Archive of Our Own

Throughout my years as librarian, I have attempted to catalogue each book that continues to survive Time's callous treatment in this library. There is a long row of annals collecting the various histories of Kings and Pendragons, and even some that try to explain some facets of those dark times visited upon our people before the coming of the very first King, Uthyr. However, I had yet had to encounter one which described life before the Ascension. I was pondering upon the possibility of ever finding such a chronicle, and after I mentioned my lament on the lack of knowledge in this area to my good friend, Gaius Whitedwarf, who is a learned man in the studies of medicine and appreciates the true value of a good book just as I do, and who has also been – through his high skill in eloquent speech – the advisor of the royal family, he offered me a very ancient tome from his own sizeable collection. This tome was written in the language of the Aboriginals and visits upon just this subject. It is my great fortune that during my studies of the books contained by Camelot's library whose guardianship I have assumed many years ago I have become somewhat familiar with this language, which is why I can now attempt a translation of this tome.

Although, dear reader, be warned that the book was written in the tongue of magic, presumably by a Sorcerer, which renders the authenticity and accurateness of these accounts rather suspect. Yet the fact that this is, to date, the only book which references those times, makes it impossible to disregard it as potential source of information on the foremothers and forefathers of our people.

For example, the book makes mention of a ground that curves steadily downwards and downwards, for so long until it curves back into itself - which would be a ridiculous assumption to believe, as every child knows that the land upon which we stand is flat. Just like the fantastic tale of days and nights that are of an equal length, or at least of a predetermined length, and follow upon each other on schedule, without deviation.

There are more believable, although no less strange, allegations in this book, like that the founder of our ancestors' religion was, as peculiar as it may seem to us, a man who, just like our priestesses, had bled for his people (this seems to be a common element in religious origins). Although how a man may accomplish this miracle I cannot even begin to fathom. In contrast, their King was a woman…

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Upon waking up from his sleep, Arthur looked out the window of his darkened sleeping chamber, and saw that a new lake had sprung up in the middle of Camelot, splitting the lower town into two unequal halves. Dark water pooled inside the gash like fresh blood welling up in an open wound.

There was a bluish quality to the light, and the sky above Camelot was bedecked with grey. A solemn procession of skirted acolytes tiptoed their way alongside the still lake, shivering even in all their layers. Heading the procession was Morgana, wearing the greens of her office.

Arthur blinked away sleep-crust from the corner of his eyes and made a quick back-count in his head to the last cycle and the cycle before that, and so on, but gave up when he realised he couldn't find a clear point of reference in his recent memories. Time had a habit of getting away from one like him, who did not dedicate his life to keeping count of its ebb and flow. In any case, Morgana's ceremonial dress could have meant only one thing: once again, Celebration day was upon them.

And Celebration day usually meant public appearances, having to listen to his father's speeches while trying not to look bored out of his mind, having to restrain himself from running off on any real or imagined errand only to escape the tedium of the day. At least there would be a feast following the speech, but having just woken up, Arthur had no idea whether that'd be soon or if he would have time to break his fast and then have lunch and then yet enough time to get hungry again beforehand. He could ask the kitchens, he reckoned; Morgana would be far too busy to suffer any pestering from him today. Not to mention, Arthur would rather not have to suffer the moods that took her around the beginning of a new cycle.

Then again, he could just assume it was the morning and he had all day to look into the far more fascinating (and potentially dangerous) case of this newly-appeared lake. If he was lucky, he might just forget that he would be expected to attend the speech and then show up when his body signalled its need for nutrition – the only way of timekeeping to which Arthur felt the need to adhere.

The kitchens were busy when he entered, filled with loud people and various foodstuffs whose origins Arthur was quite happy not to know being prepared for the feast. It was also filled with much yelling, from which Arthur could only glean that cook was angry because her largest pot, which had been kept in the little shed outside, had disappeared overnight. Various kitchen help were being accused of the theft when everyone knew that likely the Great Dragon had taken it – along with the entire shed.

Arthur was not at home in the kitchens. He couldn't tell whether the preparations had just begun or were nearing their end or were just somewhere in-between. He considered asking, but then he thought better of it. Kitchen gossip was more dangerous than any mudflow Camelot had suffered through during Arthur's lifetime: it needed only the smallest nudge to get going, it was vicious, fast running, and got absolutely everywhere. No doubt his father would hear about his inquiries before long and come to the right conclusions.

And then Arthur would find himself presented with a minder – probably Sir Leon. Leon was the worst of the lot because he didn't scold or order Arthur around. Like the terrifying Basset Hound of folktales, which was said to live in bogs and lure grown men into their death, Leon looked at Arthur with those big, sad eyes of his until Arthur felt so guilty he did whatever it was Leon wanted him to do.

Cook took a look at him and promptly sent him out back while she told a kitchen hand to rustle up some breakfast for him. Well, Arthur assumed it'd be breakfast. He sat himself on a convenient tree stump just when the kitchen hand appeared with a platter of cold cuts and a thick slice of dark bread, which he put into Arthur's lap, and a jug of something warm, which was set down next to him on the stump.

There was a clothesline pulled taut between two poles, from which a dozen or so animal carcasses hung. The largest was the size of a two-month old child and the smallest barely bigger than a shoe. They had the skin of a snake and a squished face with a large, bulbous nose. They did not look familiar but it was not uncommon to happen upon a beast whose likes no one had ever seen before, especially right after a Blight. Most of those disappeared soon after. But the last Blight had been more than a tencycle before, so these must have been the ones that proved viable enough to survive on the long run.

"What are those?" Arthur asked, nodding at the carcasses.

"Sir Owen found them with his patrol," the boy told him. "They hunted down as many as they could. It'll be served for the feast."

"They look like scaly rats."

The boy shrugged, apparently unconcerned. Of course, he was just a servant. He wouldn't be the one who had to put that into his mouth – Arthur seriously considered skipping the feast as well as the rest of the ceremony. He hoped the Great Dragon would see fit to have them just disappear.

"They taste like chicken," the boy said, not looking especially convinced of the truth of his own statement, and left in a hurry.

Arthur turned away while he ate, not wanting to spoil his appetite. The meat on his plate had a bluish tinge but tasted good, salty and smoky. The bread was slightly sticky but it was fresh, still warm. Of course, for all Arthur knew, the meat could have come from something like those scaly beasts behind his back. He preferred not to know, which is why he rarely visited the kitchens. But asking a servant to bring him his food, as usual, would have alerted the castle that he was already awake.

After finishing his meal, Arthur set his plate and the jug on his seat to be collected by the servants. He decided to slip out through the back gate and take the long way to the lake. He followed the footpath, which ran in the protection of some fleshy-leafed trees which surrounded the lower town. The thick foliage would shield him from the eyes of the guards who were stationed up on the battlements.

By the time he got out of the castle, the lake's surface had risen, swallowing the main road. Some of the nearby houses were standing in water up to knee-height. The buildings weren't meant to endure wetness. The water turned into a murky yellow liquid, bubbled and frothed like acid where it touched the walls. Small flakes of building material swam around in it like kelp. The houses fully surrounded by water were about to collapse soon. Their occupants were in a hurry to evacuate their valuables; men carried heavy cauldrons filled with small objects while women saved the linen and children ran around with knives in their hands. Others were just standing around, gaping at the spectacle. Arthur was about to yell an order at them to go and help out when Sir Leon arrived with a complement of guards to do just that, and that's when others started helping out as well. Arthur, who had not taken the time to dress in his princely finery after getting up but was dressed in a simple shirt and trews, slipped easily among the crowd and had already gone a few rounds lugging around whatever needed saving before he felt a large hand come down on his shoulder.

"Sire," Sir Leon addressed him quietly, not wanting to draw attention. "Have you not seen the Lady Morgana wearing her greens? Your place today is not here."

"I doubt my father will start celebrating while his people are in danger," Arthur sneered at the idea of abandoning his task. "There's work to be done; the more people, the quicker it will be." No doubt, Sir Leon could see through the flimsy excuse and, while other times accommodating of Arthur's whims, looked as if he would not stand for it today. So before he could employ the dreaded look on him, Arthur quickly gave his promise to appear at the festivities, and then wished to take it back, but by then it was too late.

Sir Leon regarded him with suspicion for a few seconds, but Arthur's regretful wince must have convinced him of his sincerity.

"Now, has Gaius been notified?" Arthur asked, concentrating on the here and now.

Leon nodded towards his left, where on the other side of the lake Arthur saw the familiar white crown of the court physician's head bowed over the surface as he collected a sample in one of his vials. To Gaius's right, several townspeople were dipping buckets into the water while talking amongst each other as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening. Arthur frowned.

"The people have been told that the lake water might not be safe to drink, have they? They should wait, until Gaius finishes his tests."

"There might not be any lake by the time he does," Leon countered mildly. "They know to wait, but nothing says they cannot collect the water in the meantime."

"Hopefully, they do." Arthur wasn't convinced of it. "Hey, you!" He yelled; his voice carried across the still surface strangely amplified. "No drinking of that water until it's pronounced safe!"

Several people, not just the ones Arthur had yelled at, turned towards him. Upon recognising his face, they bowed in acknowledgement and then scurried out of his sight as fast as they could with the full buckets. Their haste made it look as though they were just humouring Arthur and were intending to guzzle down the entire bucketful as soon as he couldn't see them. Arthur noticed Gaius looking at him with a small, approving smile and felt weirdly embarrassed by the old man's regard, as if he had been caught doing something un-princely.

