Archive of Our Own

The images come faster and faster.

Arthur dead.

Uther screaming his rage at the world. His curses flying like arrows. Piercing the guilty and the innocent alike. The streets of Camelot flowing with blood.

Arthur dead.

The fires. Such terrible fires. And Merlin. His hands black and dirty. His eyes lifeless.

And Arthur dead.

Somewhere else, away from the nightmare land, a choice is made, a new path taken, a decision set in stone and the dream shifts.

It changes.

It is not Arthur dead now. He stands tall and proud and as cold as a statue.

Merlin lies dead on stone. An altar she sees a moment later. A strange sort of sacrifice and yet not, for perhaps he alone is innocent. And for a moment she thinks perhaps this is what was meant to be.

But then she sees Arthur again – an unforgiving statue and around him the fires burn and the blood flows and Camelot crumbles. Falls around him. Destroyed and destroying.

She calls out in the dream and he turns, still lifeless, and in Arthur’s face she sees Uther’s eyes and Uther’s hatred. It terrifies her, scaring her into wakefulness.

Morgana struggled from her sheets, gasping against the dream and against the cold of the morning. She felt trapped and lost for a moment, unsure of where she was.

It was only Gwen’s warm, reassuring hands that settled her as they released her from the tangle of her bedding.

“Shhh…” Gwen murmured, one hand brushing the sweat from her brow. “It was just a nightmare.”

But a true one, Morgana thought, the memories of the day before rushing back to her. The image of Uther, Arthur in his arms, enough to bring the tears that refused to fall back to her eyes.

But Gwen’s face was soft and happy, tired but relieved, warm despite the cold grey light that seeped into the room.

“Arthur is going to get better,” Gwen told her and Morgana believed her instantly. Gwen would never offer false hope.

“How?” she asked.

“Merlin found a cure, this morning.” Gwen still sounded happy but Morgana saw a shadow of concern and doubt cross her maid’s eyes as she mentioned Merlin, and the new dream and the new fear came rushing back to her.

The memories crowded in, pushing her farther away from Gwen’s happiness, her own relief falling away.

* * * * *

Fire blossomed from Nimue’s fingers. For a moment the stones stood brightly etched in the darkness, ominous sentinels, and then the fire hit Merlin in the chest, burning through him and flinging him to the ground and the image was lost.

He could not see. Could not breathe. Could not fear. Could not hope.

For a moment he thought this was death and then the world began to return. It was sound he heard first. It always was. The sound of magic.

A deafening roar of power and hunger, wild and dark and without mercy, screaming inside him. Taking control - granting him strength and fear in equal parts.

Somewhere above him and a long way away he heard Nimue speak.

“Pity, together we could have ruled the world.”

He pulled himself to his knees, finding air in his lungs again, and light creeping grey around the corners of his eyes. Then he forced himself to his feet. Nimue had already turned away, returning to Gaius.

Above him he could feel the skies twisting, centring on him, and coming to his wordless summons.

“You should not have killed my friend,” he told her, his voice almost crackling with the power.

She turned sharply, surprise in her eyes and the magic lunged inside him, like a taut string breaking, snapping through his hands and lashing against Nimue with a sharp clear note, pinning her to her altar.

Merlin moved quickly towards her, the power of the heavens still clinging to his fingertips, knowing instinctively that with one touch, he could push all that force, all that white fire, through her.

As he reached her his fingers grazed her neck and she shuddered beneath them.

He was ready. Ready to do it – ready to rid himself of another enemy. Another threat to Arthur.

“Do it Merlin,” she suddenly hissed at him, “Kill me – my life for Arthur’s. Save yourself.”

And he paused.

He could feel warmth along his side, remnants perhaps of Nimue’s fire. And he could hear Gaius’s laboured breathing. Both sharp and clear and distinctly drawn, unexpected in the madness of the moment before. And he could smell smoke, smoke and dust and the kitchens of Camelot – the smell of sweet pastries.

Nimue was gone and Edwin was before him. Broken and tempting and burning with hatred and passion and talent.

And the axe turned and sank, sickeningly into flesh still alive and yet already dead and he saw Edwin fall…

Merlin was back in the ruins and Nimue smiled and shuddered beneath his hands and his magic, both longed for her life.

Horror settled upon him and the magic froze within him. Nimue breathed deeply for the first time since he had touched her. His hand still rested on her throat, but the power was gone – the rage was gone.

Beside them he felt Gaius move, trying to touch him, his fingers barely stirring the material of Merlin’s trousers. Releasing Nimue he bent to the old man. Gaius’ face was creased with pain and concern.

Gently, instinctively, Merlin’s hand brushed his eyes pressing him into a painless sleep and he sank back against the altar.

He could feel Nimue watching him.

“Do it, Merlin. Someone’s life must be taken – why not mine?” She asked.

“I’m not a killer,” he murmured, too soft for her to hear. There had to be another path.

He had a moment’s fleeting image of an old woman, deep in mourning for her slaughtered son being torn away in a fury of wind and smoke. The first witch he had ever seen.

So soon after the first execution.

He had found that spell once, towards the back of Gaius’ book. It had seemed devilishly complicated then but he remembered it still.

He leaned forward and wrapped his arms around Gaius, settling him firmly, whispering the unfamiliar words – feeling the spell’s leash finally settling around his power once again, commanding it, controlling it.

The first wisps of smoke began to gather around them, turning.

“Merlin?”

The noise struck him like the flat edge of a sword, deafening and terrible, ripping through his body and mind as the wind gathered and he was plunged into darkness.

Only Nimue’s last words following him into the howling magic.

“Arthur will die.”

For a long, deathly moment he thought he had lost them both, for they seemed trapped in the storm, but then....

Merlin’s mind shuddered as he emerged from the blackness. He fell roughly, hitting something hard, Gaius suddenly heavy in his arms. He still felt lost for a moment, his eyes unseeing but suddenly and painfully they cleared, leaving him feeling nauseous and hurt.

He had not been able to take them far, not as far as he would have wished. The water of the lake lapped perilously close to Gaius’ feet, and he pulled him away from its deathly chill and clinging fog.

Gaius did not stir, but then he shouldn’t, not for hours yet.

Merlin sank to the ground beside him, his head in his hands as rain began to patter down around them, soaking him and chilling him through until he didn’t know whether it was the pain or the cold that was making his whole body shake.

He had to return, he knew that.

And he would die. The way he felt now it was almost a relief.

Almost.

The grief he had been holding back could no longer wait. There was no magic left in him now. No destiny. He was just young and cold and lost and scared and about to die.

His breathing was harsh and deep and desperate, adding to his pain.

But Arthur would live and somehow the future would be better. That was enough.

He pressed a kiss to Gaius’ sodden forehead.

“I’m sorry,” he told him and then pulled himself to his feet.

Merlin allowed the magic to gather around him slowly, barely aware of the words as he spoke them, they were drowned by the sound of the darkness, the feel of the wind and the smell of the smoke.

The pain was even worse this time as he re-emerged into the ruins. He bent double with it for a second, and then the force of it pushed him backwards against hard rock. It was one of the standing stones.

He slid to the ground, his arms gathered around himself, trying to hold the agony inside.

“You returned,” he heard Nimue say and then suddenly, unexpectedly, a soft hand pressed against his cheek and he looked up into her sorrowful eyes.

“My life for Arthur’s,” he told her.

“So be it.”

“What must I do?” he asked, his voice quiet.

“Stay on the altar. In the morning, as the first sun hits these stones, the old religion will take you.”

* * * * *

Gwen couldn’t help but wonder when her natural reaction to problems had become to turn to Arthur.

She’d gone to find Merlin and instead had found him and Gaius missing and Hunith so wrapped in grief that she had barely been able to speak. Hunith had tried to offer her a weak, empty excuse for their absence.

