fic: Dragonscape - part 4

[lasermignon]

Dragonscape - part 4
master list



"And killed the Queen?" Merlin asked before he could put a stopper on his tongue.

Gaius stiffened; his eyes softened with old guilt. "That… wasn’t exactly how it happened. Nimueh… Nimueh thought she could become one with the Dragon. She thought she'd be reborn within the Dragon and so gain eternal life. Let's just say that the official version is a gross oversimplification of the events that took place. It does not matter now."

"But what do you mean, you can't read it?" Merlin made a gesture with his arm that encompassed the table.

"They are all in a language I cannot read," Gaius explained patiently.

"But… I thought these were your books."

"Oh, they are. I wrote them down. They contain all the knowledge I had inherited from my ancestors, or at least the things I was able to recall of that knowledge. Unfortunately, I never became familiar with the language."

"Right. Languages. They are difficult if none of your ancestors knew them already." That was something Balinor had told him.

"My progenitor might have. But I am one of those born to a human mother. There was no control in selecting what I'd inherit from one parent and what from the other as in the human way of procreation only half of the parents' features will be passed on to the offspring, and they is selected from the whole by a random process. Thus, I inherited all of my father's knowledge but none of the skills to interpret it. What little I know now, I had to work out on my own."

"So you have access to all these memories, all this knowledge, but understand not one word from it?" Merlin was conscious that only a short while ago, he would have thought the idea preposterous. But now he was uncomfortably aware of the fact that he would not be able to recall anything of those books he had read, yet he possessed the certainty that the knowledge he had taken from them was stored safely somewhere in his head.

"Quite. Whenever something triggers a memory to be released, I write it down as well as I can, and hope there will be someone who can interpret it."

"Has there been?"

"Yes, several, in fact. Every generation, there comes someone who has the gift. I give them some books and they translate them for me. So that next time the Great Dragon does something unexpected, I might be able to find a solution."

"And Nimueh- She was such a person?"

"She was. There aren’t many. After Nimueh's death… I only found someone very recently. It seems the gift is strongest among those who choose to serve as priestesses." Gaius closed his mouth abruptly. It seemed he had revealed more than he had wanted to. "But that book," he changed the topic suddenly; "I don't know what it contains. She never gave me the translation she worked on."

"Then you don't know it's dangerous. It could be perfectly harmless," Merlin cajoled. This behaviour was entirely unlike him. He could see that Gaius felt extremely uncomfortable, perhaps even afraid of the prospect of letting Merlin handle that book. But for a reason he couldn't name, it felt vitally important that he get his hands on it. It contained the next piece of a puzzle - one that would connect several loose pieces, although how he knew this he couldn't have told. It felt like a dream, in which knowledge comes to one without a definable source but it is so important one has to act on it. Just like when he discovered those man-made structures around the crystals and he just knew that they were abominations, the worst evil one can imagine, and had to go.

With that thought, everything became very clear.

"Gaius," Merlin whispered. He felt the blood drain from his face. He took a step back and withdrew his arms, hiding them behind his back. "I think it's the Dragon that wants me to read that book." But he suddenly no longer wanted to. He should not have read those other books either. Perhaps they were the Dragon's attempt to shape his mind into something it could better use, without Merlin having a say in it.

"Merlin, breathe!" Gaius's voice broke into the panicky torrent of thoughts that whirled in the forefront of his mind, prevented him from keeping a clear head. But he couldn't breathe. Gaius's voice was getting more and more distant, barely audible for the bellow in his ears. And then it all stopped at once. Every thought, every noise, every feeling stopped at once. In their place was hollow void, slowly being filled up with a growing feeling of dread.

Something bad was happening. There was no time for panicking, no time for human considerations. It was a summons of the highest order; he was needed, therefore he must obey. With the last spark of his dwindling consciousness, he felt his knees go out, the back of his head knock against hard floor, and he heard Gaius's voice calling his name.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The sky was dark and the temperature was falling. Everyone looked tired and wet and cold and miserable. Arthur was sniffling and shivering in the remainder of his feast clothes: a thin shift barely long enough to preserve his modesty, to which the remnants of his fancy shirt clung like a spotty dye job, and a sodden pair of boots with the golden embroidery from his trouser hems circling the brown leather like a pair of delicate anklets. But there was no time to dress into something sturdier, nor was he the only one affected by the moisture. In fact, he was one of the more fortunate, for most people were running around naked, working hard to transfer their meagre possessions into the castle.

Arthur ought to have been exempt. As prince, he should have taken command of the knights whose job would be to maintain the order while those of lesser rank - those who were being affected by the falling water - did the work. But after the first wave of panic had been suppressed, the order seemed to require little maintenance. Arthur's time - and that of his knights - could be better spent by helping out. So he stepped into the queue and grabbed the next thing that needed ferrying into the castle from the nearest half-collapsed building. He set himself up as an example, and after seeing the prince work alongside the common folk, his knights could do nothing less.

The water did not stop falling, but when it became clear that they were not in danger of drowning, the repressed panic slowly seeped away. People worked with a dogged tiredness in their limbs, saving what they could from the last remaining houses and accepting the loss of what no longer could be.

The chasm that had remained after the diseased lake disappeared probably served as a sinkhole for most of the water that would have otherwise accumulated on the streets. It showed no sign of filling up. Arthur wondered just how deep it was. He took care to warn off everyone who threaded too close to it. The ground was slippery, and the currents of the flow that tried to find itself a place sometimes tricky. These currents were not at all like the familiar, predictable streams inside the Dragon's core. They were dark with dirt, volatile, and smelt like offal. Even though they were a lot smaller, they frightened Arthur.

Yet it was all for nothing, because the only one who did not heed his warning was Arthur himself. One second he was carrying a heavy chest - it was entirely too unwieldy to one person alone, but his pride did not allow him to let someone else help carry it - and the next moment, a strong current sideswiped him and he lost his footing on the slippery soil and fell.

He must have blacked out for a short while, because when he next opened his eyes, he found himself clinging to hard, slippery rock, face-down, in an almost vertical position. It was so dark he couldn't even see his own hands. The visible landmark was the craggy grey scar of the chasm's opening overhead, from whence the water sluiced into his eyes, over his hair and into his neck and over the back of his thighs in chilly rivulets; its roar echoed within the enclosed space as it crashed down the two sides of the chasm, drowning out Arthur's voice when he tried to call for help.

Probably no one saw him fall; it happened so quickly, from one second to the other. If they had, his knights would be there by now, trying to get him out and yelling encouragement to hold until they could, but no one was there, and probably no one would be. Arthur had to find a way out of this on his own.

