glue poured out of a giant's fist that hardened on its way down. Its smooth, fluidly curving walls were of a stone so white whose likes Merlin had not seen anywhere else on his way.

On their way down the last hill they had met other hunting parties, though only half of them were carrying game; the other half had been chased back, empty-handed, by hunger and fatigue. But Camelot's people were stronger than to let themselves be downtrodden by misfortune for their morale had not been soured by the failures. The ones who had returned with food, like Arthur's party, were greeted by cheers from the people working on the new buildings, but even those who had been less lucky in their undertaking had been showered with back pats and encouragements.

Arthur stopped teasing Merlin as their numbers grew. At once, he slipped into the role of a leader and the men also treated him accordingly, addressing him with the kind of respect Merlin had only seen emerge sporadically within their small party. Merlin was no longer the focus of Arthur's attention. In fact, it seemed Arthur had entirely forgotten about his presence. It filled Merlin with vague disappointment but also with relief.

The procession followed one half of the split road but then turned around just before the square in front of the main gate as they were going to unload their burden in the kitchens. Halfway there, Arthur put a hand on Merlin's shoulder and they stopped in front of a side-entrance to the castle.

"Well, here we are," Arthur said. "You'll find Gaius through here."

Merlin thanked him and tentatively asked whether Arthur needed his help with the unicorn. Arthur smiled. "No need. There are enough of us." And then a mischievous glint appeared in his eyes and Arthur, leader of men, yielded the ground to Arthur the annoying pest. "Well, Merlin, I'm not saying good-bye as I'm sure I won't be able to avoid meeting you again."

"Prat," Merlin said, grinning, and then watched Arthur's retreating back until he disappeared behind the bend of the castle wall. The Dragon's song, which had quieted while Merlin was in Arthur's company, was getting louder again, as though the Dragon did not want them to part.

The side-entrance opened to a narrow, circular chamber with a spiral staircase. The stairs continued upwards though several storeys without stopping. There were many such stairways in Ealdor; they connected the living quarters with the domes. Merlin remembered the old tales told to children in which the stairs moved, carrying those who stepped on them up or down. It was strange to see a piece of home in this alien place.

On the upper end of the staircase there was a door. It was massive, its bulk made strong by several layers of tree bark glued together, with ornate iron reinforcements, but it did not fit very well into the doorway; there was a gap between it and the wall which was wide enough for Merlin to fit through a finger if he so wanted. He knocked but no answer came. The door wasn't locked, though, and the force of his knocking was enough to push it open.

The room behind the door was large and disordered. Its eclectic furniture seemed crudely carved out of stone and crystal, augmented with thin, plaited panes of the same tree bark that had been used to make the door; the pieces did not fit the spaces into which they were crammed. On second glance, this was not the furniture's fault, as the walls curved every which way, just like the outside of the castle, Merlin reckoned. The mess of objects that swamped all flat surfaces, though, could only be blamed on the chamber's inhabitant. An inhabitant nowhere to be seen.

"Gaius?" Merlin cleared his throat but he did not need to repeat the call. He heard a noise from above. Looking up, he saw a stodgy figure covered by a shapeless, floor-length dress, with a head full of white hair, standing on a small gallery in front of a stocked bookcase. Merlin's call provoked a reaction; the figure, who was presumably Gaius, whirled into the direction of Merlin's voice and overbalanced.

There was a crack as the rickety banister broke. For a second, it looked as though it was going to hold, but then it split down the middle and the person Merlin supposed was Gaius fell though the split. Merlin saw it in detail: the body tumble over the gap, the legs searching for traction and getting twisted up in the long skirt, the hair become a cloud of white - the slowness of the fall reminded Merlin of nothing as much as what had happened when he had dropped his glowtorch inside the tunnel.

There was a thump on the floor. Merlin's gaze jumped to its source and he saw a book, which had probably been dislodged by the accident, land on the floor in front of his foot. Another one followed. Merlin looked back and saw that Gaius was still falling. He touched the ground just a few seconds later.

"That was lucky." Merlin sighed, relieved. It would have been inconvenient if Gaius had ended up dead just seconds after Merlin's arrival.

This person did not look like a woman at all - apart from the obvious swelling of the lower half, which had probably caused the imbalance - Merlin decided as he watched him clamber up immediately and whirl around to face Merlin. But then, Balinor looked nothing like a woman either, and he had incubated Merlin in his body. He, for this person was definitely not a woman who now stood in front of Merlin, looked old by human standards. His face was lined with age, his body portly and stooped, his hair, though long, thin and entirely white. Yet Merlin knew Gaius had been born from a human mother; he could only have lived a tenth of Balinor's lifetime at most.