Gwen had gone straight to Arthur’s rooms.

She paused outside the door to the bed chamber. It was open slightly and she could see Arthur practicing his sword work inside.

As she watched he turned deftly from a thrust, twisting his sword to bring it back into place. Even when she had been busy disliking him, Gwen had liked to watch Arthur fight. He was graceful and controlled – she’d heard people compare his fighting to dancing and she supposed that was what they had meant – but it wasn’t like dancing not really. Because it was fierce and determined and resourceful, instinctive, impulsive and intelligent, reckless and strategic…

She caught herself, embarrassed to realise how long she had just been stood staring at him, distracted. She certainly hadn’t come here to gaze at Arthur.

As she raised her hand to knock, he pressed forward again into an attack against an imaginary foe. Suddenly as he pushed his arm into a high blow he winced, dropping the sword with a loud clash of stone and metal.

Gwen hesitated, watching as he rubbed his shoulder, cursing.

He was still hurt – still ill and weak. She couldn’t worry him yet; not while what he needed was rest and peace.

She would go to Morgana instead.

* * * * * *

The room was empty, silent and lonely.

Morgana took Gwen’s hand and squeezed it gently and then let it go again. Gwen was obviously scared and Morgana would do anything in her power to remove that fear.

“I’ll try to talk to her,” she promised and then climbed the stairs slowly to Merlin’s room.

The last time she’d been there Gwen had been asleep in the bed. Broken. Now Hunith was in her place, tangled up in herself. She didn’t seem to notice Morgana.

She picked her way through the mess and pushing one of Merlin’s shirts aside, knelt by Hunith’s feet.

“Hunith, what happened?”

Hunith just shook her head.

“Where are they? Where did he go, Hunith?” Morgana asked. “Please. Tell us and we will save him.”

Hunith remained silent for a little longer and then finally looked up into Morgana’s eyes.

“Sometimes, when you love someone, you have to let them make a choice… a terrible… pay a terrible price. Even if it breaks you.”

“What happened?”

“I can’t say.”

Morgana held her eyes a moment longer and then looked away. The pain in them was too familiar. Instead her gaze settled on a book, lying just beneath Merlin’s bed, not far from where her own fingers rested against the floor. It was old and heavy and out of place in the room. Vivid amidst the normalcy and mess.

“No,” Hunith said softly and looking up Morgana saw that she was also staring at the strange book. “Please.”

“It’s all right,” Morgana told her, not sure quite what she was saying or what she was promising.

She pulled the book closer and then opening it, gently began to turn its pages.

It was a book of magic.

Merlin was a wizard.

It was not exactly a shock; she had suspected there was something about Merlin since he had helped her with the druid boy, though she had thought for a time that perhaps it had been Will he thought of then. Now there was numbness in learning the truth. And a yearning.

Perhaps he could take her visions away, or let her understand them better. Change them. Teach her. Perhaps he could share her fear. Her joy.

“It’s not his fault,” Hunith said quietly and Morgana looked back up at her, tearing her eyes from the books entrancing pages. “He was just born like it, he can’t stop. I know that people think magic is evil but he’s just Merlin. Just my son.”

A tear fell down her trembling cheek as she said his name and for a moment Morgana could only nod in mute, unexpressed, understanding.

“Tell me how to save him?” she said finally.

Hunith smiled, tight and joyless, the tears back under control.

“I don’t think you can. He made a deal with Nimue, to save Arthur’s life. He’s gone, to the Isle of the Blessed, he’s… he’s going to die. To save Arthur. He’s going to die.”

The cold ran through Morgana and all she could do was pull Hunith to her, holding her as hard as she could manage. Hunith didn’t cry or respond, but she didn’t resist either. And as she held her, Morgana’s emotions hardened, becoming something she could use.

“I will save him,” she whispered and then standing quickly, she moved to the door.

She paused for a moment longer. She had not intended to cross Uther again, had not meant to fight him, to hide from him – but she did not mean to let those she cared for die.

“Gwen, I need you to fetch Arthur,” she called at last and the girl looked up at her, worried but trusting. She left to do as she asked without question.

“Tell him nothing yet,” Morgana called after her.

She turned back for a moment; Hunith was knelt on the floor, carefully hiding the book again. Morgana didn’t think she truly believed her, but she had no time now.

She descended back into Gaius’ rooms and began to destroy them. Overturning what she could, sweeping the contents of the desk across the floor, ripping and tangling Gaius’ bed clothes. It must look as if there had been a fight.

She did not know what Arthur would do if he learned that Merlin had bargained with magic. He cared so deeply for Uther’s opinions and favour, it blinded him to so much else.

As she worked, memories from her dream returned – memories of Arthur’s cold eyes and fleeting images of a mountain and a forest and a lake with ruins at its centre.

She had heard of the Isle. Uther had sent several miserable quests there determined to destroy the heart of magic, but few of the knights had returned and none had succeeded.

At last she finished. She found a piece of charcoal in the wreckage she had created, and carefully, doing her best to match Gaius’s writing – so familiar since her childhood, she wrote one word upon the wall. Blessed.

Straightening, she looked around the broken room.

That was how Arthur found her. Gwen stood slightly behind him and Morgana saw her eyes widen in shock but knew that she would not betray her. She trusted her too much. Sometimes she feared that Gwen’s faith had been cruelly misplaced.

“What the hell has happened?” Arthur asked angrily.

“Merlin and Gaius have been taken,” she told him, keeping her voice carefully empty of emotion.

“What?”

There was a pause and then Gwen spoke.

“A serving girl said she heard sounds of men arguing in here earlier, voices she didn’t know, and when I came to find out what was wrong, I found the room like this.”

Morgana was thankful for the quick lie. Arthur turned to Gwen.

“Did she say how many men?”

“Three or four,” Gwen replied after only a moment’s hesitation. “She just thought they were unhappy with Gaius’ treatment…”

Morgana saw Arthur’s fist tighten as his eyes searched the room and then saw them settle on the writing on the wall, his face paled and he met Morgana’s eyes again.

“Blessed?”

“Your father will not let you go – especially not now,” she told him.

“Then I won’t tell him.”

In a second he had turned and was gone from the room.

* * * * *

“He is not worth your death,” Nimue told him with cold certainty.

Merlin refused to look at her; the stone of the altar was wet and gritty beneath his hands. His head was aching, tight points of lance like pain, spearing him behind his eyes.

“You don’t know him like I do. You can’t see him like…”

“Perhaps it is you who do not see him clearly,” she interrupted.

“He will become a great man.” It was more to reassure himself than to convince her. There was no hope of that. In this grey wet place there seemed little hope of anything.

“Is this rain necessary?” he asked.

“You tore the skies open, everything has its cost,” she answered.

They remained in silence for a time. Since he had returned they had stayed mostly in silence, just listening to the rain pounding around them. Each raindrop measuring the passage of time. He sat, waiting on the altar. She stood, watching.

“Why didn’t you kill me?” she asked suddenly.

“I…” he started, but did not have an answer.

“You have killed before. Many times.”

He had. Killing was easy, horribly easy and easy to justify. There were always people who deserved to die. Nimue had been no different.

He’d never even thought of it. Not until he’d seen Morgana so ready to kill Uther, so like himself and so unable to do it… in the end. Unable to spoil herself that way.

Since then he’d begun to see their faces when he slept, those he’d killed, saw their deaths. Sometimes he saw them in the day. Something small and strange and unimportant would remind him. Mostly he could ignore it, just keep himself busy and they would go away. The memories.

But when Nimue had challenged him to kill her, he’d been suddenly reluctant to add another face, even a deserving one, to the parade. Especially hers.

