Chapter Text
“He ſhal ful out heren hym fro his holi heuene; in myȝtus þe helþe of his riȝþond…1” Anfortas said, looking up at the ceiling of the throne room, on his knees in front of the same throne he had been sitting on, straight as a log, looking down at his people the same way he hoped his god was looking down at him.
He sent a silent thank you to the soon to be priest, Daegal, who had suggested this specific prayer to him, and had had the time and consideration to write it down for him in a way that even him, with his limited knowledge of the Sacred Tongue, could read it out loud.
“Þeſe in charis, and þeſe in hors; wee forſoþe in þe name of Arthwr, oure god ſhul inwardli clepen. Þei ben obliſht, and fellen; wee forſoþe riſen, and ben up riȝt. Lord, mac ſaaf þe king; and here us in þe day þat wee ſhul inwardli clepe þee!2”, he concluded, his hands together and his head bowed down, so lost in the prayer that he hadn’t noticed the scroll falling out of his hands.
Or the blond man standing just outside the door.
It had all started, like many things were bound to do, by a simple word being spoken out of term by a woman during a family dinner.
“Father,” Morgana said, her tone calm and soothing as it always was when discussing her power with Uther sat at the same table, “a new prophecy has been given to the mortals, they should be hearing about it now.”
Uther thought the idea over, then signalled with his head that he wanted her to continue to explain herself. He knew his daughter, but her gift was as obscure to him as it was to her, and he was nothing if not cautious. That had been how he had become the King of the Immortal Plane - by being cautious and choosing his allies well.
Morgana nodded, and continued, “Morgause should be well on her way to Ascolat to speak to Elayne now, and Nimueh is making sure what we saw is something that was already written in the Book of Life, if it is a real Prophecy, and not just a possible future.”
Uther nodded, and stayed silent for a while.
That is what Morgana and her sisters did - they were the high priestesses of time, and the only ones who could understand what the gods of old had written in the Book of Life back when they themselves were nothing more than ideas.
Morgana, as the goddess of prophecies, had future as her domain, a vast cauldron of possibilities and false promises, with no place for a happy ending, even if only because it didn’t have an ending. Morgause had been the goddess of communication for a while when Morgana had been born into her role, and her control over the present was short of perfect.
Then, of course, there was Nimueh. Nimueh, who had been one of the gods to write the Book of Life, back when her name had been nothing but Time and her only companions had been Creation and Destruction, and the other gods weren’t even concepts yet. She had power over the entirety of time, as one could think by judging her name, but she preferred to stick to the past and leave the other domains to the women she had decided to call her sisters.
Elayne was just the last in a long line of “priestesses”, as they liked to call them, and was able to understand the goddesses’ words without them needing to be simplified for mortal ears - given how she had been trained to do so since birth.
Morgana’s head turned to the door, and so did Arthur and Uther’s, even if they had not heard anything, and were not likely to do so; she was probably communicating with Nimueh and Morgause in that strange way the high priestesses had been doing for centuries, and nobody but them could really understand what was going on.
Arthur was the first to snap out of it, and he began eating again as if nothing had happened. Uther, always wary of her daughter’s gift, was still looking at her puzzled, not fully understanding but not really wanting to either.
“The prophecy is right,” Morgana said, right as Arthur’s plate was done with, “Nimueh just checked, it’s in the Book of Life.”
Arthur nodded, now serious, and braced himself for her next words. Prophecy usually meant war, and war usually meant losing those humans he was so enamoured with. He just hoped it had nothing to do with Camelot, or Gwynedd; King Anfortas was one of the few kings who still prayed to his father every day for protection, and Queen Annis had just lost her husband, King Caerleon, to another war that had nothing to do with this prophecy and all to do with the blind hatred some humans felt when thinking about someone different from them.
“Do go on, dear,” a female voice said, breaking through the silence while this new woman walked into the room, “I am sure we’re all dying to know more.”
Arthur’s head snapped up, instantly, at the sound of his mother’s voice.
Queen Ygraine had always been a busy woman, what with being the goddess of creation and the Mortal Plane needing new creation over new creation, and so it was rare to see her in the same room as her husband, much rarer to see the whole family in the same room, even if it was for such a peculiar even such as the declaration of a new prophecy.
Morgana blushed, loving the attention but wanting to get away from it as quickly as possible, then said, “it’s not clear yet, you know how prophecies are, but we know that there’s going to be a war, and there’s going to be a sword. It will be forged by Tom’s daughter, Guinevere–”
It was now Arthur’s turn to blush. He quickly dropped his head, trying to hide his reddening cheeks behind his shoulder, thinking back to the time he and Gwen had dated, a brief little relationship that had ended when her resolution of swearing herself to Vivian, the protector of womankind, as an unmarried woman had been finalised.