Some time later, he was caught doing something altogether too princely to his taste; namely standing by his father's side on Camelot's most prominent balcony, decked out in royal finery, while the King made a show of surveying the gathered crowd. Arthur hoped he looked suitably interested in the process, and Uther couldn't tell that he was, instead, trying to get a glimpse of the situation in the lower town.

"When our ancestors came to this land," Uther began his speech, "they thought they had been rescued from a terrible fate by the kindness of strangers. Strangers who had the power to command matter and energy to do their bidding. With the help of their magic, they tamed the Dragons that traverse the infinite black space. But our people were deceived, for the Sorcerers were evil and wanted only more servants, and so began our people's long subjugation."

Arthur had heard the story countless times. He knew it from beginning to end: although the delivery changed subtly with every telling, the gist remained the same: the first King Uther led the people to victory against the aboriginals, the oppressors were killed, and the glorious nation of Camelot was founded. There was another part of the tale, which was not usually told. That, though their ancestors had caught the last Dragonlord and pressed him into service, the Great Dragon had stopped listening and providing for the people. A few generations later, the Dragonlord, too, had escaped – how he had accomplished the escape and where he had gone no one knew.

Arthur realised his father was finally nearing the end of his speech when Morgana elbowed her way none too softly past him, although Arthur had no doubt that from the courtyard she looked the height of elegance. She grimaced at him when some of the greenery attached to her festive dress got caught in Arthur's belt; she was wearing a different skirt now, Arthur noticed, one that was actually one of her regular blues, with leaves masking the colour. Her green skirt had got damaged by the lake water. Arthur had overheard the castle servants discussing a way to remedy it.

The King was reminiscing of long gone times, Morgana was preparing to announce the start of the new cycle, and Arthur was standing idly on display, while behind the gathered crowd the water level was steadily rising.

Uther finished his retelling about how the Sorcerers were driven away and put his hand on Morgana's shoulder to draw her into the focus of attention.

"The Greenwitch has guarded our Time ever since the beginning. This is one of the few traditions that we share with our ancestors' ancestors from before the Ascension. Thus, it is my pleasure to present you the Lady Morgana."

There was a feeble applause, but Morgana didn't seem to be very bothered by the lukewarm welcome. She probably just wanted this day to end, to be able to retire to her chambers and sleep through the next few days.

"Citizens of Camelot," she proclaimed with a smile that belied her paleness. "By the authority vested in me as the High Priestess of Chronometry, I hereby declare the beginning of Camelot's five thousandth cycle."

The King's announcement of the start of the celebrations was interrupted by a rumble from the distance that started low but quickly grew louder. One of the water-damaged houses in the lower town was beginning to collapse. The walls tilted first to the left, then to the right, and then with a mighty groan the house fell. It crashed against the house that stood next to it, which then also began to shake and topple. The surrounding streets were narrow, the houses built almost on top of each other. Within minutes, the entire area was full of crumbling houses, buildings crashing into their neighbours like a great chain of dominos, whipping the lake's water into large, standing wave that travelled slowly up the town, swallowing the buildings higher up which until now had been safe from it.

Arthur was already running through the corridors, leaping down stairs, when he heard the first screams. By the time he reached the courtyard, it was already flooded a good foot high, and the walls of the outbuildings surrounding the castle were already frothing as the thickness of their walls melted away.

People were still yelling, pushing towards safety, but the only safety was in the middle of the courtyard, which was now fully under the water. Arthur himself had waded in, allowing the pressure of the crowd to shepherd him. He stood there, among the townsfolk, when the buildings surrounding the castle began to crumble as well, and remained until the rumble of the last collapsed buildings gave way to stunned silence.

His boots had become heavy and water-lodged and his trousers were now dissolving around his knees. They were not woven from expensive linen like his underclothes, but pressed from pulp, because that way was faster. Flax had to be put into water and left to rot to extract the fibre out of it and make thread, and in Camelot things that were left alone for a long time tended to just disappear.

"Another good set of clothes ruined." Sir Leon commented mildly. He was in a similar state, as were most people standing around in the water.

Surveying the sad state of his garments, Arthur noticed that while the water looked and smelled clean, underneath the surface he could barely see the pale ribbon of his skin below the frayed trouser legs, and just glimpse a darker outline where his boots began. But he could see no farther, nor the bottom of the lake. He was about to mention his discovery to Sir Leon when behind his back, a sudden splatter broke the stillness of the water surface.

"What was that?" a panicked voice asked when the second splash came, this time further away from Arthur.

"There's something in the water!" someone else yelled. The crowd began to mill towards dry land. The water rose and fell in powerful ripples, as if a large body had just passed under the surface – not far from where the crowd had just been standing.

"Everyone, out of the water!" Arthur yelled. "Don't push! Stay calm!"

"Sire!" Sir Leon's fingers wrapped around his arm and tugged. It was time Arthur took his own advice. The water-soaked boots made it hard to wade out, let alone at a run. Arthur almost tripped when he tried to take the first step. Thankfully, the firm grip on his arm prevented that outcome; afterwards, he moved more carefully. But that meant that he wasn't fast enough getting out of the water.

Razor-sharp fangs pierced through the leather of his left boot and yanked at his heel. Arthur yelled in pain as the teeth sank into his flesh, but thankfully, not too deep. When the next jerk came, he managed to lose the boot before the creature could have pulled him down by it, into the unseen shallows.

Sir Leon hauled him up the main stairway. Arthur limped, his foot burning with pain, clouds of red billowed in the dark water behind him. Once on the stairs Arthur turned around, sword in hand, prepared to attack. Ripples, seemingly left by a long, agile body, furrowed the surface in sudden bursts of movement, slashed the black waters, but they calmed after a few, heart-stopping moments. The creature did not show itself.

"Did you see what it was?" Arthur asked, his voice raspy, blood rushing in his ears.

"I couldn't say," Sir Leon said with a throat similarly dry from excitement. "The water was covering it."

"We should have been able to see it." Arthur shook his head, his eyes fixed on the water whose surface had gone entirely still. "It wasn't that deep underwater. At least," Arthur corrected himself, "not if it were normal water."

Sir Leon contemplated Arthur with a troubled look on his face. "So you've noticed it as well. The water was like ink over it. Yet, if I do this," he demonstrated, bending down and letting his cupped palms fill with water, "it looks normal. Smells normal."

Leon lifted the liquid to his face; he refrained from poking his tongue in it. Instead he parted his hands and shook the last dribbles of wetness from his fingers. "I bet those people would have said if it had tasted funny."

Arthur grunted. "There is dark magic at work." At least, his father would certainly think so. "We better inform the King."

He started walking towards the castle in his usual brisk manner, only to falter on the second step, hissing.

"Arthur!" Sir Leon gripped his elbow to support him. "Are you all right?"

Arthur looked down at his heel. In the excitement, he had forgotten about the bite wound. The bleeding wasn't strong; there were several, small scrapes around his ankle but they did not look too deep. The flesh was a little torn up. There might have been some sort of natural poison in the creature's bite because the wounds burned, and not just when he put weight on his foot. But it didn't hurt too much.

"It'll keep," he decided, trying not to wince as he began walking again with a little more care.

"I don’t think it's wise to dismiss an injury like that." Sir Leon patted him on the shoulder (not hard enough to make Arthur lose his precarious balance on his injured foot). "You better visit Gaius right away. I'll notify the King for you." And, quite unfairly, in Arthur's opinion, ran off without waiting for an answer. Arthur had no chance of outlimping him; he had no intention of provoking the King's ire for being late to his own debriefing either. Let Leon handle it, then.

When he reached Gaius, Arthur was glad that he had chosen to be reasonable for once and do as he'd been told. Not because his wound pained him, but because of what he found there. The body of a man lay on the long table, but Arthur couldn't even tell if it was dead or alive. He had seen many strange things in his life but had never encountered anything like this. The body was pale, skin as unnaturally white as though it were covered with flour, except for the blackness of veins underneath the surface. They stood out in stark relief, looking like the vicious roots of a sorcerous plant that was growing in a person from the inside. And then the chest moved, and the man heaved a torturous rattling-wheezing breath which was painful just to listen to. Alive, then. Although for how much longer?

Arthur was jolted out of his shocked staring by a loud bang. The door behind his back slammed against the wall and through it more people poured into the physician's chambers. One of them looked almost as bad as the man on the workbench; the two others were half-carrying, half-dragging him, their faces wild with panic.

"What happened? Why is he like this?" Arthur snapped at the men who were surprised to find the crown prince where they had expected to find the court physician, but only shook their heads in answer.

Arthur only now began to wonder about Gaius's whereabouts. Where was he and why wasn't he when he was needed? The only explanation Arthur could imagine was that he was either with the King or somewhere in the town, tending another medical emergency, and he had no knowledge of the man lying unconscious in his chambers or he would have left someone behind to watch over his patient. But by the time he came back, it might be too late.

Arthur heaved a frustrated sigh and moved to help the two men find a clear surface on which to lay their sick friend. In the end, he pushed together two of the long, thin benches and went to lift the man's legs while the two other held his torso and arms.

"Think back," Arthur ordered, stifling a wince when his wounded heel collided with something lying around on the floor. "What did he do before he got ill? You were with him?"

"Yes, sire."

"There was nothing to do, sire," the other one said, and the first began to nod his head eagerly.

"We were just sitting and talking. And then he suddenly started shaking."