“Arthur will become Uther,” Nimue said unexpectedly, interrupting his thoughts.

Merlin felt the flash of anger inside him.

“He’s not like that,” he told her. “He cares about his people…”

“You presume that Uther doesn’t? Or didn’t?” she challenged him. “Yes, Arthur cares about his people, but he cares more about his pride and his father’s acceptance. Even once Uther has gone he will still long for that love. He will still try to earn it.”

There was truth in it and Merlin could not immediately reply. He believed in Arthur above anything else, but faith was not always strong, not always unchallenged.

“Do you want to know what I see in Arthur?” Nimue continued. “Arrogance, anger, fear, pride… a man who will bully just to impress others. A killer – so fast to land that fatal blow and so slow to regret it.”

It was an unfair judgement. Unfair with the sharp edge of truth.

“He’s better than that,” he tried to interrupt but Nimue continued.

“When I looked into him, I saw Uther’s fear of magic – the same fear that has caused the needless deaths of hundreds of our people. Have you told him of your magic, warlock? Have you trusted this great man of yours? Does he know that you can call down the very heavens to fight on your side?”

Merlin saw Will in his mind again and the distaste in Arthur’s eyes as he had looked on his funeral pyre. He held his tongue.

“I thought not. Arthur may replace Uther on the throne but only the name will change. Is that truly worth throwing your life away?”

He met her eyes at last, she was watching him intently.

“Does he care for you?” she asked, a strange sense of urgency in her questions now. “Will he miss you? When he learns you are gone, will he forget? Or show forgiveness? Vengeance? Mercy? Would the pain drive him to battle? In every other choice he has reached for a sword… would this be different?”

“I don’t know,” he snapped, wishing to stem the flow of words. “Why do you care?”

“What will Arthur do when he finds love and loses it?”

“I don’t know,” he told her again.

“I have seen a future…”

* * * * *

“Fetch my horse and armour,” Arthur called to a groom as he skidded down the stairs, taking them three at a time.

The boy gave him a surprised, horrified look for a moment and then scuttled away.

Arthur couldn’t believe that someone would dare to take Merlin.

It was probably a mistake; they’d probably wanted Gaius and just taken Merlin because he got in the way. But that didn’t matter, Merlin was his servant and he’d be damned if he’d let someone take him, even if it were an accident.

Somebody would pay with blood for this.

He paced impatiently. It had been a frustrating day. He had been starting to think everyone had gone mad.

His father was organising a feast and giving out gifts and fancies. Half his knights had visited him with even more awed looks in their eyes than normal, which he was used to, but usually only when he’d done something incredibly brave. The worst were the maids and servants, who were speaking around him in hushed voices as if he had died… except Gwen, of course.

The whole thing was maddening. Yes, he had got hurt and yes, it had been bad. He could feel that. His shoulder ached and icy pain shuddered through his body at regular intervals. But no one had died.

It would be a relief to escape the castle. A relief to have something to fight against. He ignored the biting ache in his shoulder that warned he was not fit yet.

He also tried to ignore the small insistent voice hidden somewhere in his mind that told him there was something false in what Morgana had said – some strange untruth. Merlin was in trouble, that’s what mattered – and Gaius.

He tried to forget Merlin’s last visit. It had felt like an odd, secret, goodbye.

As he turned again to search for his horse arriving he saw Morgana and Gwen hurrying down the steps after him.

They both wore travelling cloaks. Gwen was carrying a saddle bag.

“You’re not coming,” he told Morgana firmly as Gwen disappeared, presumably to fetch their horses.

“And you know the way to the Isle of the Blessed?” she replied mockingly.

“I’ll work it out. You’ll just slow me down… get in my way…”

“You can’t just storm into this, Arthur; running in with a drawn sword isn’t enough against magic. And we can fight too, remember.”

“I’m not discussing this, Morgana.”

“Neither am I.”

Arthur was about to argue but Morgana spoke again.

“We care about Merlin too.”

“I don’t… this isn’t about that. I wouldn’t let any of my people be taken,” he told her, annoyed.

“That’s why you’ll take Gwen and I with you. My father used to take me close to the Isle before his death, you need me to get you there, and then you can save him.”

Arthur sighed in frustration. As little as he wanted to admit it, Morgana was right. He could see Gwen and the groom approaching with the horses and another hurrying from a side door with his armour.

He ached to be gone already.

“I don’t have time for this,” he groaned. “Fine - you can show me to the Isle, but from there the fight is mine.”

* * * * *

The mountains stood before them, their shape clear – silhouetted against the sunset, towering above them and dwarfing them as if someone had taken part of her dream and painted it into reality. It made Morgana shiver.

She turned from the image - it made the place seem false and nightmarish.

Gwen looked tired and Arthur was staring across the meadow, consternation written clearly on his face. He glanced back the way they had come towards the jagged gap in the cliff that had allowed them entry to the thin stretch of forest beyond the mountain.

He dismounted quickly, passed the reins to Gwen and wandered slightly from them, crouching down.

“We should go on,” Morgana told him, ignoring her twinge of unease.

“You said this was the only route to Blessed?” he asked her.

“Yes,” she replied, hiding her uncertainty. She had only vague memories of a map and the tales of broken knights.

“Then Gaius must have been wrong. They can’t be going to the Isle.” Arthur straightened quickly. “At least not immediately.”

“No!” Morgana replied too sharply, panic gripping her. They could not turn back now.

“Only one horse has passed this way, two at the most – though not at the same time. I thought maybe they’d ridden wide of us and that was why I could see no sign of them, but here…”

“But…” she began to argue.

“Morgana, four, maybe five men on horseback would have left some trace. We should turn back, if they are on foot we have missed them, if not we shall need to find which way they travelled.”

He seized his horses reins again, flinging himself into the saddle and turning its head to face the way they had come.

Gwen shot her a worried look.

“Arthur, stop,” Morgana called after him.

He stopped his horse again, turning it so he could look at her and for a moment she found herself unable to speak. Unsure of what to say. It was an unsettling, unfamiliar feeling.

“What, Morgana?” He sounded tired and angry and exasperated. “I’m never wrong… not with this.”

“There were no men,” she said as she saw him pull the reins again. “I lied.”

He stared at her horrified for a second and then turned to look at Gwen.

“But…”

“Gwen only said what she did because I asked her too. I made up the men and destroyed Gaius’ rooms but they are both in danger.”

“Why?” he asked. “What danger? Why lie?”

“I was not sure what you would do if I told you the truth.”

“Thank you for that vote of confidence. Well, what is it?”

Even Gwen was watching her now – waiting for her to find an answer that would not damn Merlin, one way or another.

“I overheard Gaius and Merlin arguing. He… he traded his life to save yours, he dealt with a witch.”

She saw the shock on Arthur’s face – the pain and the anger and Uther’s darkness – she could only imagine how much worse it would have been if she had revealed the truth about Merlin.

“What!”

“I think Gaius went to take his place, Merlin followed…” Morgana tried to explain but Arthur wasn’t listening.

“How could he be so stupid?” Arthur was shouting now, his horse skittered beneath him, clearly concerned by its masters anger or invigorated. Arthur dismounted and let its reins fall loose.

Gwen, dismounting quickly, caught them again. A moment later Morgana followed their example and pressed her own reins into Gwen’s waiting hand.

Arthur was pacing angrily, cursing, more to himself than to them.

“He only wished to save your life,” she tried to reason with him.

“I don’t care. He’s an idiot. He knows the penalty for dealing with magic – my father will have his…”

“So he should have left you to die?”

“Yes… no… When my father learns…”

“Uther will think it was a price worth paying,” Morgana argued.