Icy fear gripped his throat. His fingers gripped the sharp rock edges under his palm but his feet could not find a purchase to push him upwards. It was only his luck that had prevented him to fall into his death; instead he had fallen onto a slight ledge, which stopped his progress downwards but was too low to reach the edge of the chasm. His hard soles slid over the moist surfaces; with painstaking work during which he tried to move as little as possible, he kicked off his boots and socks, his naked toes better at finding traction. He ought to have done that right in the beginning; he might not have fallen that way. By the time he managed this manoeuvre, he had slipped so many times that the skin was gone from his fingertips. The muscles in his shoulders started shaking from the sole effort of holding him up; the rest of his body was going numb with cold. His shift had ridden up to his underarms, so his belly and thighs were pressed against chill rock. The thin material would not have provided much insulation, but lacking even that, Arthur felt vulnerable, exposed to the elements.

He had to get out of there fast. One hand always gripping the precarious handholds he had found, he searched with the other for one higher up. When he found one, he repeated the process with the toes of his opposing foot. There. It was a crack in the cliff, only large enough to fit a couple of toes inside. It was not enough to safely hold his weight for long, just enough to help him quickly boost himself to the next stabile foothold. If there were such a thing.

He tried to find a foothold at waist-level, but only found smooth rock. There was no way up, unless he wanted to risk trying his luck with a lunge, hoping that he would find one higher up than he could reach at his current position. If he tried, he was more likely to fail and fall into the darkness.

Cold water dripped over his body and stiffened his extremities. He could no longer feel the pain in his fingertips, even the bleeding had stopped as his capillaries closed up from the cold. He could barely feel enough to hold on. His situation looked more desperate with every second that passed without a solution. Arthur pushed down his fear, steeled his muscles against the persistent shivering and tried to concentrate.

But to no avail. Nothing came to him. His mind was as empty as the black void at which he looked out every night though his bedroom's ceiling; the light of faint hope as small and as far removed as the distant the stars populating it.

And then there was a different light; not a metaphoric one, but a real one this time. It was floating next to Arthur's face, gradually emerging from the darkness. It was not very bright, its light only enough to silver the moist edges of rock, but it was more than Arthur had had before. A ray of hope. Help to find the next hold, and then the next, and hopefully, eventually find a way out.

The next thing Arthur saw, though, was not a path to rescue but a large, bulbous body carried on eight thin, segmented appendages, looking at him with a row of glistening black eyes. A spider. Arthur had seen a great many different species in his life, but never one as large and terrifying as this one. Its body was covered with hard bristles and its abdomen was the size of Arthur's head. The pointy end of its body was glistening with a drop of liquid spider silk, which it trailed after itself on the rocks as it clambered all over them with an agility Arthur could never hope to match. It climbed in front of his face, but then it seemed to be scared away and climbed higher. Then it descended back, and forth, and left, and right, and then it turned away in the last moment and the circle repeated all over - but it never came close enough to attack. All the while Arthur was watching it, frozen into immobility by dread, his blood ringing in his ears and his fingertips tingling with readiness.

Soon, its brethren arrived as well. The rock face in front of Arthur's eyes was alive with zigzagging bodies scurrying over the moist rock. Water drops caught on the threads of fine silk they dragged everywhere they crawled. They glistened in the ghostly light of the shining orb still floating next to Arthur over the fathomless depths. For a second, Arthur was distracted by its light. It attracted him, filling him with wonder and curiosity at its nature. But that second was enough.

There was a succession of sharp, scraping noises, like the sound of nails ground against a whetstone. Arthur swivelled around to face forward and for a moment, he saw a vicious black body flying towards his face, clawed limbs spread wide, the curve of its body glistening darkly. From the corners of his eyes he saw other bodies, all jumping in his direction - and froze. He could not go anywhere. Not left, not right, not up into danger. The only way he could deflect was down, by letting go of his handholds and falling into his death. His instinctive wish to live was stronger than his fear of the attack, so in the end, he just closed his lids to protect his eyes, curled into himself as much as he could in his position, and waited.

Waited for thousands of hard-shelled fangs to bite into his skin, injecting deadly venom into his blood that would paralyse his limbs and burn his nerve endings.

He waited for an attack that didn't happen.

By the time he opened his eyes, he was alone, the shining globe his only company in the darkness. The scraping noises came from behind his back, from the deep, and even though he thought he heard them getting further away, the shivery feeling that told him they would return, crawl up over his legs and up his back and bite him where it hurt did not go away; it only strengthened as the real danger ceased and danger projected by his mind took its place.

He did not waste time. He reached up, groping blindly for a handhold - and then stiffened when instead of wet rock, his palm was met with a cold, tacky substance that felt like thick snot over his skin. He shivered with disgust and pried away his fingers with difficulty, grimacing at the sticky mucus that now covered them. His first reaction was to carefully search for a handhold a little further to the side, only to find the entire rock face covered with the thing. Spider silk, he realised, layered thickly over the rock and kept fresh by the moisture. After he got over his disgust, he realised that the glutinous material would be a convenient aid in scaling the nearly smooth wall.

It was still hard work, and a slow process. He could not hold himself with his grip and could find little leverage with his feet to push himself upwards. He had to rely on the adhesive qualities of the fresh spider silk to hold him in place. The key of it was to move as slowly as possible, with most of the body kept pressed against the rock so as to provide a larger surface over which to distribute his weight. If earlier he had wanted more of his body to be covered, he was now wishing he wasn't even wearing the shift because naked skin adhered much better to the rock than the loose fabric. He briefly considered discarding his one remaining clothing but he dared not take his palms off the rock entirely, so in the end, he just pulled the front over his head, feeling the wet cloth bunch up over his nape.

He did not know how long it took to climb up the smooth surface. He lost all sense of time while climbing. There was only the present, the rise and fall of his ribcage as he timed his breathing to the rhythm of his pulls, the harsh drum of his heart as it competed for prominence in his ear with the thundering of water around him, the quivering of tired muscles as he willed them to contract just one more time, and then just once more, and once more.

He was almost surprised when on his next reach upwards, his fingers encountered horizontal surface under the rushing water, the hard edge of the chasm digging into the skin of his underarm. His heart sped up; elation made him light-headed. He forced himself to stop, not rush; a hurried move now could unbalance him just as certainly as it could have on his way up, and it would be foolish to fall right before the end. He gripped the lip with all the strength that remained in his fingers and slid his other palm over his head until it, too, could get a handhold over the rim, and then he started to pull. It was harder to push now, with only part of his body sticking to the rock. There was a moment of sudden vertigo when he pushed his torso above the edge and lost contact with the rock. Then he thought he was going to fall, but suddenly strong fingers gripped his arm, and then someone else gripped the other, and finally, he was lifted over the lip and dragged a little way farther before he was dropped on his back.