"We asked if he had a cold – from bathing in the new lake, you know."

"But he didn't have a fever, just went pale all of a sudden." They talked rapidly, cutting into each other's words.

"We told him to get some medicine from the physician and decided to accompany him, but by the time we got here, he wasn't able to walk himself."

"Yes, we had to carry him on the last leg."

"How quickly did this happen? Were you idling on your way or did you come in a hurry?" Arthur asked, feeling that he already knew the answer. Whatever this was, it was fast.

With further questioning, he found out that the man, as Arthur had suspected, had indeed drunk from the lake water. But then so had the other two, and they were hale and healthy. Arthur feared that did not mean they would also remain that way.

A scream sounded somewhere within the castle. The winding corridors carried its distorted echoes long after the sound itself had ceased, like the blood curdling wail of some preternatural creature. Soon it was followed by the noises of distant fighting. Arthur burst out the door of the physician's chamber, a heavy fire iron in hand, and ran towards the source of the heavy clangs of metal on stone, the thudding of booted feet and falling bodies, the yells of chaos and panic.

He did not have to search for long, yet he did not get there in time. The fighting was already over, the attacker gone. People were left standing or lying around scattered, still under the influence of the recent scare.

"It's gone, sire," one of the men told him. He was holding a bloody meat cleaver which he might have picked up in the kitchens as they seemed to be coming from that direction. "It came out of the lake, followed us here. We barely escaped."

"It?" Arthur asked, and then, "Where has it gone?"

"Hiding somewhere, through that corridor, there." A woman, an older servant, calmer than most of the others, waved her hand towards the nearest servants' corridor, narrow and badly lit, which, Arthur knew, led straight outside through a short pathway. "It was awfully fast, though," she added. "Unlikely it's still there, sire."

"All right."

Arthur ran his eyes over the group. Some of them were people from the lower town who had no business being in the castle under normal circumstances. There were plans in place for situations as this one, summoning every capable hand to the castle's defence. Women, children and the ill were to seek shelter within its walls where they'd be protected from outside attacks. Arthur was glad someone had remembered even without the alarm. That reminded him. "Bar that corridor, preferably at the entrance. If anyone's injured or ill, take them to the physician's chambers; I'll send Gaius to take care of them soon, understood?"

"Yes, sire," the man with the cleaver replied instantly. Arthur hoped he wouldn't become overconfident from having a weapon in his hand and run into his death. Nothing he could do about it.

"If you meet anyone else, tell them to stay inside the castle and try to drive outside everything that does not look human, and not let them back. And send someone to sound the bells – send a group, not just one man."

They formed two groups before he even finished speaking. Arthur parted from them with a nod and continued running towards the throne room where he hoped to find the King with his advisors.

On his way through the castle, he came across other groups of people. He gave them the same orders. There were just as many who had already taken ill; Arthur found bite wounds similar to his own on all of them. They were lying collapsed on the corridors, their skin covered with the same deathly pallor and the tarlike blackness of the swollen veins trailing underneath. Some were already being helped by others; whenever Arthur found a victim on its own, he yelled for nearby servants but he didn't stop his progress towards the throne room for long.

Whenever he came upon kernels of fighting, he joined in. The attacks were more like skirmishes, usually over by the time he arrived. The creatures did not attack in groups; they hunted alone. They jumped a small party from behind and dragged away one of their numbers before anyone realised there had been an ambush. The knights patrolled the corridors in fours and helped where they could, gathering the injured in the throne room because there were too many of them, and putting the healthy to the task of barring all the exits to keep the creatures outside.

Arthur found his father with Gaius, Leon, and some other knights in the private dining room adjourning the throne room, which was more likely to be used for holding quick consultations than actual meals. There was a map of Camelot, hastily redrawn to reflect the latest changes in the topography, spread out over the top of the dining table. There were red crosses scattered over separate districts of the town; it was not hard to guess what they stood for. He would have expected them to be concentrated around the lake, but that was not the situation. Instead, the map looked like a molten chessboard, with clear and marked areas alternating with no apparent order to them.

"This is Nimueh's doing, no doubt about it," Uther spat in futile rage, his nose wrinkled in exaggerated disgust. "The disease only infects people when it gets into the blood, you said. Most of those who had drunk from the water proved immune; she must have sent the creatures to help it spread."

"There might be other explanations, Sire. We oughtn't to rule them out," Gaius said in a cautious tone.

"What else could it be?" Uther snarled dismissively. "The Dragon is under our control, and the guards hadn't reported a break-in. Or are you suggesting there is some other sorcerer out there who's powerful enough to do this?"

"I don't think even Nimueh has the power to achieve something like this, Sire."

Uther was about to bark another retort, but then he spotted Arthur from the corner of his eye and refocused his attention on the more convenient target.

"Arthur," he called out. His stance and tone radiated tacit disapproval. "Glad you finally decided to grace us with your presence."

"I came as fast as I could," Arthur said, stilted, hating to find himself on the defensive every time he talked to his father. "You do know the castle is under attack."

"Precisely why your presence is needed here." Uther finally looked up. His stare was hard, accusing, as though he thought Arthur was the one personally responsible for today's events. In truth, it was the scar above his eye that bothered him now and again; when he was stressed he would get tension headaches, his vision would blur; he had to squint to keep his eyes in focus. It gave him his signature forbidding stare, which he used to its fullest effect. Knowing this, Arthur should be immune to the glares by now, but he still was not.

"I was helping out," Arthur muttered.

"That is not your job; that's what knights are for. If you wanted to help, you ought to have come straight here. This is where you can help."

"Sire, what's that?" Gaius asked, bending down, a supporting hand on his aching waist, to get a god look at Arthur's foot. Under the frayed remnants of his trousers, the skin was white, starting to swell with black veins.

"He got bitten," Sir Leon supplied, his brow furrowed with worry. "Earlier, when the houses started collapsing we had to wade into the lake."

"Gaius has not discovered a cure for the disease yet," Uther said quietly. Arthur knew what that meant. The most important objective was to halt the further spreading of the plague and the only way to do that was to kill the carriers. Healing the sufferers would have to come secondary.

The creatures were too numerous to be dealt with one by one. The only thing powerful enough to eliminate them, as well as the plague, was the Dragon itself. Arthur knew his role and he was going to fulfil it, even if it killed him.

"We'll deal with it later," Arthur decided. "Let's not waste more time."

At the King's gesture, two squires ran into the room with Arthur's armour in hand. They lobbed the gambeson over his head and then fastened on all the little separate pieces of his armour quicker than Arthur could follow. Uther barely waited until the squires finished. He had already been pacing impatiently up and down the chamber, but as soon as most of the armour pieces were in place, he turned on his heel and started down the corridor that led to the dungeons. Arthur motioned to Leon, already in armour, to follow him with the men chosen for the task.

The pauldron over his shoulder was still a little loose; at his movement it skidded down his arm until a small hand straightened it. Arthur swore and forced himself to stand still for the next half minute until everything was fastened to its place, then ran after the knights.

By the time he finally caught up with his father, Arthur was properly annoyed, which was why he didn't bother to keep his opinion to himself. "You needn’t have waited for me, you know. Sir Leon could have taken my place, or any of my knights. I trained them personally."

Uther did not look at him, just continued marching forward, his features set in a hard mask. "You're Arthur Pendragon," he said. He did not attempt to lower his voice. "It's your duty to lead them." His father's expression twitched in a particular manner which indicated that his reason for insisting on Arthur's presence was something he didn't fancy explaining. Probably because it was close to superstition, which in turn was as close to relying on magic as Uther would ever admit to.

As their party passed the guards placed in front of the entrance of the dungeons, the first tolls of Camelot's great bells were sounded. It was a loud noise, meant as a warning to be carried far over the flat planes surrounding the town and out to the distant little farms outside Camelot's borders and tell their occupants to hide, for soon the heavens would open and death would find those who did not heed the warning.

A long stairway encased in a dark passage led from the dungeon entrance to the Crystal Cave. It took a while to walk down them all, not to mention climb back up after they were done, so Gaius was grateful when Arthur tapped him on the shoulder and told him to stay. Gaius was the one who taught Arthur all he knew about the Dragon, and Arthur knew if they had more time, he'd have wanted to be there to observe. But barring an unforeseen event, Arthur was confident his presence was not needed. His knights were trained to execute every routine manoeuvre, even the ones not regularly needed.

After what seemed an interminable trek through darkness, faint light bloomed in the distance, signalling the end of the tunnel. A few more steps down, and Arthur shifted the helmet of his armour over his head to shield his eyes. Myriads of crystals grew out of the cave walls, which reflected and refracted the light until the brightness became blinding. The insides of the cave defied human comprehension. Its measurements, so vast they could not be compared to anything above the surface, played only a small part in this.

The open space within the cave was filled with rivers. They did not flow within riverbeds restricted to the ground, but instead jetted in the middle of the open space, running in all directions, separating and joining in intervening patterns around long, thin crystal needles that reached far into the space. To Arthur, it looked like a large tangle of silvery ribbons, swirling around each other in changeable, twirly loops at the whim of a capricious breeze, or like the complicated network of blood vessels within a large creature's brain, unobstructed from view by the surrounding flesh. Blue arches of lightning jumped between crystal spikes and the many-faceted walls, turning the air prickly and bitter to the taste. It was a sight that was beautiful and terrifying at once.