“You believe that?” Arthur laughed. “Whether he thinks the cost was worthwhile or not, it will not stop him executing Merlin. The deed is done but there can be no exceptions to the punishment…”

“That’s not true.”

“It’s the only way to keep magic out, to keep Camelot safe… if we forgive some, let them get away with… magic would gain a hold.”

“Is that Uther talking or you?”

“Is there a difference? What do you think, Morgana? That I do not care as much for my people as my father?”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Arthur turned from her in disgust but it did not seem the right moment to explain that she believed he cared much more deeply for the people of Camelot than Uther did now. Merlin was what mattered; she needed to break him from his anger.

Arthur stood in silence for a moment and then turned back to them with a grimace.

“We will return to Camelot,” he said bitterly.

“You do not mean that,” Gwen said softly, her shock clear.

“Is that your choice?” Morgana spat at him, not waiting for an answer. “You will leave Merlin to his fate? Let the witch deal out your father’s punishment? Let him die.”

“I will not go against my father.”

“You did for the druid boy – you helped him. Why is this different?”

“He was a child, he didn’t have a choice. Merlin knew what he was doing...”

“What if none of them had a choice?” Morgana interrupted him.

“What? None of who?”

“All those people that your father executed? What if they didn’t have a choice?”

“What are you talking about, Morgana?” Arthur’s exasperation was clear. “They chose to use magic.”

Her heart was pounding. A tight, cornered, living thing in her chest. Desperate for escape. She almost did not ask, almost did not want the answer, almost feared it but it was not in her to give way to fear and she needed to know.

“You were born a prince, you can never change that. What if it is the same for those who do magic? What if they are born with it? What if it chooses them? Should they die for that? Should they die for some trick of fate? For some unsought curse? What if Gwen was born with magic? Or Merlin? What if I were?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, that’s not… Why are we even talking about this?”

“Why does Uther fear magic?” She knew she was pressing him too hard, but could not stop. “Why must he destroy it?”

“I don’t know, Morgana! I don’t know the answers.”

Morgana saw the shadow of real pain in his eyes for a second, a pain she had not seen before and did not understand, pain and anger. And then turning, he stalked a few feet away, staring across the shadowed meadow. She let him stand in silence and turned herself to look at Gwen.

Gwen looked worried and frightened but smiled, bravely, as she met Morgana’s eyes. Morgana moved closer and squeezed her arm.

“We will camp here for the night,” Arthur said at last, “It’s too dark to go on.”

If we go on, did not need to be added.

* * * * *

Nimue did not tell Merlin what future she had seen. Instead, she drifted into silence and for impatient seconds the only noise was the sound of the rain. He could not find the words to fight her and his mind wandered.

He did not want to think about what she had said about Arthur or how closely it had matched his own first judgement. Arthur was better than that, or would be. He knew it.

And the dragon had said…

That thought no longer had the power to reassure him.

“Then in the dark he sought her out and desperately he cried
‘Don’t fear,’ she begged, ‘Our destiny may still be brushed aside’
And then she swept his tears away and took him by the hand
‘Word has come the Questing Beast was seen within this land…”

The words filtered into Merlin’s consciousness slowly, mixing with the rain, drifting in and out of it. It was only the mention of the Questing Beast that really caught his attention.

Nimue was singing. Or almost singing, a strange sort of chanting lilting prayer.

“Together we will find the den,
For our sweet love vow’s sake,
We’ll hunt the beast through field and glen
And this future we shall break…”

“What song is that?” Merlin asked, his curiosity winning against his desire not to interrupt.

“An old story,” she said. “It was famous once.”

“I don’t recognise it,” he told her.

“No? It may not have reached your home and I doubt it is sung in Camelot now,” she sounded weary and sad. “It would not be to Uther’s taste.”

“Why?”

“It’s the tale of a prince and a witch who fall in love and vow to stay together. A great destiny is laid on each that they will achieve wondrous things but only if they stay apart. Together they seek the Questing Beast, fight many foes and cross many dangers until at last they find it and then they live together for many years, laying their great destinies aside.”

She spoke without wistfulness, with a strange detachment that added strength and truth to the words and for a while Merlin did not answer letting the words sink inside him.

“Did they do the right thing?” He asked at last.

“Who knows,” Nimue laughed. “Why? Is a destiny troubling you, warlock?”

“No… I… yes,” he admitted. It was no use lying, she seemed to see through him and the doubt was gnawing at his soul. “I was told it was my destiny to protect Arthur, but the… one who told me that, I found out that he’s just been using me. What if it was another lie? Just another way to make me do what he wished?”

“I see. Is that why you came?” she said softly, but did not wait for an answer. “Here is some advice. Destinies are only what you make of them. Some come to pass because it is what is doomed to happen. But others don’t. Are they lies? Is it because people fight them? Because the future can change? I don’t know.

“But I do know that some only become truth because the people they are laid upon act how they believe they should. That’s the true power of a prophecy.”

“So you don’t think it is true?” It hurt to say. Hurt that her opinion on this mattered to him.

“I think it matters little if it’s true or not, it only matters how you act towards it.”

“But… what good is my magic if this isn’t my destiny? Why do I have it? What use is it?” he demanded.

“Why does that matter? Do you ask why someone can sing or laugh or wield a sword? It is a gift.”

He couldn’t answer her. So many bad things had happened because of his magic. He thought of his mother sick and injured and wrapped in pain. There had to be a greater reason.

“All you need to ask yourself,” she said, leaning closer to him, “is do you protect Arthur because of your destiny, or would you anyway? You could still turn aside from this path. Choose a new future.”

It should have been an easy answer and in one way it was, Merlin was ready to lay down his life for Arthur, destiny or not.

But he hadn’t always felt like that: he’d loathed Arthur. Had it only been the dragon’s words that had made him save him again and again until it had become habit? There had not seemed to be another choice at the time.

“Arthur will not be like Uther,” Merlin told her at last. “He is worth it.”

She smiled at him for a second and he knew she had felt his hesitation. His own doubt that still lingered despite the one certainty that, worth it or not, he could not let Arthur die.

“And yet you don’t trust him with your secret,” Nimue pressed him.

“That’s different. Uther is king. If I tell him and Uther catches me, Arthur would suffer.” He had told himself that enough in the dark of the night, had wished that it were that alone that always stilled his tongue.

“Nothing will change when Arthur takes the throne – he wants nothing more than to be his father.”

“His intentions are good,” he snapped at her. “All he needs is someone to remind him sometimes.”

“And who will remind him once you are gone?”

The question pierced him. A sharper pain than the magic still running through him. He had tried not to think of not being by Arthur’s side. He swallowed, collecting his answer slowly.

“Morgana will,” he told her. “She always challenges him.”

“Morgana? She is steeped in magic as far as you and I, Merlin, you have seen it. And he will learn it and he will never trust her again.”

He breathed deeply. The images Nimue was painting all to clear.

“Then Gwen will,” he told her firmly.

Sweet, uncomplicated Gwen – she was already half in love with Arthur, he could see it, she would stay beside him and guide him – and if Merlin’s faith in Arthur sometimes wavered. His faith in Gwen never did.

Nimue looked confused for a second and then laughed – deep and throatily.

“The serving girl? You believe he will listen to a servant?”

“Yes,” he told her, the certainty settling into him, “he listens to me.”

The sometimes was added automatically in his mind. But now he was sure, Arthur would listen to Gwen.

“I wish I had your faith, warlock,” Nimue told him, but did not argue.

* * * * *

The dream came again. The confusion of blood and smoke and fire, mixing together and colouring the moment in reds and blacks. Her heart shuddered away from it, anticipating the sight of someone she loved, dead. But the dream had changed again, shifted somehow.