It had been a plan years in the making, of course, firstly because Vivian was somewhat of a nomad goddess and was never in the Immortal Plane for long enough to contact her through normal means, prayers, and secondly because she would not accept simply any woman - you had to be sure of it. Which is why the priestesses from her temple suggested everyone try and have a relationship at least once, before entering the temple, and think of how they would feel not having that.
Arthur’s relationship with Gwen hadn’t been unpleasant - they had had picnics, laughs, and experienced how having someone you can tell anything and everything to can feel. It had been a dream, but it hadn’t been romantic, and her inability to fall in love had been what, in the end, had put Gwen on the temple’s doorstep. She and Arthur were still friends - best friends, actually - but his father still believed that he’d been foolish to accept to court a woman who was already halfway to lifelong maidenhood, and so her name still struck a nerve every time it was uttered next to him.
“If she’s the one who’s making it, then Camelot will probably be one of the kingdoms this prophecy is for, won’t it?”, Uther asked, rushing to say it before Arthur could even think about it, and Morgana nodded almost as quickly.
“I saw Escetir, it couldn’t have been any other kingdom. I couldn’t see who was wielding the sword, but I did notice that they were wearing Camelot colours, so I am guessing that Camelot is kingdom King Cenred will have to fight. This is, sadly, all I can tell you.”
Arthur looked down at his empty plate, the back up at Morgana.
“Are you sure it’s written?”, he asked, ignoring his father’s look, “Camelot has been loyal for generations, our favour should still be with them, shouldn’t it? Didn’t we promise whoever was in charge years of protection in exchange for their prayers?”
“I can’t do anything–” Morgana started, but Uther interrupted her.
“Their offerings have been lacking, and they started to worship other gods the same way they used to worship us. Temples dedicated to me are being repurposed to the study of medicine, and more and more people now see gods as an afterthought, as nothing more than an old wives’ tale. I have been thinking about testing them for a while, child, and this comes just at the right time. Maybe, this will teach them what happens when you forget who your betters are.”
“Father!” Arthur said, indignant, standing up from his chair. He had noticed that Camelot’s offerings hadn’t been as powerful as they’d been in the past, but he had written it down as a dry spell. It happened, every few decades, that people stopped believing as much as they used to, and their offerings and prayers didn’t hold the same power. But that was it, nothing more than a period of time, and to think that his father wanted innocent people to pay for it!
“Arthur,” Uther said, standing up as well, and nobody dared to move, or breathe. It might have been a family full of gods, but Uther hadn’t gotten the title of king of the gods out of pure luck alone.
Arthur sat back down in his chair, refused to look at his father, and fixed his eyes on his sister.
“This prophecy,” he said, thinking his words before speaking them, as not to anger his father further, “does it have anything to do with the other?”
Morgana’s lips turned into a smile, and she drank from her chalice, slowly, taking her time savouring her wine the same way she was savouring the moment. Everyone was waiting for her answer.
“It does,” she said, looking at Uther instead of Arthur, making it obvious who she was really speaking to.
Ygraine stole the spotlight, even if just for a second, by saying, “we knew it was coming, we just didn’t know when . This is an important moment for both planes, my children, and you must be ready for what is about to come. If what Morgana says is true, then we must get ready for more than a simple war. This will change the world as we know it.”
Arthur was tempted to say, You would know how it feels like, wouldn’t you? You shaped this world., but he didn’t, because the conversation was obviously between Ygraine and Morgana, and even he wasn’t courageous enough to try and change this.
Morgana’s eyes found the table again, she’d always had a problem keeping eye contact with Ygraine. Maybe it was because she had never been her biological daughter, even if she had been raised as one, or maybe it was the fact that Ygraine was the one that had single-handedly created the world. Even if she wasn’t directly the reason why she had been born (and oh, what a centuries it had been, those right after she’d found that out), she was the reason why everything had been born, and her pact with Destruction was the only reason why new things, and humans, and gods, and animals, and everything, were allowed to be born every moment.
Speaking of Destruction, Morgana asked, “is it true what they say about him, his compassion?” given the nature of their conversation, and the prophecy they had just mentioned, which was known by no god more than it was known by the Pendragon family, she didn’t have to specify who she was talking about. Nonetheless, the name Emrys was fast on her tongue. She took another sip of her wine, in order to wash it down, then continued, “I’ve obviously never met him, but if he has to come back for this war, who do you think he would side with?”