His eyes were swimming and he felt faint. He knew they were speaking to him but couldn't discern the words as he fought the darkness that descended over his senses. He might have passed out for a while, because the next thing he remembered later was being carried over someone's back in the most undignified way, with his naked backside in the air and his limbs waving limply with each hurried movement. He did not even have enough strength in them to signal that he was now awake, so he had no choice but to endure the indignity until his body was laid out on top of a hard surface and his eyes met Merlin's worried gaze.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"…wake up! Merlin!" A stiff palm patted his left cheek and then the right, with enough force to make his teeth clack together.

But that was not what ultimately woke him but a voice - his own - calling out Arthur's name and then, "Spiders!" Merlin abhorred spiders. He blinked open his eyes and found himself lying on the floor of the physician's chambers, with Gaius's white hair hanging into his face and a pair of watery-blue eyes pinning him under their intense scrutiny.

"What happened?" Merlin asked and tried to sit up. His head hurt, but only a small part of that hurt came from the throbbing lump at the back of his skull - he must have knocked it into something. A greater part of the pain was internal, something ephemeral he couldn't describe as actual pain but he also couldn't define it any other way. He sniffed and felt something wet under his nose. He wiped at it, embarrassed, but only when he pulled away his finger did he notice that the liquid was not snot but blood. Strange; he hadn't had a nosebleed since he had been a child; since that time Will had accidentally elbowed him in the nose.

"You fainted." Gaius's voice brought him back to the present. He made it sound as a rebuke, but Merlin detected traces of worry underneath the disapproval.

"I did not faint!" Merlin protested.

"Of course you didn't," Gaius agreed with supreme patience. "You merely took a nap. You must have been exhausted." Then he sighed and gave up the pretence of good humour. "I couldn’t wake you," he said, looking Merlin straight in the eyes. "I was afraid-" That Merlin had fared the same fate as Nimueh, Gaius's gaze said but neither of them felt the need to speak it.

Merlin looked away and nodded. He tried to gather his wits, which seemed like an impossible task. Gaius gave him time. He went and began to put the books Merlin had dragged from the bookshelves back to their place. Merlin wanted to protest because they all looked similar; he'd never be able to tell apart the ones he read from the others he didn't yet.

He noticed that Nimueh's book - with the conspicuous red drawing on its lid - was nowhere to be seen.

Which reminded him. "Gaius, I think it was the Dragon."

Gaius halted in the middle of what he was doing but did not look at Merlin directly.

"Why would you think that?" he asked.

Merlin tried to think of the reasons; it was more of a suspicion than true knowledge, but he knew Gaius wouldn’t be satisfied with that explanation alone.

"It was the same sense as before? When I woke up in that corridor." Only that time it had been a lot less painful. He did not feel as though someone had taken his skull and given it a thorough shake until parts of his brain were no longer connected to others. "And I think something happened. The Dragon needed me to help him understand but… It was as though I saw everything interpreted through its senses, and it was a bit chaotic." Well, that was more concise than he had expected; also a bit of an understatement. But just when he thought that, a clear image flashed though his mind, of a blond head surrounded by watery darkness, a face lined with fear and determination. Arthur.

The door to the chamber burst open just as Merlin had been reaching for the handle from the inside. He jumped away just in time to avoid being smashed in the face by it and saw a knight running in with a naked man thrown over his shoulder. The head that was hanging down limply over the knight's back was blond.

Merlin stood rooted to the floor while Gaius was already helping the knight lay the man - Arthur - onto the table that had, until a short while ago - served as Merlin's desk. Merlin was in motion, his palms cupping the back of Arthur's head before it could have smacked against the hard surface, guiding it gently to rest on the tabletop. It was then that he noticed that Arthur's eyes were open; they were looking at him through narrow slits. His pupils were enlarged and his focus vague. He looked as though he was fighting oblivion. If the memories Merlin's disordered mind retained from his "nap" were true, he had every reason to be in this state.

There was a wet bunch of fabric coiled around Arthur's shoulders. Merlin pulled it off, and it turned out to be a battered undershirt.

"Is there a reason you're not wearing underwear?" Merlin quipped, trying to keep his eyes on Arthur's face and mostly succeeding.

Arthur eyed Merlin's sodden but fully intact garments with envy, and Merlin could understand why. As opposed to Camelot, in Ealdor, all clothes were made out of cotton, and while they got a bit wet initially, they would not have dissolved from the water.

"I didn't have any clean ones," he slurred, and gave Merlin a look as though it had been his fault.

"You want me to wash your underthings?" Merlin said, surprised.

"There was a reason I allowed you into my room," Arthur said, looking cheated. "But no. It would have sufficed to deliver the laundry to the washerwomen. And you ought to add your own; they could use a good laundering," he added, and finished the grumble with a sneeze.

"What is this substance?" Gaius pulled away his fingers from Arthur's chest where he had been checking the heartbeat and they came away slimy and sticky. He rubbed his fingers against each other and it gave a disgusting sound. Merlin watched, horrified, as Gaius first took a sniff of his fingers then stuck out his tongue and tasted them. "No smell, tasteless, hm."

Whatever it was, Gaius seemed to have judged it not dangerous, for then he yelled to Merlin to grab a pail of warm water and clean Arthur off. Merlin tried to concentrate on the task rather than on the body under his wash rag, but there were details still he couldn’t escape from noticing, particularly the various injuries Arthur had suffered. The nails on his fingers and toes were broken, some to the quick, others even more, exposing patches of sensitive tissue that excreted pinpoints of blood. The skin of his fingertips, palms and toes were scoured raw, already scabbing over. The flesh over bones close to the surface, like the knees and hipbones was scratched and bruised, and there were tiny scabs on his chest and abdomen where the hairs had been torn out by the root. The hairs that remained resisted getting properly cleaned the most.

"No bandages necessary," Gaius determined. "None of these wounds are deep; they'll benefit more from being exposed to open air."

The one who did not benefit from being exposed to open air was Arthur. Merlin saw goose-bumps and felt the cool of his skin, which was not helped by the lukewarm wash, nor by the rapidly falling air temperature.