She saw them both – Arthur and Merlin – stood back to back, pressed against each other. Seemingly apart but invisibly laced together and stronger. Her heart sang. Sang pure and true and happy for a moment that was both long and short and trapped in the knotted time that dwelt in dreams.

But the fire and the blood and smoke was still there and their faces were strong but filled with sorrow.

The world seemed to rage around them. She saw image after image of disaster and betrayal and magic – such cruel and evil magic – wreaking its will on the world.

She felt battered by a storm of pain and misery – the only haven being the pair in its centre, who she longed and reached for.

While she was reaching she suddenly saw herself, alone and wreathed in black hatred, a bow in her hand, loathing its arrow, aiming for…

Morgana woke with a scream. Lost for a moment and then, feeling the thin blanket and rough earth beneath her, she remembered where she was. Gwen was beside her side in a moment, soothing her again.

“We have to stop it,” she told her. “We have to reach Merlin.”

“We will,” Gwen told her. “Come, you need to sleep, drink this.”

The last sip of Gaius’ sleeping draught slipped past her lips, plunging her back into a soothed sleep and the dream was lost.

* * * * *

Gwen watched as Morgana slipped back to sleep and stroked the tangled hair away from her forehead. It felt fevered and sticky, but at least the sleep seemed more restful now. The nightmares seemed to be coming more and more regularly and they were getting worse. She didn’t know what she could do. And if Gaius were lost…

She rose slowly and headed back to where Arthur was sat staring into the fire. She had snatched a few hours sleep earlier in the night but she did not think he had rested at all.

“She’s sleeping again,” she told him softly. For a second he did not seem to hear but then he looked up, his eyes focusing upon her.

“We’ll need to leave soon.”

“There was only a little sleeping draught left, she’ll wake before dawn.”

He nodded.

“You should rest,” he told her brusquely.

“So should you,” she retorted and he smiled slightly, though it was not a happy smile.

“I can’t sleep.”

His hand strayed absently to the wound on his shoulder and she noticed that a little blood had seeped through his shirt. Moving quickly to her horse, she grabbed a water bottle and a rag and some lengths of the bandages she had packed.

“Remove your jerkin,” she told him firmly.

He blinked at her in surprise for a second and then smiled – a real smile this time.

“So forceful. Guinevere?” His voice was warm and mocking but he removed the jacket anyway, revealing that the blood had spread further than she had expected.

She gave him a withering look as she sat beside him and gently eased his shirt away from the stickiness of his shoulder and began to sponge the blood away with the rag. Arthur winced.

“It hurts you?” she asked him.

“Less than before,” he told her with a slight laugh, “Wounds are easy. They heal. It’s everything else that is hard.”

She could feel his eyes watching her as she worked, but she ignored him.

“Guinevere,” he asked after a moment, “the things you said when I was… ill…”

She felt herself flush, and thought for a second that she saw his lips twitch in amusement from the corner of her eyes, though when she looked up his face was serious again. She had hoped he would not speak of this again, it had been embarrassment enough this morning, now she was suddenly aware how close together they were sat.

“Did you mean… those things?” He sounded worried, uncertain, and she paused for a moment before answering.

“Yes, I mean, I think you will be a great king… one day,” she told him.

“You have such faith in me. I don’t know where it’s come from, I used to think you didn’t like me much.”

“You noticed,” she teased him.

“Guinevere.” There was both warning and question in his tone.

“You’ve been different,” she told him as she began to bind his wound, “better… since Merlin came.”

He laughed softly again.

“I’m not sure whether that’s a compliment or an insult.”

She waited a moment before speaking again, weighing her words carefully before she spoke them. “What do you mean to do? About Merlin?”

He sighed and looked away.

“He used magic. I don’t have a choice.”

“There’s always a choice, it’s just sometimes not an easy one.”

“Why are we here, Gwen? Why did we run so fast to save him?”

“For the same reason we went to Ealdor,” she told him.

“And why did we do that?”

He was staring at the fire again.

“Because we care for him.”

He laughed again, though it was bitter this time.

“I don’t care for him, he’s just a servant.”

She did not point out the irony of who he spoke these words to, she knew them for a lie and they didn’t hurt her.

“Because he would save us in a heartbeat, he wouldn’t even hesitate. He has saved us. All of us, one way or another. And because he makes all of us better people,” Gwen spoke quickly, hoping the meagre words would be enough.

“We need him,” she finished pathetically, tying off the last of the bandage.

“My father…” Arthur began but couldn’t continue and Gwen did not know what to say. It was not her place to criticise Uther, nor her right.

“After my father…” she said at last and Arthur looked up at her, horrified.

“I’m sor…” he started but she just shook her head and he fell silent again.

“After he died, I was so angry at him. Not because I thought he was bad or evil or wrong or involved in magic, but because he made such a stupid mistake, two mistakes, he didn’t think…”

It hurt still to talk about her father, and it hurt more to criticise him. She could see the muscles in Arthur’s cheek had tightened.

“Guinevere, you don’t have to say this,” Arthur told her, meeting her eyes.

“I just wanted to say that I love my father, he was the most wonderful man in the world to me, but he wasn’t always right…”

“You think my father is wrong about magic?” he challenged her and Gwen had to look away.

“It’s not my place,” she told him softly, “I’m just saying you are allowed to disagree with him. Even if he is your father. Even if he is the King. And maybe you should, because no one else can.”

“He’s trying to protect Camelot.”

She breathed deeply for a moment, as if she stood at the edge of a deep, cold lake and was pulling in the strength to dive in.

“Maybe people who perform magic are meant to be part of Camelot,” she said keeping her voice gentle but firm. “I mean, maybe they need to be protected as well.”

For a while Arthur didn’t speak, staring into the dying embers of the fire instead and Gwen wondered if she had gone too far.

“But if that’s true then all the people who have been…” he began at last and then trailed off, his face seeming sharper and when he spoke again his voice held broken ice. “Morgana asked… but I didn’t… I don’t know why my father hates magic but he declared war on it when I was born. What if it’s something about me? What if this is my fault?”

She stared at him in horror for a second and then impulsively reached and gripped his hand. He let her.

“It isn’t. Maybe he did start this because of you, because he wanted to protect you, but that doesn’t make it your fault. You can’t blame yourself for your… for things that started when you had no power to stop them.”

Arthur was silent for a moment and when he finally spoke his voice was quiet.

“I have the power to stop it now. When the black knight came, after my father destroyed him, he told me he cared for me. I didn’t know that before. I mean he’s said he’s proud before, but I just…”

Gwen had never heard Arthur, usually so assured and confident, talk like this before, struggling to find a way to explain his feelings. If you’d asked her a few months before she would have thought it impossible that he even thought this way. She had no words of comfort for him.

“I mean, you can be proud of something and not care for it.” There was a tinge of bitterness to the sudden rush of words. “I’m proud of my horse, it’s a good horse, but it’s still just a horse. But he said… it. And it’s… I mean I still don’t believe it sometimes, not deep inside, but I know it and that’s good - like my mind knows even if my heart doesn’t and that must be worth something... It makes me feel stronger.

“But now that I know, I’m afraid to disappoint him. I don’t want to disappoint him. I don’t want to fight him. I don’t want to lose him, not now,” he finished with a note of desperation.

Silence lingered between them.

“You have never let fear control you before,” she said eventually.

Arthur did not reply and she did not press him again. Instead they sat in silence, their shoulders touching. Not quite together and not quite apart. Until the sound of bird song, in anticipation of the dawn, began to reach them from somewhere distant and Morgana began to stir.

Arthur rose stiffly from where he had sat on the ground and moved towards where his armour lay. Gwen’s heart lifted slightly.

“Wait. I’ll help you dress.”

She worked quickly and deftly as the dark turned to grey and Morgana rose, preparing him for battle.