"Lucky?" he screeched and Merlin barely resisted the urge to cover his ears. "Did you do that? Are you a sorcerer?" the man demanded. Merlin was so taken by surprise and - he had to admit - intimidated by the sharp tone, he could only stammer.

"I… I do not know!"

"How else would you be able to influence gravity?"

"I am a dragonlord," Merlin blurted.

And then he immediately wished he hadn't. Balinor had warned him that anyone found to be a sorcerer could only expect swift death in Camelot. Merlin was not even certain he had the right person.

"A dragonlord?" the man was looking at him shrewdly, but he seemed to be accepting the answer.

"Yes. My name is Merlin." Merlin knew the grin on his face was probably making him look demented, but he was so relieved he couldn't help it. "Excuse me, but are you Gaius?"

"Yes, I am Gaius."

"Only because Balinor said…"

"Yes?"

"That Gaius is a woman."

"Doesn't surprise me. Only one gender, so why be able to tell the difference between human sexes? Balinor probably decided I was female because of the hair and the robes. I find them more comfortable than trousers. Some non-human characteristics are impossible to hide in those…" he went on, no doubt in an attempt to show solidarity but then he noticed Merlin's discomfort and stopped.

"Are you incubating?" Merlin asked in surprise.

An eyebrow sailed heavenwards while its counterpart lowered dangerously.

"No." The tone made it clear Merlin was treading on shaky ground and would do better to back up.

But then Gaius quickly cleared his throat, slightly flustered, and directed the conversation onto a different topic. "You're Balinor's issue, then?"

"How did you know?" Merlin asked, realising that it had been a foolish question as soon as the words left his mouth.

"You bear his features. Still, I need to check. Lower your trews."

"What?"

He was given the sharp glance and a lift of the eyebrows, which even after such a short acquaintance Merlin had learnt to regard as a formidable instrument of intimidation in Gaius's repertoire of facial expressions.

When Merlin made no move to obey, Gaius sighed. "I'm a physician, Merlin. I can assure you my interest is not of a prurient nature." But the reassuring words were followed with another cutting glance, which convinced Merlin to loosen his laces and let the material drop around his ankles. He blushed when Gaius bent down with a groan, bringing his face level with Merlin's exposed privates.

Gaius hummed. "Looks human." He sounded almost disappointed, levelling his eyebrow at Merlin again as he looked up at him. Merlin shrugged and looked away.

"Balinor said that was the plan."

"I suppose it makes sense. Well, nothing for it, then."

Gaius abruptly turned around, his hips bumped into a small table that stood nearby, jostling it and causing the cup of water that stood on it to overbalance. The cup tumbled off the table, water splashed, and in the middle of it, there was a flash of movement. Merlin caught the cup without intending to. But not with his hand.

Gaius tutted at him, looking annoyed.

"I forgot to tell you that you could put that away now," he nodded at Merlin's midsection. Merlin scrambled to pull up his trousers. Then he had to let go with one hand to free the cup and put it back on the table.

"My mother always used to say to keep it in my pants," Merlin muttered. His trousers were baggy enough to allow him free movement because Hunith had realised early on that Merlin would be more willing to observe the rules of propriety if he did not feel restricted. He had not always obeyed her word, though. He remembered the trouble into which he had got when he and Will had been half as tall as now. Will had convinced him to play tricks on old man Simmons, who had not liked Merlin and Will even before that, but liked them even less afterwards.

Gaius snorted. "I'm not sure that was quite the meaning she had in mind. Well, at least now I know that it works the same way, even if it looks human. But that's not how you were supposed to stop the cup from falling." He filled the cup from a pitcher and looked into Merlin's eyes, imploring. "Now, let's try it again, and this time do it the right way - the way you slowed my fall."

But nothing happened this time around; the cup clinked as it made contact with the floor, water splattering all over Merlin's boots.

"I don't know how," Merlin confessed, fearing the disappointed glare. "That thing before with… gravity, you said? I don't know how I did it - or even if I did it. Nothing like that happened ever before."

"You said you are a dragonlord. You must know how to control the Dragon."

"I don't," Merlin said quickly, with enough conviction to stop Gaius's torrent of words. "Balinor said to rely on instinct until I can rely on knowledge. That's why he told me to find you. So you could guide me."

"Ah." Gaius nodded but his look became troubled. "I see. I'm going to have to look into the matter. Until then, why don't you make yourself useful?"

Merlin nodded and looked around for a place to stash his pack. Gaius directed him to a cupboard before he unceremoniously ushered Merlin away.

"And Merlin? I hardly have to tell you not to go babbling about who you are and what you are."

Merlin gave a pained smile and shook his head before he slipped out the door.

part 3