"Help Sir Leon put him into bed," Gaius told Merlin, nodding towards the cot that he had lent Merlin for sleeping on his first day here. Sir Leon, who must have been the knight who brought in Arthur and now remained a silent observer as Arthur was treated, had already lifted Arthur from the table. This time around, he refrained from throwing him over his shoulder. Merlin ran ahead and folded back the covers before they put Arthur into the cot and tucked him in tightly. Arthur closed his eyes, shivered, and fell asleep.

"Gaius?" Sir Leon looked at the physician, his eyes questioning and filled with honest worry, Merlin saw, for a man he considered a friend and not for just his prince.

"He's going to live." It wasn't Gaius's words that convinced him, though, but the tiny smile that appeared in the corner of his mouth. Then and only then, Sir Leon was satisfied. He nodded and made his leave, presumably to report to the King about his son's health.

"Despite your nap earlier, you look as though you might to fall over any second," Gaius said dryly. He was right; nothing proved it better than the fact that Merlin needed a beat to realise the words had been addressed to him.

"I should go up to Arthur's room," he muttered and blinked, but when he next opened his eyes, he found himself sitting next to Arthur's hip, with Gaius's hand on his shoulder keeping him upright.

"None of that, my boy," Gaius rebuked him gently. "I need you to keep the prince warm. He suffered a bad chill. Besides, I don't have another cot."

Merlin saw the sense in those words. He shucked off his clothes with some difficulty and slipped under the covers, wrapping his limbs around Arthur's chilled body within the narrow cot.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Two different versions exist of the events which took place within the Crystal Cave during the Great Water Falling. In one version, the evil sorceress, Morgause, using the confusion to further her own purposes, stole into the Dragon's core to exact her revenge on Camelot for the fire which had ravaged her face into an ugly, twisted mask as a child. Heroic Lord Agravaine found out about her evil intentions and rode his boat to single-handedly save Camelot and the Great Dragon from the evil in its core.

In the older, darker, version it was Lord Agravaine who took advantage of the young Pendragon's preoccupation and led his most loyal knights into the Dragon's core, dragging with him an innocent, helpless woman whose beauty and sanity had been stolen by a terrible fire in her childhood, to use her to control the Dragon and realise his own, long-denied ambition of becoming Pendragon of Camelot while Arthur, trapped by the water and left to his own devices, travelled to death's door and back.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Arthur's attempt to extricate himself from the bed was what woke Merlin the next morning. It was too hot under the blankets, but his uncovered feet felt frozen. His left arm that had been tucked beneath Arthur's side had gone numb, and when he tried to move it, an uncomfortable prickling sensation shot up his muscles from the tip of his fingers to the shoulder joint. Despite this, Merlin felt comfortable. His not-quite-yet-awake mind did not like the idea of relinquishing his cosy place, but Arthur seemed to be intent on starting the day already.

Merlin grunted, an attempt at communicating his disapproval, but didn't open his eyes. Arthur stopped moving for a couple of heartbeats, but just when Merlin thought he'd stay put, he pulled his thigh out. It was trapped between Merlin's legs. They were sweaty from being forced to huddle close within the confines of the cot; their skin stuck together. When Arthur moved, Merlin's body, which was perched precariously on the very edge of the cot, was dragged along, and Merlin soon found himself having rolled on top of Arthur. He did not mind. Arthur, however, appeared to, because he moaned, as though in pain. By then Merlin had woken up enough to guess the source of Arthur's distress, for he was lying on it: a rigid line of heat pressed into Merlin's soft belly.

"Sorry," Arthur breathed, his fingers on Merlin's hipbone, pushing him backwards. It resulted in Merlin almost falling over the cot's hard edge but a strong arm wrapping around his waist saved him from the indignity of it happening. This, however, brought their lower bodies together once again.

"What for?" Merlin asked, feigning ignorance. He had only once been this close to an erection, but Will's reaction to Merlin catching him with one had been the opposite of Arthur's. Instead of being awkward about it, he tried to goad Merlin into a contest of measurements, which would not have worked anyway. Merlin found he preferred Arthur's quiet embarrassment over the crass bragging. Especially because he had never felt about Will this way; his heart had never skipped a beat as when he felt Arthur's shallow breaths over the sensitive skin of his throat, his blood had never before spiked at the thought of the reaction being involuntary, uncontrollable, and that Merlin's proximity probably did not help the situation at all.

He wanted to wrap himself around that fiery hardness, explore its velvety smoothness and rub his most sensitive nerve endings against every change in its texture. For a second, ensnared by the heat of passion in Arthur's eyes, first tempered with caution and then, when Merlin did not pull away, blooming into sheer delight. He feared he would not be able to control himself either. Only the fear of discovery, imagining Arthur being disgusted by his differences, convinced his traitorous body to obey sense.

Before Merlin could get very far, arms encircled his waist and shoulder and drew him back. Arthur's lips touched against his, soft and undemanding, only for the space of a few heartbeats; it was not nearly enough. When he withdrew, Merlin found himself following. Arthur cleared his throat, a blush darkening his cheeks, and though he tried to force his lips into a strict line, he couldn't quite stop smiling. The world might as well have stopped existing outside that smile.

"As much as I'd like to," Arthur said, "this is not the time for this - and certainly not the right place." As though answering Arthur's words, the cot creaked and the sound of running footsteps intruded into their little bubble of intimacy.

Arthur wrenched himself out of Merlin's hold as though something had bitten his backside. He tumbled down the other side of the bed and almost made Merlin fall, too.

"Sorry," Arthur apologised sheepishly. "Something must have happened."

As revenge, Merlin took the blanket, so that Arthur had to contend himself with wrapping a sheet around his torso right before the door burst open, admitting a haggard-looking knight. It was the same knight who had carried Arthur to Gaius's chamber, Sir Leon.

"Sire!" Sir Leon's voice was too big for the size of the sick-room but he had probably expected to wake Arthur from a deep restorative sleep, not to find him already awake - let alone awake and naked in the company of another man.

"Arthur! You must come immediately." He was visibly flustered, eyes fixed on a dark patch on the wall over Arthur's bare shoulder which Merlin thought might be mould or evidence of the less savoury side of Gaius's profession.

"What happened?" Arthur asked, and suddenly all traces of sweet, youthful insecurity which Merlin had been privileged enough to glimpse disappeared from his face, replaced by the well-worn mask of competence and the authority of his station.

Sir Leon had recovered from his earlier embarrassment for now he looked straight into Arthur's eyes and then drew a bundle of clothes from underneath his cape and handed it to Arthur.

"I'll tell you while you put these on."