* * * * *

“Gaius,” Morgana said suddenly and began to run, her dress billowing out behind her. Gwen saw the huddled body a moment later as Morgana sank to the ground beside him.

Something became still inside her. She could not imagine Camelot without Gaius.

“He’s all right,” Morgana said a moment later. With a soft laugh of relief Gwen sank down beside her.

Gaius was cold and wet but he was still breathing shallowly and he didn’t seem hurt.

“Good,” Arthur said, his voice flat and he turned back to his horse.

Merlin wasn’t there. There was no sign of him.

Morgana met her eyes. Arthur hadn’t spoken much since they’d started to ride. They didn’t know what he was thinking. And whatever they had spoken of in the night now felt closed between them.

She looked across the lake. The ruins seemed to rise from the mist of the lake, just visible through the rain, with no island beneath them. A strange, floating relic of the past.

It made her uneasy.

She did not want to think of Merlin there.

There was a strange sort of personality about the area – everything seemed set in itself, determined and full of purpose.

Arthur was paying little attention to the view. He had tied up the horses and was now checking his weapons – it seemed a familiar ritual to him. She wondered if that was a sign of fear in some way, a way of combating it. He never seemed scared, but neither did Morgana, not to most people, anyway.

A small boat waited on the shore. It did not seem tied to anything, but it did not seem willing to drift away either. It was merely waiting.

Behind them Arthur grunted in a way that seemed to suggest he was satisfied and Morgana watching him, rose quickly. She squeezed Gwen’s shoulder for a second, and she was already by the boat’s side when Arthur shouted out.

“Stop!”

Morgana turned to Arthur, annoyance clear on her face.

“You’re not about to insist that you should get in first, are you?” she challenged him.

“We’re dealing with magic,” Arthur replied, “the boat could be enchanted – dangerous.”

“As much for you as for me.”

“I’m used to facing danger.”

“And we are not? Anyway, we don’t know the boat is enchanted.”

Arthur ignored her.

“This armour is heavy,” he told her. “It will be a damn sight more problematic if the boat sinks because of the weight and you are already inside it.”

“I don’t think that boat will sink,” Gwen interrupted.

The boat was making her nervous. The island, or lack of it, was making her nervous. She wished to be gone as soon as possible and Arthur and Morgana could argue for hours if you let them. She sometimes suspected that they enjoyed it.

“See,” Arthur said to Morgana triumphantly, “Gwen agrees with me that the boat is enchanted.”

“That’s not quite what I said,” Gwen started, but Arthur had already pushed past Morgana and was stepping into the boat.

He was barely inside when it began to move, leaving them behind. Arthur was swallowed by the mist.

* * * * *

As the silence began to reclaim them again, Merlin felt the anger and fear that had been burning slowly inside him release slightly, allowing the pain of the magic still coursing through him to take hold again.

There was magic in the air around him as well, magic thrumming through the stones with a rapid, insistent beat.

“Does it always hurt this much? Magic,” he asked Nimue, feeling oddly vulnerable.

It barely mattered now with so little time left, but she was one of the few people who could give him a truthful answer and he could not help but ask.

She watched him for a moment, her expression softer than before. The rain had begun to ease away. He remembered with a jolt how beautiful he had thought her when he first saw her.

“Not always,” she told him. “But sometimes. Few people could do what you have done since yesterday. Hold back dragon’s breath, travel with the wind and carry another with you, open the heavens and claim the power of life and death, fight me… and even fewer would be able to stand afterwards. Was it your first time? The spell you used to take Gaius away?”

He nodded and she moved closer to him.

“And you have no teacher?”

He hesitated, thinking for a moment of the dragon, anger mingling with loss.

“Gaius…” he started but she laughed sharply.

“Gaius knew little magic when he took Uther’s service, he could not have taught you these things.”

“I have a book.”

She reached out and touched his cheek, her fingers lingering.

“So much potential. So much I could have taught you,” her hand fell to her side again. “Magic is a cruel and demanding mistress, Merlin – the more you ask of her, the more she takes from you. Sometimes the cost is terrible.”

Her voice had become sad, tinged with regret and Merlin felt a sudden closeness to her.

“Gaius said that as well,” he confided in her.

“He would know.” Merlin was surprised at the anger that had replaced her sadness, but then it was gone again and she sighed. “Everything passes.”

“You should have let him take your place,” she told him, but there was no mockery in her voice.

“I couldn’t,” he told her truthfully.

“If there were another way to escape your fate, would you take it?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

Nimue reached towards him again. He flinched away, but her hand just stroked his cheek, cold but soft. Merlin did not move, uncertain of what he should do. He searched her eyes looking for some hint of what she was thinking.

The sky had turned grey behind her, and for a moment, there was a fleeting hint of promised sunshine, streaming across the water.

She reached down and took hold of his hand lifting it and pressed it to her throat, holding it in place.

“You could have killed me, let my life flow across the altar and it would all have been finished. You still could, I would not stop you. Do it now. I’m your enemy – what would there be to regret? It would be a victory.”

He pulled his hand away from her throat abruptly.

“I’m not a murderer,” he told her.

“No? It is a shame, we could have done so much together.”

“If that is how you feel, why not just stop this?” he asked.

“The old religion binds me.”

He almost laughed. “The old religion? This is your doing, not some old lies told to peasants.”

“You don’t understand.”

“Then tell me. I have spent my whole life not understanding these… things. Tell me.”

She was still so close that he could feel her breath and she did not break his gaze as she answered.

“Magic is wild. They tried to bind it, to control it, to turn it into something they could use. But it wasn’t powerless, it bound them – made them perform its will. Demanded a cost. I am its servant, Merlin, its slave – the last. It’s given me so much knowledge, so much power and it still holds me.” Her voice was angry.

“So everything you’ve done, you did because it made you?”  He didn’t believe it.

“Of course not, I have my own will, my own anger, my own price. But when it calls, I come, like a hunting dog.”

“And what would have happened if I had killed you?”

She laughed softly. “You would have taken my place, it would have… claimed you, taught you its secrets.”

“And how would that have been better than me dying?”

She looked at him, confused, for a moment. “You would have stood beside Arthur, you would have secured our hope, our chance, our champion.”

For a moment he saw her thoughts clearly, saw her stood beside Arthur, and if not her another, saw how truly she believed this. All her hopes resting upon it. All those plots to hurt Arthur had been nothing but a way to scare Uther…

She wanted this. Needed it.

She pulled away from him, turning to look across the lake where it was visible between the ruins.

“But that’s lost now. I will find another way. It’s nearly time,” she told him.

* * * * *

The boat moved underneath Arthur, pulling away from the shore.

The mist seemed to thicken, clinging to him, making it impossible to see and almost impossible to breath. He closed his eyes against the whiteness for a second, a gesture of fear. In anger he forced them open again, pulling in two deep, choking breaths.

The air left his throat feeling coated and sore.

Self-consciously, he reached for the hilt of his sword, his hand settling comfortably around it and he let it reassure him.

Beneath him the boat shuddered to a halt. Had he hit land? The mist was still too thick around him to see, but slowly, almost imperceptibly it began to thin.

He saw the hand first, gripping the prow. Ghostly and white and dripping water.

Arthur pulled his sword loose, raising it to meet the throat of the man who had emerged from the parting mist. As the sword swung towards him the man reached up and gripped the blade, his hands wrapping firmly and strongly around it, jarring Arthur’s still painful shoulder.

He was tall, dark hair hung damp around a gaunt face. He did not flinch against the sharp blade and no blood dripped from his clenched hands.

Arthur tried to draw his sword back but it would not move.

“No weapons must be taken to the Isle,” the man told him.