Here and there, enormous standing crystals which they called the Dragon's teeth bore the sign of the work of previous Pendragons. Bulky scaffoldings surrounded the sparkling monoliths, made of wood bark, ropes, and metal and sturdy, tarred linens, some to prevent light reaching the mineral's insides, others to siphon off the accumulated energy and incapacitate them. None of those had been erected in Arthur's lifetime. Some, he couldn’t even tell what purpose they served.

The group arrived to a ledge, which seemed diminutive, compared to the measurements of the cave, but was still large enough to safely accommodate thirty men. Its surface was dark rock, as if someone had stripped it bare from its crystal covering, with a horn-shaped protrusion on one end which reached above the fathomless depths of the cave. A small flotilla of boats waited at the point of the horn, ready to be boarded. Most of them were only large enough to accommodate three knights in their heavy armour; the larger ones, built to carry scaffolding material to the Dragon's teeth, were no longer in use but were still maintained. Each of the smaller boats had four thin metal prongs strapped to its sides, in lengths varying from two arms' length to three times a man's height.

"While we're waiting for the sign, you can get your men in position," Uther ordered, projecting a calm which Arthur knew to be a front, if only from the King's need to give out pointless orders. This place always made his father nervous.

Arthur stared out into the open space, trying to identify familiar patterns within the complicated maze. The shapes he was searching for looked like loose balls of silver yarn among the sparser webbing of waterways flowing into and out of them, but if one looked closer – and knew what to look for – one could distinguish their individual designs and identify the functions corresponding with them.

He spotted several serviceable nodes, but only three that looked accessible. Fortunately, the one furthest out looked to be semi-permanent, which meant it would take several weeks until it changed into something unrecognisable. It was encased between two flat crystal surfaces – two of the standing giants which looked more like eyeteeth than fangs.

The other two were of the same kind; they were closer but within a constantly changing formation of waterways. Only one of those was essential for the plan, but the fact that either of them might cease to exist – morphed into something else – before they even reached it necessitated sending out teams to both. Arthur would normally lead one of those teams but he made an exception this time. The third node was farthest away and seemed to require a fair bit more complicated manoeuvring to reach. He decided to tackle that one himself and send Leon and Owain to the other two.

The boats were loaded with everything they might need. There were ropes with hooks to be anchored to crystals for holding the boats' position, spare paddles, spare chains, spare armour, barely any place remained for the crew. Each boat carried three knights, one to steer and hold their position once in place, the other two to carry out the assignment. Leather straps fastened to the boards which they attached to the buckles on their armour to keep them from going overboard. Then the knights who stayed behind this time pushed the boats over the ledge one by one.

The drop onto the nearest stream was always the most frightening bit. There were no permanent waterways close to the walls; they were more common in less restricted areas where the Dragon's teeth could grow unrestricted. Thus, the nearest river could be a few arm lengths away, but it could just as well mean a straight five-storey drop. That was, if the drop remained straight, because the longer to go, the more likely for the boat to get pulled sideways upon falling into the gravitational field of a neighbouring stream.

Arthur was in the first boat to be dropped down. Thankfully, they did not encounter such a change of direction, but that did not mean his stomach didn't try to rebel against the fall. The two other knights in his unit were Geraint and Dagonet. Geraint was only a few years older than Arthur, but already seasoned and sure-handed. Dagonet in contrast was young, but he was one of the rare ones who were quite fearless of heights and therefore quick to act when fast action was required while travelling upon dangerous pathways. Arthur envied him that talent; not that he was afraid of heights, but there were still times when he looked down into the cave's depths and got queasy to his stomach.

Once the boats were sitting on the water, carried on by fast-moving currents, their passengers would no longer be subject to being pulled in alternating directions. Although the streams flowed in gut-clenching loops and curls, and their horizon tilted erratically, up stayed up and down stayed down, even if the entire rest of the world seemed to veer around madly. The ledge, a thin black line in the glowing crystal wall, which was the reference point for their return, could one second be seen slantwise over their heads and the next down to their right.

Arthur had been ten when he first saw the Cave. It had been during Leon's trial, after which he would be accepted as a knight, and Arthur's father had allowed him to attend. He remembered watching as the small boat rode a towering loop and being afraid that Leon was going to fall out and die. Later, he learnt that the rivers' flow only seemed to defy gravity from an outside perspective. When one travelled in a boat on a river, there was only ever one direction for "down", and that was under one's feet. The hardest lesson to learn was to think of the boat as the stationary object and regard everything else apart from the path ahead as unimportant. The way Arthur taught this to his new knights was to blindfold them and sit them in a boat and take them on a ride. When they had their eyes closed, one could barely feel the boat rock, even if the stream on which it rode changed directions abruptly left and right or up and down, or curled into a loop the boat sliding round its circumference in a path dictated by the centrifugal force, because down always remained under the boat's bottom. Then on the way back, Arthur took off the blindfold and told the trainees to focus their eyes on the bow but close them if they start feeling queasy, or try predicting their route over the labyrinth of streams if they feel able. Most of them only learnt the lesson at their own expense, scrubbing vomit from their armour and off the boat's bottom. The real danger came not from falling out but from falling into a river, because the armour they wore was too heavy to swim in it, so they would inevitably sink to the middle of the flow. If the stream was thin enough, chances were that the force of their fall would drive them out on the other side. But if the fall was short and the river's circumference was wide, the only salvation to hope for was a weighted rope thrown down by one's fellow knights who happened to sit in a boat right above. Drowning in full armour was a nasty way to die.

Arthur was blessed with good orientation skills, an acute sense of direction, and an excellent memory for keeping in mind the ever-changing pathways. He also had practice in navigating the crystal cave's streams, which was why he was the one in the back of the boat, steering and giving the orders. The paddles did not get much use. The currents were strong enough to speed the boat along its way. The paddles were more likely to be used to break the boat's momentum when they had to slow down at a forking, or when it needed to be lifted over to another waterway which flowed near but did not connect to the one they were travelling. The latter was one of the riskier manoeuvres; it required discipline and flawless timing, and while a mistake rarely resulted in death, as another stream would soon break the fall which followed when a boat missed its goal, the loss of time usually meant failure for the entire mission.

Arthur directed his crew through three such lifts and many twisting waterways before reaching the node between the two crystal slabs. They were much larger from close up – it was hard to assess the true size of things within the cave – but this wasn't the first time Arthur was near such a structure. What came as an unwelcome surprise was the actual distance between them. It would require twice the length of the longest prong that the boat carried to bridge it.

The stream here swelled thrice to its former size, which meant its flow slowed and they had more than enough time to prepare for anchoring the boat while drifting through between the crystals.

The first change occurred when the bow slipped between the two crystals. The Crystal Cave's walls started disappearing as though they were losing their substance, smooth planes and sharp edges fading into something darker. Arthur knew it was only an illusion. The walls were still there, intact, cradling Camelot and its people who were relying on them against the brittle, cold nothingness which existed outside the Great Dragon. The glimmer and sparkle of minerals dimmed allowing through a ghostly image of star-dotted darkness. In its middle, an apple-sized blue sun governed its cradle of planets and moons.

Arthur knew the same thing was happening outside the cave. Even if the tolling of the bells had not reached everywhere, the darkening of the skies over Camelot would hopefully deliver their own warning of what was about to come.

Arthur forced his attention back at the mission. He helped untie the ropes but left the task of securing the hooks at their ends to the crystals to Geraint and Dagonet while he searched the silvery maze for the other boats within. Leon's team was almost in position. He couldn't see Owain's crew anywhere near the node they had been aiming for; they were either very late or hopelessly lost.

The cave entrance with the ledge was underneath their boat and a little to the right. Even from this distance, Arthur could tell that it was already empty. The rest of the party had retreated into the safety of the stairway where they were protected by the shielding qualities of the thick rock. The knights out in the boats had to make do with the thin metal layer of their armour.

"How are we going about this?" Geraint's question drew Arthur's attention back to the task at hand, reminding him that they had a bit of a problem. Dagonet was shortening the left side rope to balance out the boat and remained silent. He was better at executing the orders he was given with the utmost precision than making suggestions.

"Untie the other middle-length prong," Arthur said; he was already working on the fastenings of the one on his side. Dagonet, when he was done with his rope, crawled to the front where rarely-needed miscellaneous equipment was packed up in neat bundles to look for a length of chain they could use to connect the two metal rods.

The ubiquitous glimmer, which made seeing clear difficult in the cave, grew suddenly even dimmer as a large shadow swam over the boat. Looking up, Arthur spotted the underside of Avalon, the Lake of the Dead, looming above their heads. It drifted slowly, guided by unseen gravitational forces. It gave the appearance of a large black pearl; its waters dark and still, for which Arthur was thankful. The Lake of the Dead was governed by its own rules; the bodies thrown in it sometimes decayed within minutes – other times, they were preserved. If any of the dead were floating over his head, he didn't want to know.

Arthur was not a regular visitor of the lake; it was the priestesses' office to lay the dead to rest. But now that he thought about it, the water in the lower town had the same opaque quality to it as Avalon's waters. No wonder the disease had spread so fast. And apparently, the dead weren't the only ones inhabiting those waters. Arthur shivered at the thought.

The sounds of a hurried exchange broke him out of his disquieting contemplations. They came from the stairway where the King and his advisors were stationed, and gained an unearthly quality as they were amplified by the complicated, conical shape of the vent which connected the inside of the tunnel with the main cavern.

"Time is of essence, Sire." The voice belonged to Arthur's uncle, Agravaine, who had not been part of the original group of knights escorting the King, so he must have just arrived. It made sense; he must have been the one whom his father had tasked with keeping an eye on the situation above in his absence.