Arthur shrugged; he dropped the sheet and started dressing. And why not? Leon had already seen him bare, indeed anyone in Camelot who had cared to look could have caught a glimpse of the prince's naked backside paraded around the courtyard. That thought evoked a strange, mixed feeling of protectiveness and pride in Merlin, which seemed out of place. They might have slept together once and some things might have happened after they had woken, had they not been interrupted, but that did not mean Merlin had any sort of claim on Arthur.

"Well?" Arthur asked, his voice muffled by cloth because the shift he had been given was too large for him and his arms and head got twisted up in the material. Merlin huffed in amusement and stepped close and freed him from the tangle, earning himself a smile from Arthur. From the corner of his eye, he saw Sir Leon shift from one foot to the other. Merlin could tell he was wary of talking in the presence of an outsider.

He was going to excuse himself; Arthur must have seen his intent on his face because then he grabbed onto Merlin's arm and said to Sir Leon, "He's safe; you can talk in front of him." But Sir Leon was the cautious type; mere words weren't going to be enough to convince him.

"It's all right," Merlin told Arthur. He did not want a confrontation. "Gaius probably took my clothes to dry, out by the fire." That said, he did not wait for an answer, just stepped outside the small sick room.

Merlin found his discarded garments dry and folded on top of a bench that stood next to the long table. He vaguely remembered Gaius picking up after him while he had been already curled around Arthur's chilled body. The fireplace was lit and provided a very welcome warmth. Gaius's chambers and the kitchens were the only places in Camelot where Merlin had seen a fireplace. He wondered how Camelot's people dealt with the cold in times like this. But then perhaps ordinarily they did not have to.

The door to the sick room did not fit any better in its frame than the one to the main chambers. Merlin tried not to listen, but even so he had overheard most of what was said inside the little room.

It turned out that a majority of the knights had gone missing during the time when everyone who had worked hard salvaging people's possessions had slept. They had not turned up for the assembly, and no one could find them when they searched the castle.

"Where could they have gone?" Arthur's voice asked.

"You don't think the Dragon…?" That was Sir Leon.

"No." Arthur sounded very sure of that. "If it was just one or two-but eighteen people don't just disappear at once. And you say Uncle is one of them?"

"Yes. Is that significant?"

There was a sigh. "It might have to do something with the Dragon after all."

Merlin did not understand Arthur's implication but Sir Leon did not seem to have the same problem. It seemed a frequently discussed topic between them - one on which they agreed to disagree, for the argument had stopped before it really began and Leon brought up a new one instead. Even though no names were mentioned initially, it did not take Merlin long to figure out it was about him.

"Are you sure about him, Arthur? He's awfully new. You don't know anything about him. And you're already letting him sleep in your room - and when you're not sleeping in your room, you're still sleeping with him. I have never seen you take to someone this quickly."

There was a pause and Merlin imagined Arthur shrugging at that. "It's Merlin," was the only answer.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Leon asked the same thing Merlin was wondering about.

"I don't know. I have a good feeling about him." This could have been said flippantly, but instead it was said in a tone that warmed Merlin's insides.

"Like you had a good feeling about the Dragon?" Sir Leon asked, and that tone Merlin could not interpret in any other way than gently rebuking. Merlin would have felt insulted, had the mention of the Dragon not sent his thoughts into a flurry of alarm.

"I… actually, yes," Arthur said; he sounded surprised. "Exactly like that. I can't explain." There was a pregnant pause. "And for your information, I still have the feeling that the things that've been happening are not the Dragon's fault."

Merlin finally managed to uproot his feet and fled the physician's chambers in search for Gaius. He had to tell him Arthur suspected something. Merlin wished he could just tell Arthur the truth about himself, but the images of horror that both Balinor and Gaius had painted while cautioning him against that very thing were still vivid in his mind.

The missing knights were soon found; they were seen emerging from the Dragon's core with Lord Agravaine in the lead. Or rather, Lord Agravaine was the one who ran in front of the sorry bunch as they fled the castle's deepest corridors as though they were being chased by a fearsome beast. According to their descriptions, they were.

Merlin was standing at the edge of the crowd with Gaius, observing from afar.

Uther soon arrived at the site of the commotion, for they could not convince the fellows to return to the castle; instead they stood in the courtyard, shivering. The water had mostly stopped falling from the sky, apart from the stray drop, but it was still cold and dreary outside. The golden glow had not returned, and the temperature dropped further until it was so cold that when people spoke, their breath emerged from their lips and noses in great white plumes. It was a terrifying sight. Merlin had put on both of his spare shirts and he was still cold.

The King was in an abysmal mood already, and the fact that he was forced to stand outside in the cold air only exacerbated it further. He barked questions at Agravaine as though he were a mere peasant and not the late Queen's brother. Why had he thought it a good idea to go behind his and the Pendragon's back, confronting the Dragon, how had he hoped to achieve his goals when he had not personally fought one battle against the Dragon? But instead of answering the questions put to him, Agravaine tried to deflect attention from his own culpability by yelling and causing panic among the people who had gathered to the incident.

"Sire, all the protections that kept the Dragon in chains were gone!" His words had the desired effect for the people started muttering, yells of alarm were heard in the rising hubbub.

"Do you believe me now?" Merlin turned to Gaius, whispering urgently.

Gaius gave him a baleful glance and then turned back to watch the unfolding events. But Merlin knew it was code for 'later', knew that this time Gaius was not dismissing him the way he had the first time around.

"What do you mean, gone?" Uther asked, his voice just loud enough to rise above the noise.

Agravaine, looked in his element now. His face shone with all the attention directed at him and Merlin couldn't escape the notion that he was enjoying the situation. Agravaine had a flair for drama and was not above fuelling the crowd's emotions to get what he wanted.

"They were just gone; the Dragon's teeth were bared. Any sorcerer could now influence the Dragon, and we couldn't do anything. Just as I couldn't do anything except watch my men die in front of my eyes." Agravaine knew Uther too well; knew what would immediately get his attention.

"A sorcerer, you say? Do you have any evidence for your accusation?"

Merlin wanted to ask just when had Agravaine's men had ceased to be Arthur's, but it was not his place. His eyes were searching for the blond head among the crowd. He spotted Arthur with a thunderous expression on his face. He did not seem to be as taken in by his uncle's fear-mongering as the King and his subjects. From the way he glared at Agravaine, Merlin could tell Arthur liked him even less than Merlin did, probably because his dislike was based on years of witnessing his character rather than just a strong negative first impression, like Merlin's.