Around them Arthur could see other figures now, men and women and even children, all cold and wet and proud and imperious and oddly lost. Many hands were gripping the boat.

“Who are you?” Arthur asked, wanting mostly time to decide what to do, and they all began to speak. Not at once, but each taking an answer, one after the other, so fast that the answers blurred together and he could not make out which figure was speaking.

“We are the dead…”

“The sacrificed…”

“The abandoned…”

“The lost…”

“The bargained…”

“The betrayed…”

“The keepers of the Isle….”

“The terrible cost…”

It was the man who held the sword who said the last and he ripped the sword from Arthur’s fingers.

“Are you what happens when someone trades their life?” Arthur asked, fighting against the sudden image of Merlin, cold, wet and alone. “If it’s this terrible why let it happen to someone else? Let me stop it.”

“That’s not your path,” the man replied and he dropped the sword. It plunged beneath the lake’s surface.

Arthur flung himself forward, reaching beneath the water, but his fingers closed on nothing and although the figures stood as if only in shallow water, he could not touch the bottom.

“Why?” he demanded, but they had already begun to move away, disappearing back into the mist.

All but one. A woman. Tall for her sex, with pale hair plastered to her face and neck. Her sodden dress, drifting in the water around her, was beautiful and richly made. She was staring at him.

“What is your name?” she asked.

“Arthur Pendragon,” he spat at her and she gasped, a tiny painful gasp that wrenched at his heart unexpectedly. It must have shown on his face for she smiled at him.

“No, do not fret, it is just an old loss rediscovered.”

Moving a step forward, her hands reached out to rest on both sides of his face. He flinched away for a second, scared of the ghostly touch, but they felt real – cold and wet but real.

“You have come to release me.” The voice was laced with unexplained happiness but then her eyes faltered and her hands fell away to rest beneath the water. “No.”

“I’m here to save Merlin,” he told her slowly, uncertain.

“That shouldn’t be your path. Never mind. You must cut yourself another.”

“Who are you?” Arthur asked her. She wasn’t making any sense.

“It is of little matter… you will need a sword. One they will not know.”

Her left hand rose from the water clutching a sword and for a moment she stared at it as if she didn’t know where it had come from. It wasn’t his sword, Arthur realised, strange engravings marked the blade but it looked strong enough.

“Where…”

“All waters are one water,” she interrupted, her expression confused, as if the need for the question surprised her.

She took the sword in both hands and held it out to him, a formal gesture. As he reached to take it, she held on for a second, forcing him to meet her gaze.

“It was forged in fire,” she told him, “and has rested in water, but it must find a home in the earth before it can live in the air. Find it a harder sheath.”

With the last word she was gone, the sword suddenly heavier in Arthur’s hands and the boat moving again.

* * * * * *

Merlin was unconscious now. Nimueh looked at his body laid out on the altar, his skin both pale and wet with sweat. The first light of the sun, just visible as a soft grey through the easing rain, could not seem to warm him. He had descended quickly at the end. He would be dead soon.

She watched him, her sorrow at the lost opportunities genuine.

She reached out and gently stroked his cheek. He was already cold, Death’s fingers lingering there. She sighed.

“If you had only had the strength to take another’s life,” she told him softly, “we could have...”

“He doesn’t have to,” a man interrupted her. “That’s why he has me.”

 * * * * * *

Arthur’s frustration, tiredness and the pain in his shoulder solidified into something useful as he saw Nimue reach out and touch Merlin – rage.

“If you had only had the strength to take another’s life,” he heard her say and his anger hardened again.

“He doesn’t have to. That’s why he has me,” he told her loudly.

She turned, shocked for a moment and then she smiled, stepping away from Merlin.

“Have you come to challenge me… prince?” she mocked him.

“I’m not going to let you kill him.”

“It was his choice, he agreed to the cost.”

“You tricked him,” he replied flatly, edging towards her.

“No. He sought me. He thought your life worth saving. None of this is of my doing.” She circled away as she spoke, placing the altar between them.

Arthur did not care, he thought only of reaching Merlin. As she backed away he stepped forward and pulled Merlin into his arms, carrying him from the altar. He sank with him to the ground, setting him on the wet grass.

There had been no response as he touched Merlin, no response as he lifted him. The boy felt cold and lifeless, though there was still a slight breath visible at the base of his neck. Merlin’s scarf was missing, Arthur realised, that’s why he could see the breathing. He wondered for a second where it had gone and then, steadying himself, he slapped him, hard enough to raise a bruise. Merlin did not even flinch.

He looked up. Nimue was watching him, her expression curiously blank. Almost sad.

“You will lift this curse,” he ordered her.

“If I do,” she told him, “you will die. To return a life, another must be taken.”

He rose steadily to his feet, leaving Merlin on the rain soaked grass and pulled the sword from his belt, its balance was superb. She did not seem surprised to see the weapon.

“Is that your answer, Prince?” she asked.

“If I take your life, Merlin will live.”

He moved quickly, hopeful to catch her off guard, his sword swinging almost of its own volition to strike her down. Her hand rose, quicker than he could see and the sword stopped with a painful jolt inches from it, sliding away from her. The pain in his shoulder doubled. He slashed at her twice more, each time she turned the blow away. He fell back.

“Think,” she told him sharply. “You may not always slaughter your way to a solution, Pendragon. Do you think the old religion would leave its servants so unprotected? My life cannot pay this cost.”

He fell back a few steps, allowing the sword to fall to his side and tried to win back his far too spent breath.

“Then he is doomed?” he asked her, after a moment, not able to look at where Merlin lay.

“Perhaps. There may be another path.”

He knew what she meant. He could still die.

It was the right thing to do, to refuse the sacrifice. But he knew what his father would say, Merlin was just a servant and he was a prince and that came with responsibilities. And his father was right, even when he was wrong, but what good was a prince who would not die for his people.

And this was Merlin.

“You said before that it was not your destiny to kill me? Is this what you meant? That I should take my own life? Was that your intent?” he asked her.

She shook her head gently.

“No, the future told me that the deed lies in another’s hands, many years away.”

“So what does my destiny hold?” he challenged her.

“I think that depends on the outcome of this night – the Questing Beast was seen – the future is moving.”

“What does that mean?” he snapped.

“In some places there is more than one path to the future, more than one future to reach. What we do affects which we take. Our feet are on one path now – what happens next might yet move them.”

“And what path am I on now? What future?”

She looked away for a moment and though his eyes did not falter from her, he knew hers rested upon Merlin. Then she looked back at him.

“You will be a more terrible king than your father. Magic will falter and die and Camelot will be doomed. Your reign will only bring sorrow and cruel retribution. The sword will rule, not wisdom.”

He felt the anger of her statement, his own rising to meet it. And with his anger the sword rose, steady again in his hand. That was not his father’s kingdom and it would not be his own.

“Then why don’t you kill me now? Stop it happening?”

“That’s not…”

“Your destiny, I know. But you said the future could change tonight. Why not change it?”

“I created you – I will not destroy what I created,” she told him.

He moved suddenly, anger and fear sweeping him forwards and she did not fight him – in a moment she was pinned to the altar, his sword to her throat.

“What do you mean?”

“They did not tell you,” her voice was soft, almost gentle. “Your mother was barren, my magic allowed her to bear you – but her life was forfeit. She died so I could create you. That is why your father does not love you as he should.”

“That’s not true,” he told her, not quite sure which part he was arguing against, the truth of his birth or that his father did not love him. Feeling the world falter beneath him and not knowing whether it was his wound or her words that made the ground twist.

“Why do you think he turned against magic?”

He had no answer, his hand was shaking and the sword pressed against her throat, drawing the first drop of blood. He wanted to kill her. To wipe away the things she had told him.