"Arthur," Uther's harried voice followed soon after. "Stop dallying around and order your men to get the job done."

"Yes, father," Arthur muttered to himself, letting his own irritation creep into his tone. It served only for his own amusement, and that of his knights, for the boats' crews had no way to verbally communicate with those in the tunnel. Arthur felt no great need to share his feelings with his father anyhow.

"They are ready to begin," Geraint said, indicating the other boat in position. Arthur waved back to Leon as a signal that they were ready.

Sir Leon's team had the more difficult task of altering the course of the waters that made up that particular node. It was only difficult because there were no large standing crystals shaping the pattern. They had to work against invisible fields, while constantly in motion, because there was nothing to which to anchor the boat.

Instead of the tall metal prongs, Leon had equipped his boat with a thick tube of hollow bark. Two knights would hold one end under the water and direct the other one at a neighbouring waterway, using it like a hose-pipe to create a thin water bridge between the two. Because there were no crystals, these types of patterns were ever-changing and relatively easy to manipulate; after a while, the artificially created bypass would stabilise on its own, and the boat could move on to a different part of the node and repeat the process, thus making changes in the overall design.

It was painstaking work, and required not only patience but also precise knowledge of the results of each change in the overall functioning of the node. While Arthur was in possession of the latter, patience had never been his strong point – as opposed to Sir Leon whom Arthur had once caught participating in a ladies' embroidery session after he had been ordered to stand guard over it as discipline for some minor offence. Just like embroidering, Leon made his current task look easy when it was anything but.

With every new water bridge created, the Dragon's body turned a few degrees towards the blue sun, which was faintly visible behind the half-faded crystal walls. Leon would continue until its weak rays shone directly on the ledge, at right angles with its smooth, black surface. Once there, he would keep on making new pathways to maintain the position for as long as possible. But the longer it took for Arthur to finish his own job, the more unstable the node would became until it collapsed into a maelstrom of exploding water droplets. There was no time to be wasted.

"Get ready," Arthur said.

He lengthened his harness until it enabled him to stand and tugged on his gloves – the only part of his outer covering not made out of metal. He picked up the prongs, which Geraint had connected by a length of chain and then waited until his knights sat down, knives in hand, readying themselves to cut the ropes anchoring the boat on a moment's notice.

Standing up in the boat created a strange sensation. His upper body seemed lighter and his heavy armour, which weighed half as much as Arthur himself, felt like tree bark plastered to his chest and arms, while his legs felt encased in boots of lead. Arthur began to extend the metal rods towards the crystal surfaces. It required almost no physical exertion to raise the heavy prongs; in fact, the higher he lifted them, the less effort it took, as the forces surrounding the crystals caught them in their pull of gravity. It almost took more effort to hold them back from connecting too soon, as the two prongs had to touch the two crystals at the same time.

But that did not happen, for the chain connecting them proved too short.

"Help me, quick," Arthur yelled at Geraint.

Geraint dropped his knife and stood to unhook the chain from the prongs. Dagonet, interrupted in his last check of his armour's fastenings, was already rummaging for a longer one up front.

"No time, Dagonet!"

Arthur thought quickly. He stopped Geraint before he untied the chain from the other prong as well. Instead he moved his arm in tight circles and allowed the links to wrap around his arm.

"What are you doing?" Geraint exclaimed, alarmed and not questioning, as he had already guessed the answer. Arthur knew he was taking a risk; he did not need to be told.

So he ignored the question and instead barked at Geraint and Dagonet who still had not stopped rummaging to sit back in his place and get ready. There was no time to get another chain. He then shifted his grip higher up on the loose prong in his right hand – it was hard; the crystal's pull made it feel as though something was tugging on its far end, so he had to take care not to lose it. He managed to adjust his hold so that it lay straight against his other vambrace.

This was not how things were done – not when one valued one's life. Arthur had been taught better than this. He knew it was too dangerous, knew the smallest mistake could lead to painful death. But there was no time for anything else; Arthur did not even have time to be afraid.

No longer restricted by the chain's length, he widened his reach and pushed the metal against the crystals.

It was instinct that governed him to close his eyes but it was also the most important rule which every knight was taught: you don't keep your eyes open when you connect the crystals.

There was a fraction of a second when he thought he felt the current pass through his body, singeing his nerves and boiling his blood, pulling his muscles into painful, cramping knots. But that was only anticipation and an understanding of the process, for his senses were too slow to assimilate anything past the blinding white flash which burned his retinas even through closed lids. The charge travelled from one prong to the other over the metallic surfaces of his armour. He would have stopped feeling anything, had it gone through his body.

There was a second when everything was still. A terrifying silence set in; the constant sloshing of water against the side of the boat could no longer be heard.

A heartbeat later Arthur was falling.

A harsh, rending noise echoed through the entire cave and then sharp blue light flooded everything. With the light came pain, just as sharp and blinding, like burning needles pressed into his brain. The pain was not his, Arthur knew, but the Dragon's. Arthur turned his head within the helmet, his mind filled with a litany of silent apologies. He hid his sensitive eyes behind metal like a wounded animal trying to huddle into itself to present the smallest possible target. His armour's metal seemed to glow with heat, roasting the skin of his forehead where it was pressed to his helmet, and cooking him in his own sweat.

When the pain was gone, the boat was still falling. It had seemed like ages, but Arthur knew it had probably only lasted as long as one beat of his pulsing heart. He could not catch his breath, because instinct forced his ribs to constrict over his lungs and push out a yell. It was weak and short as he did not have enough air in his lungs for more. His gloved fingers were still painfully curled around the metal rods, the skin of his palm blistering from their heat even though the leather.

And then as suddenly as they came, the light and the heat ceased. The cave sank into pitch-blackness. Arthur knew it only seemed so in contrast to the previous brightness. The boat settled on another stream; little drops of water misted the air – remnants of the waterway Arthur had destroyed.

When he regained his vision, he was sitting in the boat surrounded by the star-studded black velvet of the universe. The cave walls had not yet regained their visibility but the radiation filters, which protected the Dragon's insides from full exposure to the blue sun, had only been down for a few heartbeats after the override Arthur had effected, a secondary node taking over almost instantly.

The Dragon was turning around its axis and as the sun fell behind the maze of streams, something else rose over the horizon in the opposite direction. A gigantic, blue-striped planet surrounded by sparkling rings of white. They looked so delicate it seemed to Arthur he only needed to poke them with a finger and they'd break into millions of diamond facets.

"Sire, what is that?" Geraint asked; his voice rasped like rough skin against fine cloth.

Arthur's glance followed the direction of Geraint's outstretched finger.

"I don't…" But when he looked closer, he thought he saw a glint in the dark. As though obeying his will, the image projected on the cave wall enlarged and settled on a moon which orbited the blue gas giant. An elongated sphere too symmetrical, with a completely smooth surface that lacked the impact craters which left their distinctive mark on other moons' faces, and as it drifted into the shadow of the planet, for the moment before it disappeared, Arthur noticed tiny dots of light over its surface, arranged at each point of a hexagon that looked too regular to be coincidental.

A weak splash came from Arthur's other side. Turning around, he saw Dagonet, head bare and his face pale, as he heaved, emptying his stomach into the starlit waters. Arthur couldn't see his helmet anywhere in the boat. Arthur's eyes sought Geraint's. The older knight shook his head, his face hard with shock, gradually softening with sadness. Neither of them spoke.

The sparkling excess of the cave's insides gradually rematerialised, bathing every surface in light. Arthur's attention was once again drawn to the one spot that remained clothed in darkness: the Lake of the Dead. He thought he glimpsed a face in the water. It must have been just his imagination because the face was much larger than a human's head, probably larger than the boat in which they were sitting, and yet it looked exactly like the face of the sorceress Nimueh; Arthur did not know how he even knew those features, for she had died just before his birth. Enormous eyeballs turned slowly until they were focussed on Arthur, and the corners of the gigantic mouth curved into a mysterious smile.

For a while the lake seemed to be following them on their way back. Hours later, when they had found their way back to the ledge, Dagonet was already dead. The infection on Arthur's foot had healed as though it had never been; a news which Uther greeted with great elation. Leon's crew returned unscathed. The third boat was never seen again.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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

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

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

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

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

His name: Merlin.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

It began with a summons.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But that could not be right, could it?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"And that would be Merlin?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Balinor gestured at the dark entrance, smiling almost proudly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Are you all right?" Merlin asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The boy threw his head back in laughter.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Do you honestly expect me to say no?"

"It seemed like the polite thing to ask."

And so the banter started up again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I… I do not know!"

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

"I am a dragonlord," Merlin blurted.

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

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

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

"Yes, I am Gaius."

"Only because Balinor said…"

"Yes?"

"That Gaius is a woman."

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

"Are you incubating?" Merlin asked in surprise.

An eyebrow sailed heavenwards while its counterpart lowered dangerously.

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

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

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

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

"What?"

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

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

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

"Balinor said that was the plan."