"Why else, do you think, Lord, I return thwarted?" Agravaine paused until the crowd went entirely silent. Everyone was waiting with bated breath to hear when the condemning words would fall and to learn whom they would condemn.

"Speak!" Uther barked, tension vibrating in his clenched jaw.

"There was indeed a sorceress waiting for us when we arrived in the Crystal Cave," Agravaine began and murmurs of "Nimueh" rose from the crowd. But the name Agravaine named was a different one. "Morgause."

"No!" the Lady Morgana's voice rang clear above people's heads. When Merlin looked, he spotted her standing on the steps to the castle, her knuckles gone white as her hands gripped the rails in front of her.

"What happened?" Uther asked, his tone icy with accusation.

"She attacked us," Agravaine said, donning a brave face. "She enchanted one of the Dragon's fangs. It broke into smaller pieces and from those pieces, warriors emerged, knights made of crystal. Morgause ordered them to attack my knights."

This was the first time Merlin witnessed her iron composure crumple. "No," Morgana denied. "She couldn't have! You lie!"

"But I do not, my lady," Agravaine turned to her with a honeyed voice and a slick, satisfied smirk on his lips.

"She must have been the cause, then, behind everything that's happened lately," Uther pondered darkly. "Wherever she is, find her!" He looked directly at Arthur, disgust clear on his face, although with whom he was disgusted, Morgause or Agravaine, Merlin couldn't tell.

Uther moved up the stairs in quick, sharp steps; Morgana stared after him with an expression of utter fear. Her mouth opened and closed silently around the word 'no' several times before she steeled herself and followed him inside. Merlin was reeling, directionless, when Gaius grabbed his arm and motioned for him to follow as he returned to the physician's chambers.

The fire had almost died while they were gone. Merlin stepped to the fireplace and placed on it a couple of logs from the pile heaped next to it. They burned with a strange, popping noise. When Merlin asked, Gaius told him the wood was hollow inside and filled with small bubbles containing a stinking gas that burned fast, at a high temperature.

"Do you believe what he's saying?" Merlin demanded of Gaius when he had calmed down enough to regain his voice, although it was still shaky with emotion.

Gaius sighed. "He might have been telling some truths," he said cautiously.

Merlin opened his mouth but Gaius raised his hand to silence his objections. "I'm not saying he's telling the whole truth." Merlin was glad that Gaius was not committed to pretending that Arthur's uncle was in any remote way an honourable man. "No doubt his report contains a fair amount of omission and prevarication and he is using what happened to his own benefit, but Agravaine has always been a resourceful man. He would not allege something he couldn't support with proof."

"But how could he, if he's lying?" Merlin snapped.

"He isn't lying about the disappearance of the bindings, is he?" Gaius rebuked gently. Merlin looked down at the fire, ashamed, that he had almost forgotten about his own blame in the matter. "And I don't think he's lying about the presence of the crystal knights; there have been accounts of similar happenings before." Gaius lowered his voice. "And, while he is probably not telling the truth about how she ended up there, I don't think he's lying about Morgause either."

Merlin's eyes snapped up at Gaius's face.

"You know something," Merlin said. It wasn't a question for Gaius's expression betrayed him. "You knew that Morgause was a sorceress?"

Gaius's shoulders dropped and he nodded once.

"You remember I told you I only recently found someone to translate some books for me," he said slowly, and at first Merlin did not understand how this answered his question. Then suddenly it was obvious.

"Morgause?" Merlin had no idea how he had not realised that those things were related. "But Gwen said all sorcerers are mad and power-hungry. Gwen seems a nice girl. Not someone who'd spread unfounded accusations."

"Merlin, you must understand something." Merlin nodded, silently urging Gaius to continue. "These so-called sorcerers… they are just like any one of us in Camelot."

"What do you mean?" Merlin asked.

Gaius sighed and sat down on the bench opposite to Merlin.

"Sorcerers only started emerging after we lost Balinor, so I'm pretty certain it has to do with not having a Dragonlord. Perhaps the Dragon wakes them up because it needs them. Perhaps the presence of a Dragonlord draws enough of the Dragon's influence to himself for it not to happen. Who knows?"

"But something happened to them, right, to make them go mad?" Merlin asked, his voice getting faint. "The Dragon calls to them, is that it?" That was bad news, for if that was true, Merlin was only a small, coincidental step removed from falling victim to the madness.

"Yes and no." Gaius paused and Merlin felt as though his heart was going to jump out of his ribcage. "You know the history of Camelot. I expect your Ealdor's history is the same. Why humans were brought to the Dragons?"

"Because the aboriginals were slowly dying due to weakness and disease. Humans were strong. They wanted to breed with us. But they did not succeed."

"Merlin, you are not human."

"Right."

"But neither am I. Nor is anyone in Camelot. It is true that the aboriginals did not succeed in creating a stronger version of themselves out of the human stock, but that doesn't mean their experiments did not produce any viable results. It only means we were more human than they'd expected."

"These so-called sorcerers are the unfortunates who develop some of their hybrid origin's more evolved mental abilities later in life, without developing the necessary skill to control them. Some of them are in some sort of subconscious contact with the Dragon; their thoughts intrude on the Dragon's consciousness and create interference, and they make things happen without meaning to do so. Others can listen in to other people's thoughts but cannot shut down the constant flow of thoughts so they go mad from it."

"Sorcery is not magic or anything unnatural. It's just a name that the common folk use to explain a phenomenon whose causes they do not understand."

"If that's true," Merlin said, shaken by the enormity of the revelation, "then all of us are doomed."

Gaius chuckled. "I daresay the situation is not as dire as you're imagining it."

Merlin shook his head. "I do not understand how you can even trust me not to succumb to this affliction." He chortled as he remembered Arthur's words. "The King already thinks I have some sort of mental deficiency. Hopefully, he won't come to the right conclusion."

Gaius put a calming hand on Merlin's shoulder.

"You aren’t going to succumb," he said and Merlin wanted nothing more than to believe him.

"How can you be so sure?" he asked.

"Because Balinor created you, not the random occurrences which characterise human procreation. The first hybrids made were not defective in any way other than aesthetics."

"Aesthetics?"

"They were too human for their makers' taste."

"Oh." Merlin swallowed. "Balinor never told me I'm ugly," he said weakly, trying to ease the tension by joking. It was not a very good joke, but Gaius smiled at him nonetheless.

"Which is why I'm giving you this." Gaius pulled a book from the crook of his shoulder, which Merlin had not noticed he had been keeping there until now, so occupied he was with his own ill prospects and Agravaine's treachery. It was a book whose cover was decorated with a red stylised eye: Nimueh's book.