She smiled at him and the sword pricked deeper. It took all his strength to stop it from sinking further. Only the echo of his own commands for wisdom and control on distant training fields stayed his hand.

“What now, sire?” The words were harsh and laboured.

“Tell me how to save him,” he demanded, pushing the anger and pain aside.

“There is no way, unless…” Her voice trailed away, but she did not sound scared, merely tempting.

“Unless what?” he asked through gritted teeth.

“If you can break the altar, the old religion’s power will be lost, then you both may live.”

Around them the Isle seemed to shudder and a strange keening noise rose from its base. Arthur stared at the solid stone. He had no idea how what she asked might be achieved.

“You have betrayed us.”

The words were spoken by many voices. Looking up, Arthur realised that the people from the lake had surrounded them and were approaching quickly. He swung his sword away from Nimue’s neck, releasing her. She rose quickly, raising her hands.

“Think, Arthur Pendragon, think. I cannot hold them for long,” she told him.

“I don’t know what to do, you have to help me,” he told her bitterly.

“Magic cannot destroy its master,” she warned, casting her first spell, wreathing a protective barrier of flames around the three of them.

Through the smoke and fire he saw the pale woman in the crowd, the one who had given him the sword.

“A harder sheath,” he murmured and then without waiting he leaped onto the slippery surface of the altar and, taking only a moment to balance himself, plunged the sword into the stone.

It slipped through it, as if it were only mud and for a moment there was silence, then beneath his feet the altar cracked, the stone shearing away from itself and he was flung to the muddy ground.

The flames surged and then died away. The figures seemed to still then with a sigh, vanished. Nimue began to laugh.

* * * * * *

It was the cold that came back to Merlin first. The cold and then the pain – like he had fallen through ice into the frozen lake beneath.

“Merlin,” he heard Arthur say from somewhere far away as he struggled to draw a breath. “Come on Merlin, wake up – you’re going to be all right.”

It sounded oddly concerned for Arthur, though the hint of exasperation was purely his and the last certainly sounded like an order.

He could hear laughter too; broken, joyous laughter.

The next thing that filtered back into his perception was that somebody was shaking him. Mentally he groaned and tried to push them away but his body refused to follow his thoughts.

Then someone hit him hard across the face.

He was not sure if it was the shock or the pain that forced the first breath back into his lungs, plunging him back into the sound and feel of the world.

For a moment he could not remember what had happened, but the first drop of rain hitting his face and the realisation that the ground beneath him was muddy and wet pulled the memories back.

“Shut up, will you,” he heard Arthur snap, and that wasn’t right.

Forcing his eyes open, he saw a blond head, though the vision was dark and blurred. As the world slowly cleared, he saw that Arthur was holding him and at the same moment he realised he wasn’t dead. They weren’t dead.

He tried to sit up, but could not manage it, gasping softly at the effort.

“Calm down,” Arthur ordered him. “Stop.”

“No,” Merlin told him, “I need… the altar. I have to die,” he finished desperately.

“No, you don’t,” Arthur sounded like he was somewhere between amusement and annoyance.

“No. You’ll die,” Merlin tried to make him understand.

“Wrong again. Are you ever right about anything, Merlin?”

“But…”

“I’m alive, aren’t I,” Arthur told him and then added as an afterthought, “idiot.”

Merlin let his mind wander for a moment, trying to find the ruins around him, though he could not seem to see very far. The world felt as if it were changing, somehow. He searched, trying to find a way to explain to Arthur.

“Nimue…” he tried at last, but stopped as he saw Arthur’s face freeze for a second and then sober.

“She’s here.”

As if he had somehow been released by the words, Merlin’s eyes at last found the altar and the pale figure sprawled beside it. He could see blood on her throat but she was alive. Her laughter had softened but her eyes shone with tears and triumph.

Beside her the altar was broken, laying in jagged chunks, only one part remained standing and a sword, a familiar sword, rose tall and proud from it.

And he understood.

“It’s broken?” he asked, dreading what that would mean. He could not feel magic in the place anymore. The stones no longer sang to him.

“It’s free,” she told him, then she looked at Arthur. “We worked well together, Pendragon, and you will need me now.”

“I will never need you,” Arthur’s anger was blinding. “There will never be a place in Camelot for magic.”

Nimue stiffened then, rising to her feet and Arthur rose with her, but Merlin could not follow him. The two faced each other.

“Magic is wild again, wild and powerful – you cannot exclude it.” Nimue spoke with certainty. “It is unleashed, and with it comes terrible, glorious things. Such power, I can feel it, inside me.”

“There is no old religion to protect you now. You should pay for what you have done,” Arthur’s hand reached for the sword that no longer hung there and Nimue smiled.

“Every witch and wizard you have ever scorned, ever hurt, ever punished is now more powerful than you could begin to imagine. You would do well to start making amends, Prince. I at least will forgive you and by your side I can aid you against what will come.”

“You will never stand by my side,” Arthur told her.

“You have chosen the wrong path,” Nimue said and then looked at Merlin, “both of you. I hope he is worth the cost, my lord.”

For a moment, Merlin had the queer sensation that she was addressing him.

Then in a storm of smoke and wind that tore at her clothes and hair she was gone. There was silence for a moment and Merlin felt a strange sense of loss at the parting, mingled with fear.

“We need to go, something’s happening,” Arthur said at last. “Come on”.

He pulled Merlin to his feet and as his weight hit him, Arthur stumbled slightly. They rested a moment each holding the other up. Arthur’s face was a grimace.

“You’re hurt,” Merlin said, feeling useless.

“I’m not dying yet,” Arthur told him and took his weight more firmly, with grim determination.

“No…”

“God, you’re not exactly heavy, Merlin, stop fussing.” Arthur cut him off, his voice annoyed.

Merlin let himself be dragged, almost carried. The armour was cold and hard beneath him, but Arthur’s hands were warm where they held him firmly and Merlin allowed himself to grip them so their hands rested together, allowing himself to cling to Arthur in a way that he knew they would both normally resist.

As they moved painfully towards the stairs, he saw what Arthur had meant. It was not that the sacred ruins were crumbling and falling around them, but they seemed to be aging, as if time were moving fast – he could see moss spreading quickly, stones wearing away and cracks appearing.

And he could feel it. It felt like they were dying or coming back to life or both.

* * * * * *

Morgana could not draw her eyes away from the ruins. She was cold and wet and tired and, most all, desperate to know what was happening. It felt like they had waited an age, not knowing whether Arthur and Merlin died or lived – or what they could do in either case.

Gwen had made Gaius, who slept on, as comfortable as possible and now she was gentle, soft and patient beside Morgana.

Suddenly the world went black, just for a moment, and then pain and light, flowered around her. She could see things – things like those she saw in her dreams – but they had never come in her waking hours before.

Horrible things – monsters and battles and fire and Camelot under siege from all manner of enemies.

Her skin swam with them, tingled all over as if someone was touching it – painful and terrible and wonderful and filling her with such potential.

She felt for a moment like she would drown in it.

Then she felt Gwen’s hands on her shoulders, Gwen’s voice calling her.

And she saw her.

Gwen at Arthur’s side, a crown on her head, and a smile on her lips. Then Lancelot and the images began to move faster, flowing together – a stolen kiss, a pyre, Arthur’s eyes, Arthur’s pain, another battle, a dark haired man gripping Gwen, Gwen’s fear and loss, Arthur being carried away.

“Don’t leave me,” she begged her.

And then she saw Gwen again. Trapped in a cold, barren room with only a cross and its broken man for company. Abandoned. The loneliness wrapped around her like a shroud. And Morgana felt as if a beast was in her own heart, trying to claw its way out.

She gasped at the pain and the wonder of it all as the magic danced across her skin and through her soul.