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

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

Gaius tutted at him, looking annoyed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Nearly everyone in Camelot seemed to be occupied with the efforts of procuring food or rebuilding the town. Merlin thought to include himself in these efforts. He was no hunter and had no skill for carpentry but at home he used to work on the fields so he thought he could be of some use. But upon asking around he learnt that the new grain would not be sown until the soil had recovered from the Blight and that could take a long time, since water, which could help the process along, was also a scarcity. The men raising new buildings herded him away, saying he barely looked strong enough to lift an empty basket and he'd only be under foot. In the end he joined the group of women and children who were busy clearing away the rubble. As the only man among them, he was made to lift heavy pillars of crystal and pull half-decayed woven frames out of stinking heaps of mud while others cleaned them so that they could be hauled out of the way. The crystals were similar to the building material of Ealdor's sun domes, mostly translucent grey, with irregular formations of bright colours mixed into it. Their surfaces were rough and uneven, and bore no obvious tool marks. They were probably not cut to shape, but used as they had been found. They were buried underneath a slimy, brown, malodorous sludge, the leftovers from the material they had daubed onto the wicker frames to rebuild walls after they had been consumed by the flood.

The work was made a lot harder by a band of young pranksters who, instead of helping, made mischief by throwing rocks at him to see if they could make him drop whatever he was holding. They ran away when their mothers scolded them but never stayed away for too long. Merlin came close to dropping a portion of a wall on someone when a small but sharp rock hit his hand, but someone else slipped underneath it in the last minute and took half its weight off him. He looked over his shoulder and discovered that it was a young woman.

"I'm Gwenhwyfar," she said with a kind smile. "But," she added, "nowadays people call me just Gwen." She sounded hesitant, as though she did not know what to expect from Merlin. "Well, apart from this certain someone." She grimaced, as though she thought the name might make her seem pretentious.

"Nice to meet you, Gwen," Merlin smiled and then offered his name. He tried to offer her a hand to shake as well but it turned into an awkward greeting as both of them were weighed down by the pillar they were holding. "So, tell me! Who dares call someone as lovely as you Gwenhwyfar? I'd never do that!" His teasing provoked another smile, this time a mischievous one.

"Oh, there's someone here called Arthur who does. He's a bully," she said, but her tone told Merlin that she was joking.

"Already met him." Merlin nodded, trying to sound wry. The children were running around his feet again, but this time they had been persuaded to throw the small stones they collected into the chasm instead of at Merlin. Still, he followed them with a wary eye in case one of them changed their mind about it. But that didn't happen. Soon, the space around their legs was free of the debris and they were liberated of their burden by a few able-bodied men who carried it away to be used as building material in a new house.

Merlin wanted to know what happened to cause all this devastation but he did not need to ask. "The Great Dragon gives and the Great Dragon takes it away," she shrugged, seeming so unconcerned that Merlin thought something like this must be an everyday occurrence, even if on a smaller scale. But being out of town apparently made him unlikely to know, and Gwen readily explained about the strange flood.

"Thank you for helping with this." Gwen turned to him when their hands were free again. Merlin was busy rubbing his sore arms, which she saw and remarked upon. "There's a man's job, but do you see any one of them here?" She had been trying to be supportive but ended up sounding disparaging, which she realised and then there was a bit of an awkward silence before she blurted out, "Not that I don't think you're not a man! But you wouldn't have been able to hold that heavy thing on your own for long."

"No?" Merlin quipped.

"Well, you don't look like one of those muscley fellows."

"Thanks." Merlin teased. It wasn't nice of him, as she looked more and more upset with every faux pas she committed.

"I mean, I'm sure you're stronger than you look…"

Merlin finally took pity on her. "Not especially," he admitted, giving her a cheeky grin to show he wasn't offended and was rewarded for it with a weak punch to his shoulder. Then someone pushed a shovel into Merlin's hands and he was waved back to work; Gwen grabbed another one and followed him to the next piece of rubble that needed to be dug out of the muck.

"You could have just said you're a superhero in disguise," she teased. "I haven't seen you around before, so I'd probably have believed it."

"I like to think honesty's one of my better qualities." Merlin wondered if she was flirting with him. "So why does Arthur call you Gwenhwyfar?" Merlin asked when he got bored of the silence. "Apart from being a bully, of course."

Gwen giggled at that but then her expression became more serious with a hint of half-forgotten disappointment clouding the shine of cheerfulness in her eyes.

"I used to be an acolyte," she said, as though confessing to something shameful. Merlin wondered why. From everything he had heard from her and what he had seen of the priestesses who were walking around the lower town, conducting whatever business of their own they had, and the way the townsfolk treated them, he would have thought that being a priestess afforded one a certain amount of prestige and status. It was probably the reason she no longer was one that she was ashamed of. He did not want to ask but his eyes must have betrayed his curiosity and she answered his unvoiced question nevertheless.

"I was always late." She shrugged.

Merlin was not familiar enough with Camelot's religion to know what that meant but he was sure it implied more than arriving late at scheduled events. Afterwards, he asked Gaius about the priestesses and learnt that, unlike Ealdor's volunteers at the Dragonlord's shrine, they had nothing to do with the Great Dragon. Their primary role was to account for the passing of time. (The secondary was to preserve the Old Religion's tenets.) The priestesses lived together in close quarters until the rhythms of their bodies established synchronicity with each other, and they chose their high priestess based on punctuality. Only maidens untouched by men were allowed into the mysteries of Chronometry, and when Merlin asked what those were, Gaius said that Merlin ought to be able to guess and did not seem inclined to say anything more on the matter.

But even without this knowledge Merlin could tell that it affected Gwen more deeply than she let it on.

"So they threw you out? I was never on time when it was my shift either but no one tried to forbid me to become a farmer. People are cruel," Merlin said, doing his best to cheer her up and not betray his ignorance.

"You're not funny," she said, grimacing, but her grin rather belied her words. "Besides, the Lady Morgana is not cruel. She always told me I must be touched by time, but I think she just said that to make me feel better. She was always very kind to me."

Merlin secretly thought that the stone-faced woman he saw walking around town, back rigid, not greeting anyone, not even looking at people, as though she were above base courtesy, seemed anything but kind, but he did not know her and Gwen actually did, so he wasn't going to say any of that.

"So, are you?" he asked instead.

"What? Touched by time?" Gwen seemed to find his question funny. "Honestly? I don't think so. I mean, I wouldn't even want to be. Who would like to just go to sleep one day and wake up to their grandchildren already having grandchildren and everyone they knew long dead?"

"That was just a children's tale, wasn't it?"

Merlin had heard stories like that told in Ealdor to scare little ones from wandering away from the main area to the dark, unused corridors deeper down. Of course, some of those stories also said there were terrible beings living down there; things that looked human but were skin and bone and were afraid of the light; they were like the dead walking but they never really died; they ate the children – and sometimes even grown men – who wandered into their territory alone.

"It's happened to my father." She shrugged and smiled awkwardly. "Well, something like it. He asked a girl to marry him – and then ended up wedding her granddaughter."

A commotion drew both of their attention to the far end of the square that the lack of houses created. The work crowd around them began to thin, people put down whatever they were doing and started walking toward the castle.

"Come," Gwen said, making sure that the beam they had been supporting remained as stable as it could get, with one half of it still buried beneath rubble, and tugged Merlin after her.

"But what about--?" Merlin gestured behind him, only to see that already fresh workforce started filling up the vacated places.

"They – as opposed to you and me – have already slept and eaten. Aren't you hungry? Hurry up or there won't be anything left by the time we finally get there," Gwen yelled, running ahead and laughing.

Merlin caught up to her.

"We also worked shifts at home," he said, just to say something. People in Ealdor utilized the dark hours for field work as those who spent longer time exposed to the blue radiation under the thin crystal domes tended to meet a horrid and drawn-out end.

Camelot's great hall, the place where feasts were held in times when food was plentiful, was stuffed full with people and densely set tables and benches. After the Blight, everyone was required to surrender everything edible to the Kingdom's stores, but considering that half the buildings in the lower town had succumbed to water damage from the flood, and those that still stood were in danger of collapsing, families would not have been able to cook for themselves separately. So the King decreed that all food was to be shared and rationed, and everyone, regardless of the quantity they provided, was to be fed by the castle's kitchens.

The tables had been already set. Gwen led them to one in the back where Merlin recognised some of the builders who took the beams and other larger pieces they had to steady off their shoulders after they had been freed from the rubble. Gwen introduced them as she had already known them, although they were all new arrivals. But after that necessary courtesy, Merlin was unable to command her attention. It was firmly fixed on a man with dark hair and dark eyes glinting with kindness set in a handsome face. His name was Lancelot. Merlin turned to his left-side neighbour for conversation, but Percival, a big, strapping lad, proved either very laconic or just more interested in his food. So in the end, he kept his attention occupied with the aggressive and increasingly unsuccessful but ultimately very amusing attempts at flirting which Gwaine, his opposite neighbour, inflicted on three maids sitting a little farther down. He was a good sport about it, occasionally winking at Merlin and playing it up even more when it became clear that he was not succeeding.

After the meal, Gwen asked if he had a place to sleep. Apparently, most people did not have one, and they were provided temporary accommodations in the castle. Granted, they were not any grand accommodations, just a straw mattress, some blankets, and roof over their heads but most of them were grateful to have even as much. People did not like to sleep outdoors after a Blight. Not because it was prone to happen again, but because they were reminded just how quickly their lives could be forfeit, subjected to the whims of some higher power.

Merlin thanked her but waved her off. First, he intended to return to Gaius.

Gaius was busy tending injuries when Merlin found him. He thought Gaius had entirely forgotten about his promise to look into Merlin's problem, although what he said was that he was thinking about it. Merlin did not blame him; he understood that life did not stand still for Merlin's convenience and he was not Gaius's highest priority. Gaius probably felt guilty, though, because he offered Merlin the bed he kept for his patients. Merlin did not demur.