"You're giving me Nimueh's book." Merlin couldn't have wished for a better proof that Gaius was telling him the truth and not just placating his fears in the face of an unpreventable eventuality. The relief broke out of him in a sudden swell of gratitude. He swooped down and enveloped Gaius within an unexpected embrace. "Thank you! Thank you so much!"

Gaius bore Merlin's enthusiasm with enviable equanimity. Then he stepped out of Merlin's chokehold and sent him to his usual table to do something useful with himself.

"But what about Agravaine?" Merlin asked.

"Trust Arthur to know how to handle the situation," Gaius told him. "He may be young, but he's been around his uncle all his life; he has no illusions about his trustworthiness. You should only concern yourself with the problem you have the ability to solve: the Dragon."

"All right."

He sat by the table and put the book in front of him. For a long time, he just stared at the book, at the ominous symbol, and couldn't bring himself to open it. He was curious - beset with an obsessive yearning - to know what was inside, but the fear of madness stayed his hand several times when he went to unfold the cover. He was aware of Gaius covertly observing him, as he went to look up references to the crystal warriors who had - according to Agravaine's account at least - sprung up out of the pieces of a shattered Dragon tooth. Merlin only hoped that when he found it, it would include a way to get rid of them.

"There," Gaius said.

Merlin stood from his table, glad for an excuse to postpone opening that book, and stepped to Gaius. "Did you find it?"

"Hm," Gaius agreed.

"What does it say?" Gaius looked up, his eyebrows indicated he found Merlin's sudden enthusiasm strange but thankfully, he didn't ask.

"Nothing good, I fear." Merlin watched as Gaius finished reading the passage until he finally looked up. "This account speaks of a sorceress by the name of Medhir, who woke up the crystal knights. They bent to her will and rampaged through Camelot, leaving death and destruction in their wake. Only the sorceress's death stopped them. The knights fell apart into little crystal pieces which were gathered together and dropped into the Lake of the Dead to prevent them from rising again."

"You think the King means to kill the Lady Morgana's sister?" Merlin asked, appalled.

"He's certainly going to try," Gaius said with his usual dispassionate pragmatism which would have seemed uncaring if not for the barely noticeable downward twist of his mouth. "Which is why you ought not be wasting your time asking useless questions, and go find a better solution," he added tartly.

"Right." Merlin jumped, feeling duly reprimanded, and then ambled back to his table and the neglected book, sat down and lifted the cover with a decisive flick of his wrist and a deep, fortifying breath, which he promptly exhaled in surprise.

"Gaius!" Merlin heard the heavy steps coming closer to him but he couldn’t take his eyes from his discovery. This book was not like all the others. It did start out just like every other volume that Gaius had taken down but now it was marked by Nimueh's distinctive hand. The pages were full of colour, with drawings and side notes. There were loose papers of several different makes hidden among the pages, all of them covered with writing and larger, more detailed illustrations. But the writing was not one Merlin could read.

"Different from the writing you use in Ealdor, is it?" Gaius asked when Merlin told him this.

Merlin stabbed his forefinger at the original writing. "This one's different as well, but I still can read it."

"And you cannot think of a reason why?" Gaius asked, sarcasm rife in his voice, making Merlin feel as though he was overlooking something fairly obvious. "Balinor spoke that language. But this one," he pointed at Nimueh's rounded letters, "he does not. Balinor left us generations ago. Languages change over time. Perhaps you can still read it. Try if you cannot discover similarities." Merlin could, but it took too much time to decipher every single word, so in the end, in the name of efficacy, Gaius read a few lines to Merlin aloud. It quickly became apparent that they were not translations.

"What are they then?" Merlin asked for he could not make heads or tails of them. They reminded him most of nursery rhymes. Gaius looked just as puzzled. Then he tilted his head and an appalled expression came onto his face.

"What is it?" Merlin urged.

"I'm afraid these might have been intended as incantations," Gaius intoned, sounding shocked.

"Incantations as in… spells?"

Gaius shook his head, looking disappointed.

"None of this makes any sense, Merlin. She must have made them up, believing they'd work. It seems Nimueh had been mad for quite some time before anyone suspected."

Merlin didn't like the sound of that. As he looked at the beautifully coloured pages, he couldn't believe they were merely the result of a troubled mind's fever dreams. And as he looked, slowly, very slowly, they began to make sense.

"No, wait. This drawing, I have seen it before." Merlin didn't know what it was but as he continued staring at the complicated tangle of lines, he began to see a more detailed, three-dimensional version of an unknown object superimposed on the drawing. He still could not tell what it represented or what purpose it served but he knew it was not just a figment of Nimueh's delirious imagination or else Merlin was suffering from the same sickness. And Gaius had assured him he was not.

"Merlin, surely you're not proposing to harness the Dragon with spells!" Gaius cried, appalled.

"No, no!" Merlin hurried to appease him. "I'm suggesting that she might have thought they were spells - or she might have not - but perhaps they are something else?"

"Such as?"

"Mnemonics?" Merlin suggested.

"Well." Gaius's brows rose in surprise and his troubled look suddenly cleared. "That actually makes sense," he pronounced, sounding cheerful, and then patted Merlin's back. "Well done, Merlin, I didn't think of that possibility."

Merlin continued paging through the book until the dinner bell, at first with Gaius's help, but gradually, the unknown language's words became more familiar to him, the way some letters consistently replaced others, how the order of verbs and nouns changed, oft-repeated context became recognisable, and soon he did not need Gaius's help to understand their meaning. And with the help of the side notes, the words of the original text which he could read and learn but not consciously remember, soon coalesced into concepts in his mind. Concepts he couldn’t explain with words, but ones he could grasp and was able to recall with the help of the mnemonics Nimueh had made up.

They were concepts that he had thought to only exist in fairy tales, like conjuring food and matter out of thin air, shaping the Dragon's insides into comfortable living spaces, healing deadly diseases and injuries. No wonder they seemed like magic to the common people.

Merlin tried to say one of the mnemonics out loud; he had to repeat it several times until the pronunciation felt right, but when it did, it created an unexpected regurgitation of information in his mind; he heard the Dragon's song in his head and felt energy building up over which he had no control and panicked. In the last moment, he managed to stop it and then he spent ten minutes calming his heartbeat and trying to look relaxed so that Gaius would not notice.