Ygraine thought it over in her head, even if she didn’t really need to, then smiled, lost in a memory, no doubt of her and Emrys. She had so many of them, and not enough people to recount them to; she couldn’t really go up to someone and say, ‘do you remember at the dawn of world, when’, because nobody but her and Nimueh and Emrys had been there. And Death had grown tired of hearing stories about the time of dinosaurs, even if they had been a good test run for these ‘humans’.
“Emrys would no doubt side with whomever’s defending their home, that much is certain,” she said, at the end, “his compassion is not just something legends speak about. I have known him long enough to know that he’s one of the kindest men you’ll ever know, one of the few gods whose domain did not dictate their personality.”
Morgana nodded, she had always wondered just why the god of destruction was always depicted as kind hearted, and compassionate, in every legend she had come across.
“Is that why he went away?” Arthur asked, then bit his tongue. Nobody ever dared asking the remaining gods of old why their companion had just disappeared one day, not to be heard from in decades.
Ygraine’s expression changed into one of sorrow.
“He went away because of the Black Death, I presume. He couldn’t handle the knowledge that something he had helped create had killed so many. He thought- Gaius had told him- that medicine was advanced enough to fight it, but it wasn’t, and I don’t think he’s ever going to make peace with himself for it.”
Arthur obviously had something to say, because it wasn’t like him to be silent in a situation like this, but he knew well how much his father despised hearing about the prophecy and all that concerned it. It had taken some time for him to make peace with the fact that sometimes, when his father looked at him, everything he could see was the man who would usurp his throne and be the next king of the gods.
It was rather Hellenic - that is, if ancient Greek myths had been real, and not just an idea people of that time had gotten into their heads to explain the existence of people who were way more important, and powerful, than them. He could sometimes picture himself Zeus, coming to slay his father Kronos for eating his siblings, for being an unjust ruler.
He suddenly found himself unable to meet Uther’s eyes.
A short rapt of knocks came at the door, and the family all looked at that, instead of each other, as if they were just waiting for an excuse to do just that.
“Come,” Uther said, and the door opened.
A man in peasant clothes and neatly trimmed hair came in through the door.
“Tom,” Arthur said, acknowledging Gwen’s father as if they were still maybe-sorta-father-in-law and maybe-sorta-son-in-law, and Tom smiled back at the greeting, all while getting closer to the table by the minute.
“It is starting, my lord,” he said, looking directly at Uther now, “Gwen sent me word that a strange sword has been commissioned by some anonymous person, who paid upfront and left instructions and the recipient of the gift written down on a scrap of parchment. It was you, Arthur.”
Arthur suddenly felt as if everyone in the room was watching him, and maybe it was because everyone was, indeed, watching him.
A sword being made for him meant that he would have to fight in this war, which was not something he had never done but also not the norm, and that he would be fighting for Camelot, if Gwen being the one who was smithing the sword had something to do with it.
“You are sure she’s making it now?” he asked, and Uther looked at him, puzzled.
“What is it with you today, son? If he says that she’s making it now, then she is. It seems as if you don’t want to go to war!”
Arthur started rubbing his hands together, hiding them under the table because he didn’t want his father to catch a glimpse of the nervous habit he had not got around beating yet, and thought over his father’s words very carefully. Did he want to go to war? It was what he had been made for, what the prayers of humans had willed him into existence for, there was no need for a god of war if there was no war.
But war also meant death, and destruction, and famine, and children growing up without their parents, and parents growing up without their children; Arthur had never been good at telling himself that they were not his fault, they were something that was outside of his jurisdiction because he was to control war, not the effects it had on the world and the people who fought in it, the soldiers who, like him, couldn’t be too far away from the battlefield for long.
“It is not that, father,” he replied, in the end, “I simply want to know how the preparations for my part are going. Usually, with these prophecies, war is always the first step. This time, another god was tasked with this, and I wanted to know how it is going, how long will it be until me and my men will have to march into battle.”
Seemed diplomatic enough.
Tom had smiled at being called a god because not a lot of his fellow gods recognised him as their equal, given how they were always up there in the sky, reigning over their domain, while he couldn’t very well leave the forge alone, not even in the expert hands of her daughter. Arthur, he supposed, couldn’t be one of those stuffy gods his family always seemed from the outside, because every major war he was always there on the frontlines. Maybe, and just maybe, there were other gods that, like him, preferred the company of humans over that of other gods.