He only noticed how tired he was when he stretched out on the thin mattress. It smelt of rotting grass but not of other people or the stench of illness. Gaius must have kept it fresh to be ready for emergencies. Merlin kicked off his shoes and changed out of the clothes he had been wearing ever since the morning he readied himself for the journey through the tunnel. They would need a good wash, especially after today, as soon as Camelot could spare the water for such conveniences. For now, he just left them in a pile in the corner of the room.

However when he closed his eyes, Merlin could not fall asleep, however tired he was. The ever-present brightness seared through his eyelids and kept him awake. The room did not even have a window; it was as though the light came from its walls. Merlin could not imagine how people in Camelot ever managed to fall asleep like this. He turned this way and that, but in the end, he had to resort to the same trick as before, drawing his dark coat over his head.

His sleep was uneasy; hazy dreams kept him from real rest, and in these dreams, he was searching, but for what he was searching, he had no idea. He was forever wandering Camelot's passageways, but it seemed as though he was the only living soul in the entire building. He did not meet anyone, although he felt other presences around, like ghostly impressions trapped within the liquid walls, heard inarticulate echoes of words spoken but not the words themselves, glimpsed a swirl of colour here and there from the clothes of figures moving just outside his range of perception.

After an indeterminate time, he reached an archway that did not look any different from all the other archways which he had passed on his way here but felt different. When he stood in front of it, he heard a soft melody full of pain and yearning. It called to him. Merlin stepped through the archway and found himself in darkness. His naked soles smacked on cold stone as he walked down unseen stairs. He was not afraid of falling despite not being able to see anything; the melody guided him, and he felt secure in the knowledge that whoever sent it would not let him come to harm.

Once again, he did not know how long he wandered in the dark; time did not seem to have a meaning. One moment, it seemed to have been an eternity, the next, the melody changed and it felt as though he had only just began his journey. But then, between one step and the next, he suddenly found himself out of the darkness and engulfed in light.

It was brighter than looking into the sun, brighter than the golden glow that greeted him when he had stepped out of the dark tunnel into the Great Dragon. His eyes could not get used to it. They protested by leaking moisture, so he had to squint and shield them with his hands. He rubbed away the tears, and through the tunnel of his fingers, he saw himself surrounded by a crystal dome. At first it looked just like the domes in Ealdor, but then the details became clearer and he discovered that it was actually larger, so much larger, probably large enough to engulf his home with all its domes and corridors and undiscovered dark places where horrors lived.

The melody which had summoned him disappeared in the noise that surrounded him until Merlin listened some more and realised the noise was the melody: it was the babbling of brooks, roaring of waterfalls, tinkling of water drops falling on crystal. The crystals, too, were all humming a tune, resonating on their own frequency, sometimes louder, sometimes quieter, and all of that added up and became a song.

Merlin tried to find the water to quench his thirst and then he saw that there was water all around him. Streaming and rippling, surging like a living being. And then, somehow, Merlin knew that it was alive. Alive and talking to him, but it was not a language he understood.

He looked into a crystal that stood nearby, taller than he himself, and saw his own image reflected back at him. But it was not just an image for he looked different, older perhaps or younger. He was alone in a dark place, fighting some invisible foe, and his death loomed near. Merlin could not look away.

He finally tore his gaze from the image, but it had been burned into his mind. He looked at other crystals instead, careful not to let his mind be captured again by the images, and in all of them, he saw some aspect of himself battling and arguing and laughing and loving, but some crystals showed him caged, his eyes wide and features locked into a terrified snarl.

He felt trapped, running while his feet were frozen to the ground, looking for a way to get free. And then he saw them, the things that held him imprisoned: crude, unnatural structures built around the crystals, choking the living streams, disfiguring their perfect shape into something ugly. Something trapped and forced into submission. He understood then: the same submission, the same impotent anger and fear was what he saw on his reflections. It stared back at him from those crystals. It was the present, it was the past, it was the future.

But there was another future for him: one of which he had only seen a few, where he was happy and valued and free to be himself. He wanted that future. The melody surged, encouraging, empowering. And since this was a dream, he knew it was in his power to make that future happen.

So he did.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Old Religion is called old because its origins are rooted in our remote past, in the time before the Ascension. Until the reign of Arthur Pendragon's father, Uther, the Church of Chronometry had been closely tied with the mysteries of the Old Religion but Uther declared its teachings too similar to sorcery and thus, they went out of official practice. Not many people know now but the Old Religion also concerns itself with Time's passing. Instead of just one dogma which claims absolute authority over describing the nature of Time, there exist several, often contradictory theories regarding Time within the Old Religion. The most important – and least comprehensible to the thinking of the non-scholarly mind – is a theory of so-called Relativity which asserts a dependence between Time's passing, velocity, and the gravitational pull between two bodies. This theory is supposed to have originated at the beginning of Time, before the era of men, when only the simplest beings existed in the universe, as it was allegedly formulated by a rock. (Modern scholars have postulated a hypothesis that the 'rock' might be a simplistic description of a Dragon but no factual proof has emerged since to support its veracity.)

According to our records, when discussing the theory, the following apocryphal conversation took place between the young Dragonlord and his mentor:

"So an unladen swallow would go faster and require less time travelling from one side of a dome to the other than one carrying a coconut?" Merlin said.

"Indeed, just the opposite," his mentor countered. "The theory of relativity predicates that if someone goes close to a large centre of gravity – a heavy body, such as a coconut, time slows down for them."

"But that would just mean people observing from afar would perceive it as taking longer, wouldn't it?" the Dragonlord observed.

"Indeed that is so. A very good observation, Merlin," the mentor praised.

This conversation, while most likely entirely fictional, is used to demonstrate the young Dragonlord's budding mental powers which, even at such a young age, were well beyond the capabilities of his peers.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"What are you doing here? Answer me, boy!"

Merlin was woken by a sharp voice and a boot toe nudging at his knee. He sat up and blinked until he could focus his vision to see the forbidding figure of King Uther looming above him. The King's face was like stone, his small eyes squinting down at Merlin with disapproval. At the same time Merlin realised that he was not lying on his mattress but on the hard stone floor in one of Camelot's rarely-used corridors. His heart picked up, beating a wild drum, and the cold fingers of apprehension gripped his guts. Merlin clutched his blanket, which somehow made it here with him.

He distinctly remembered falling into a restive sleep on Gaius's uncomfortable spare cot, with the inescapable golden gleam shooting arrows of orange starbursts through his tortured eyelids and a stale-smelling, scratchy blanket pulled over his head. When he tried to think past that, his mind conjured up hazy memories of walking through corridors and down a dark passage into a cave with gleaming crystal walls but that was surely just a dream he had, for what else could it have been?

The King was still waiting, his patience waning as his eye slits narrowed with every second.

"I'm sorry, I must have fallen asleep," Merlin said, his voice shaky with starting panic.

"I can see that," Uther spat. "But what, pray tell, was your business being in this part of the castle in the first place?"

"I—" Merlin's sleep-fogged mind desperately searched for an excuse, any excuse that did not include having to tell the King about wandering asleep and possibly doing something he should not have done. Then he saw a flash of movement from the corner of his eye and a small, furry body disappearing within a crack. "Rats!" he blurted.

The King must have thought his exclamation bore relevance to his question but it was clearly not enough of an answer for the strength of his glare did not abate.

"That is," Merlin found himself saying, "my mother always used to say rats sensed catastrophes before they happened and fled to safety even when humans didn't and died of it. We always had an excess of rats in the… um, basement, after a strong flare… the Blight?" he corrected himself hastily.

Uther looked irritated. "Yes, we do have rats as well. Camelot might be more refined, but we have better things to do than fight a rodent infestation at a time like this."

"Oh, that wasn't what I meant." Merlin smiled eagerly. He was warming up to his chosen explanation, and besides, it was actually not a bad idea.

"Then what was your meaning?" Uther enquired.

"I meant, I know they are small and probably smelly but with a good thorough cooking…" He shrugged. "Still meat."

"That is…"

For a second, Uther looked utterly gobsmacked. He recoiled, as though a boil filled with pus had just exploded into his face, took a few more steps back and yelled down the corridor. "Guards!"

The sound of running feet soon became audible. Merlin swallowed when Uther leaned back down.

"What is your name, boy?" he asked.

"Um. It's Merlin."

"Merlin." Uther looked darkly satisfied as he promised, "I'll remember that."

The guards arrived then and Merlin waited numbly while the King gave them orders, probably to seize Merlin and throw him into the darkest dungeon cell. At least there, Merlin's tired mind supplied, he would be able to sleep. But that was not what eventually happened. Merlin watched with bafflement as the King ordered every able hand to be summoned into the tunnels. And so it came to pass that Merlin found himself, alongside Gwen, Lancelot, Percival, Gwaine and countless others, hunting rats.

Thanks to the rush of adrenalin and the cold, Merlin was fully awake when the first stragglers arrived with demands for him to show them the technique of catching rats without poison. Merlin couldn’t just brush them off, citing exhaustion. He had just been woken up after all. Never mind that he felt more tired than he had when he had gone to sleep. There were people scattered all over the corridors, they reported, carrying out the King's orders – and what a clever order that was, they praised. Merlin was too relieved to have avoided punishment to mention anything about it having been his idea.