Nimueh had been overly fascinated with the idea of prolonging one's youth indefinitely. This was not, as far as Merlin could tell, a concept the book originally dealt with; the Dragon's original inhabitants had no need for it. Nimueh hoped to devise a way by focussing on healing techniques, researching and obsessively making up incantations that had nothing to do with reality, probably hoping one of these would give her what she wanted. By then, Merlin thought, she must have gone mad.

His stomach forced him to take a break before he could finish the book. After a meal spent within his head while surrounded by now-familiar company and unintentionally ignoring all attempts at conversation that had been directed at him, he returned to his previous efforts and by the time he had trouble keeping his eyes open, he found, to his surprise, that he had reached the last page of the book.

He slept alone in Arthur's bed; not because it was too bright for him to sleep in the sick room, as the sky was still an unchanging grey, but because he hoped to find Arthur there. He only found rumpled sheets which still retained some warmth. It was very cold that night. Merlin pulled the covers over his ears and was lulled into sleep by the comforting scent that surrounded him. When he woke up, he stumbled into a large pile of dirty clothes. He remembered Arthur's words and decided to repay Arthur for his generosity, and picked up the long-neglected laundry and took it down to the laundress. At first she was surprised, but then she realised whose clothes they were and she praised Merlin's bravery for daring enter the cursed room, thinking him a castle servant; Merlin did not disabuse her of it.

Merlin spent the beginning of his waking hours in growing anticipation. Gaius sent him to deliver cough medicine to those affected by the unreasonably cold weather - and they were many. The already cramped spaces which had been designated as sleeping quarters for those dispossessed by the water falling were not heated, people huddled close together for warmth and illness was spreading quickly. Merlin was glad to be able to do something for he was filled with restlessness, waiting for something to happen. On the other hand, his mind was not on his task and he often found himself having forgotten where was headed, just walking around in a daze, listening to the unintelligible murmur of the Dragon's voice in the back of his mind.

Merlin sat down to his midday-meal next to Gwen, who was having her dinner. She confided in him that she had spent the day with the Lady Morgana, needing to console her one time and placate her at others. The Lady seemed to be filled with an inexorable loathing towards her uncle, cursing him to wither prematurely, and preoccupied with getting her sister back, insisting she was blameless, a mere victim in her uncle's ploy. It should have been a great honour that the Lady had called for her, claiming Gwen was the only one she still trusted, but it was an uncomfortable task as well, as Gwen did not feel entitled to publicly judge someone like Lord Agravaine by agreeing to insinuations - not that she didn't have her own opinion, she told Merlin, but she preferred to keep it to herself. Merlin was about to point out that he did not qualify as an extension of Gwen even on a good day, as he felt she was on the verge of spilling everything that was on her mind, but timely rescue came in the form of Lancelot, Percival, Gwaine and Elyan, who sat down around them to break their fast.

"What have you been doing, then?" Gwen asked, a frown that was half-disapproving drawing her brows together - the other half was amused.

"Searching for the Lady Morgause," Percival, normally the most reticent of the group, said, his words muffled by a yawn. The amusement melted off Gwen's face at once.

"The knights were busy blockading the lower corridors so the princess asked us for our help," Gwaine added, cheerfully ignoring the heaviness in the air. "We searched everywhere in the castle but she was nowhere to be found."

"Everywhere?" Gwen inquired cautiously.

"Everywhere she could have been found if the allegations about her were false," Lancelot answered darkly. And that was the last they spoke of that.

Merlin continued with his errands for Gaius. He felt full and not at all in the mood for running around, so when Gwen found him, he was leaning against a private section of the castle wall, eyes closed and enjoying the faint warmth on his face where the pervasive gloom had faded and a little patch of the sky slowly turned golden. She grabbed his arm with both hands, making Merlin stumble, and said he needed to come. Merlin asked her why, but she was so filled with anxiety, she could not explain herself clearly. So Merlin came. She led him towards the throne room where Merlin heard Uther's ringing voice spitting vitriol and condemnations.

They hid behind a wide-bottomed pillar; there were other such pillars and other people gathering among the shadows they provided but Merlin only saw Arthur standing rigid and flushed in the focus of the King's fury while the Lady Morgana floated around at the back of the throne room pale-faced, like a startled ghost, her presence seemingly ignored by everyone else.

"The sorceress needs to be put down." Uther said.

"No!" The yell came from Morgana who rushed forward and grabbed Uther's forearm in a gesture of despair. "Surely there's some other way of destroying the warriors."

Uther turned on her. His features were frozen into a mask of callous determination.

"Even if there were, Camelot's law states that everyone found guilty of sorcery must be put to death." At the piteous keening emerging from Morgana's throat, the King's expression suddenly thawed. He gently patted one of Morgana's clutching fists in an ineffectual attempt at comforting her. "I am sorry," he said and for once he truly looked the part. "I know Morgause is your sister, but sorcery is dangerous. I cannot take personal interest into account when Camelot's survival is at stake."

He allowed the Lady Morgana to be taken off his arm by Gaius, whose presence Merlin only now noticed. She was led to one of the high chairs flanking the throne and made to sit, Gaius whispering calming words to her. He looked troubled and, Merlin noticed with a faint feeling of nausea, guilty.

"Arthur!" Merlin turned his attention back to the King who was now striding towards a group of men with Arthur standing in their midst. Among them were Lancelot, Percival, Elyan and Gwaine. "Get your new men ready to enter the cave and dispose of these knights." Merlin thought he also wanted to add an order regarding the alleged sorceress, but then he looked into Morgana's direction and left it unspoken. "You must hurry. If this continues, soon people are going to start dying from the cold. Ask Gaius for any help he can provide," he finished curtly and only waited until Arthur gave a nod to signal his understanding before he turned on his heel and marched away.

"Come," Gwen whispered and Merlin had no choice but to follow her hurried steps towards where the crowd of men was gathering closer around Arthur.

It turned out half of the men were no knights but newly recruited from the young townspeople who wished for acclaim and the fresh influx that came to Camelot from the countryside after the Blight who had not yet found a steady place for themselves and wanted to try their luck. They were recognisable because their faces shone with enthusiasm and eagerness while those who had already faced the enemy looked determined but underneath that, afraid. They were the ones already outfitted in armour - the metal still shining but worn and dented in places, evidence of the earlier battle. There was a large pile of spare pieces of mail that had been gathered together to equip the volunteers.

"Remember, you won't need full protection," Arthur was saying when Merlin got close enough to be able to hear his voice. "We're not going up against the Dragon, but against warriors who are trying to kill us. You'll need protection against physical attacks. And make sure you're still able to move quickly."

part 5