“She sent me word, but I can go down and check, if you’d prefer. I’d invite you to accompany me, but you know how Gwen is with people entering her forge while she’s working. Wouldn’t want you to be on her bad side, again.”
Arthur blushed, and Tom smiled. With that, he saw himself to the door.
Gwen was humming a song she had heard in the palace the same day, when her father arrived. He didn’t make any noise but, again, he never did. It wasn’t as if he had to announce himself, or ask permission; he was the god of the forge, and every blacksmith knew better than to not be cordial and welcoming with him.
“Father!” Gwen said, smiling, without peeling the eyes off the fire, knowing that Tom would have understood, “was just about to send a quick prayer before starting.”
Tom smiled, still looking at her, then he shifted his focus to the flame, murmuring a small “Tom foresceawaþ self þa fyr3”, and laughed at Gwen’s gasp when the flame got livelier and the iron finally started melting.
“Years and years of knowing who your father is, and still you don’t know that I would do everything I can to make you smile, and your work that much easier.”
Gwen smiled, again, and poured the now melted iron into the stamp, trying not to think of Tom as his godly self, but just as a concerned parent, interested in their child’s lifework.
“It is not every day that a blacksmith can say that they had Tom himself in their forge, father,” she said, and Tom laughed, because he never wanted to go to another forge ever, if it meant having to leave his daughter’s.
“Tell me about this sword you’re making,” he said, while Gwen started beating the metal into the shape she wanted it to be.
“I have already told you about the strange note, yes?” she asked, only half interested, without peeling her eyes off the metal, not now that it was still hot and dangerous in a way that so different from its intended purpose - war - yet so similar.
Tom nodded, and Gwen continued, “that is all I know, for now, sadly. It will be ready for the turn of the week, if that is what you came here to find out. I am supposed to give it to you, and you will in turn give it to Arthur, if we’re to do as the anonymous note said.”
Tom smiled.
“You know me too well, Gwen,” he said, and Gwen looked up from the anvil to smile back at him, even if just for a second, “Arthur has asked me when the sword will be ready, so that his part in the prophecy can start. I believe he cannot wait to test such a fine weapon, created by the finest swordsmith in all of Camelot…”
“Father,” Gwen said, still smiling, “flattery will get you everywhere.”
Tom laughed, and exited the forge.
Arthur eyed the sword Tom had bought him with weary eyes.
Pick me up, it said, and Arthur never wanted to do that.
Cast me away, it said, and Arthur had never wanted to do something more.
It was a mighty good sword, that much had to be said, and the only fault that one could blame it on was that it didn’t have a name. Arthur had begun calling it Caledfwlch, in his mind, but it didn’t feel right enough to be said out loud, to be remembered for generations as a sword of legends.
He looked up from the weapon and saw Camelot’s walls in front of him. He took a deep breath, thought the cover story over in his head quite a few times, and started walking towards the citadel.
He greeted everyone who greeted him first as he walked through the lower town, but tried to make himself scarce the rest of the time, as if he was someone who wasn’t supposed to be there. He tried to shake that from his mind the same way he had shed his godhood when making himself human; he was the first knight of Camelot and he was not afraid of some peasants.
He smiled as soon as he saw the castle, thinking back to when Camelot had been nothing but a village and the first king had made the pact with his father. It had been nothing but the blink of an eye for someone like them but, for the humans, it had been generations. He reminded himself to start thinking about time as finite and not just something he had to spare.
“The throne room,” he asked a servant who was passing by as soon as he entered through the main door, “if you please.”
The servant bowed to him, certainly recognising the armour he was wearing, and pointed vaguely at the throne room. Arthur smiled, thanked the man, and started walking in that direction.
“He ſhal ful out heren hym,4” a tired, old voice, sounding from the room that was his goal, and the oh so sweet and familiar sense of someone praying at him with the right words at the same time. He had to stop, for a bit, to savour the taste.
“Þei ben obliſht, and fellen; wee forſoþe riſen, and ben up riȝt. Lord, mac ſaaf þe king; and here us in þe day þat wee ſhul inwardli clepe þee!5”, again, the same voice, a bit louder now. He was now at the entry of the big hall, and could see the king - his king, he reminded himself, the iron clasp with Camelot’s insignia twinkling right on top of his heart - deep in prayer. Then, he heard a scroll hitting the floor.
“My Lord,” he said, and did not laugh at the irony of him calling the man who had just prayed to him ‘Lord’, “that was such a great prayer. I believe you have sent word for me?”
Anfortas turned, looked at the man in front of him, took in the sword that was at his side, and smiled.
“Yes, Arthur, I believe I have. We have so much work to do.”