While his body was occupied with chasing down rats, Merlin's mind was busy contemplating the mysterious circumstances of his awakening. He felt uneasy. A sense of foreboding grew his heart until images of indescribable horrors chased one another in front of his tired eyes. He told himself it was just sleep deprivation, that his dream was just that: a dream conjured up by an exhausted mind, and his sleepwalking ended where the King had found him. Despite this, he could not shake the apprehension that he had done something terrible. Something they all would be paying for.

The news got around that the King ordered a feast to be held at the end of the workday. Pickings were apparently plenty, already enough to last for several more days without rationing, and it was just the beginning.

Arthur even showed up a little later, bearing an old, worn shirt, and a short, heavy metal rod, probably the abandoned hilt of a broken tool. They were the standard rat hunting instruments in Ealdor as rats were too small and agile to be caught otherwise. One used a thick-spun cloth, throwing it over the rat and jumping on it with one's entire bodyweight for optimal effect, and then quickly hit the rat on the head with the rod while it was still trapped by the fabric before they found a way to escape. Merlin really hoped Gaius would not be too upset about the blanket, for he doubted it would survive the hunt.

Granted, in Ealdor, they hunted rats for pest control, not for food, and rat hunting was an activity reserved for children. But Merlin could not help but notice that adults derived just as much fun from the game. Merlin's mouth curved into a grin every time he heard Arthur's triumphant shout or roaring laughter as it echoed through the corridor. Gwen, too, squealed loudly every time she successfully caught a particularly lively one.

They looked different from the rats Merlin was used to: their noses longer, eyes dark. They came in a variety of colours, not just the familiar dark grey that faded so well into the colour of the rock in Ealdor.

"It seems you have your uses after all," Arthur told him, grinning from ear to ear. "Even if that's not in hunting large game." Merlin grinned back.

"Where's the challenge in that?" he said. "Anyone can hit the side of a barn. Catching rats on the other hand requires precision and timing."

Arthur laughed again. Merlin saw people looking up and giving him that soft, proud, almost adoring look which Arthur seemed to frequently elicit in others, which then he pretended not to notice. Perhaps he felt embarrassed as in Merlin's experience looks like that were usually only bestowed on small children or beautiful maidens. Arthur, while young and handsome, was neither of those.

"My father thinks you suffer from a mental affliction, you know. I have to say I'm starting to agree with him."

"Your father?" Merlin tried to remember any man whom he might have met who looked even remotely like Arthur but he could think of no one, or rather, no one remarkable. Most people had been content to listen to his fumbling explanations on rat hunting and had not really talked with him. The only one Merlin had had a proper conversation with had been... "The King is your father!" Merlin squeaked.

Arthur cocked an eyebrow in a way that reminded Merlin of Gaius, his grin turning smug. In retrospect, it should have been obvious; Arthur was the King's son; he was the prince. That explained why everyone deferred to him despite him being barely more than a brat.

A heavy arm hooked around Merlin's shoulder, jolting him out of his unflattering throughts.

"Come now," Arthur said, pitching his voice low enough to prevent potential eavesdroppers from overhearing, and leaning so close that his lips brushed against Merlin's ear and elicited shivers from his tired body. "You can't tell me you truly were down here hunting for rats."

"I haven't been sleeping well," Merlin complained, suddenly too tired to mind his words. "It's too bright everywhere. I'm used to sleeping in the dark."

Arthur gave him an assessing look, eyebrows furrowed. His arm was warm around Merlin's shoulders and now that he stopped working, the boneless exhaustion caught up with him. He felt himself leaning on Arthur, his muscles giving away like rolled out dough.

"You do look as though you could use some sleep," Arthur told him in a contemplative tone then gripped his shoulder and shook Merlin back to momentary wakefulness. "Well, come on, then, Merlin." And then Arthur started dragging him through the corridor with that arm still around his shoulder. He had probably guessed that Merlin would most likely collapse without its support.

"Where are we going?" Merlin mumbled, his tongue suddenly thick and awkward in his mouth.

"You'll see when we're there."

With that answer, all of Merlin's protestations were cut short. Arthur hauled him unceremoniously up an unending stairway, then towed him around corridors, hauled him up some more stairs until they finally arrived at an archway. It was unique among all the other entryways in Camelot that Merlin had seen so far, because it was a dark curtain whose end pooled messily on the floor blocked it from the outside world.

"Here we are," Arthur declared and swept the curtain aside with his free arm. Merlin was pushed through the opening. Arthur followed, and then took his time to carefully to cover up every square inch of the gap. Merlin did not blame him; if he possessed a treasure as great as the room behind the curtain he, too, would guard it jealously. For through the high ceiling of the chamber, Merlin looked out at the endless, star-dotted night at which he had spent so much time staring through Ealdor's tiny windows.

He must have said some of that out loud because Arthur then turned to him and told him the curtain was not there out of jealousy. "People would avoid this floor entirely if the room weren’t covered. They are afraid to catch even a glimpse of this." He gestured at the infinite blackness overhead that without question dominated the room. "Even the servants who ought to be cleaning in here refuse to enter. But would I have brought you here if I wanted to keep it to myself?"

"You're giving me a room?" Merlin asked with awe in his voice.

"Don't be an idiot, Merlin. Of course I'm not giving it to you. It's my room," Arthur corrected and Merlin couldn’t have avoided noticing the possessiveness in his tone, "but I'm willing to share." And that was more than Merlin had expected. Because one night in here would have been reward enough.

Still, tired as he was, he couldn’t help remarking, "There's only one bed."

"So?" Arthur asked as though he saw nothing wrong with that picture. And for all Merlin knew, there might not be, in Camelot. "We probably won't be using it at the same time. But even if we have to, it's big enough for two. I hope you don't smell," Arthur added because their talk was veering towards something that could be deemed too serious for their usual dynamics. Merlin himself could admit that the air was becoming heavy between them, and perhaps there was more to the offer than what Merlin read into it at first glance. So of course Arthur had to disabuse him of that notion.

"It'll be your responsibility to change the bedding every week. And to pick up a bit around here – as thanks for me letting you sleep here."

"I thought this was supposed to be a reward," Merlin complained. Possibly, he was pouting but as dark it was, it probably did not matter.

"Don't be stupid, Merlin," Arthur answered in a blustery voice, "of course it is. I'm the prince. It is an honour to serve me. You realise not many people have that privilege, right?"

"You said just now that they don't want it."

But Arthur was no longer looking at Merlin; he pretended he had not heard him and was already halfway out of the room, from where he yelled back, "Don't forget the feast!" and then was gone.

For a minute, Merlin stared after him, only seeing darkness where the curtain swung back into place and blocked the light from the corridor. Then he shrugged with the casual nonchalance of the deadly tired, stumbled to the bed which he could only barely make out in the weak starlight and tumbled down on top of it, not caring about undressing or pulling the covers over him. He burrowed his nose into the luxurious pillows, taking a deep inhale of the comforting bed-scent, and by the time his lungs exhaled, he was no longer conscious of it.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

One would expect that our way of life has evolved by a great deal since Camelot has its Dragonlord back, and in some ways it has; in others it has not. To this day the only trusted way of measuring time is by the human body's rhythms. The longest a chronometer built by humans remained accurate was twenty-seven cycles. It was a ninety-nine litre water clock with water from Lake Avalon. During its tenure of twenty-seven cycles, no one dared look at it for fear it would show them something they did not want to see.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Merlin woke up just in time for the feast. Pulling aside the black curtain which covered the wall, Merlin found a window and noted, surprised, that the golden glow which had caused him so much grief was gone and the sky had turned to dull grey. It scared him at first. Merlin thought it might be a sign of what he had done while in the grips of a walking dream, but no one else seemed to care.

Thus, Merlin stopped caring as well. After what felt like the best sleep of his life, he'd have had a hard time to hold on to the feeling of guilt, even if he tried. He felt full of energy, but his stomach was empty and the thought of a feast filled him with anticipation. So he made a hasty work of straightening the mussed bedding and only remembered to tug the curtain in front of the doorway back in place after he had already been several steps away but he turned back and did it. Not because he truly believed anyone could be frightened of such a sight but because it gave him satisfaction to ensure no one else, apart from him and Arthur, would be able to catch a glimpse of it.

"Merlin!" Gwen called to him and Merlin halted to wait for her to catch up. Finally, she did and they continued towards the fest hall together. "Where were you?" she asked. "I was looking for you everywhere."

"I was asleep," Merlin said and then he suddenly found he wanted to tell Gwen about the room. "Because I couldn't sleep, it was too bright everywhere, and when I told Arthur, he brought me to his own room and told me I could sleep there." He grinned. Gwen's eyes widened but in terror instead of the awe Merlin had expected to see in them.

"Surely, you're not talking about that cursed room! And Arthur made you sleep there, you say?" Her brows furrowed in dismay for Merlin, and likely disapproval at the prince's actions.

"No, no!" Merlin shook his head, baffled of how she could so misconstrue the meaning of his words. "He did not make me. He told me I could. And it was great!" He gave her an even bigger grin to show he not only didn't mind sleeping in there but loved it, but she clearly wasn't convinced.

"Goodness," she cried out in dismay that was now turned from Arthur at Merlin. "Why would you do such a thing? I don't know how Arthur can stand it either. I'd be deadly afraid to fall off the world's face!"

Her fear looked honest, although Merlin couldn't understand what there was to fear. The castle of Camelot stood on the ground with a stretch of empty space between its top and the no-longer-golden sky and Arthur's room was not even on its highest floor; clearly the view was only an illusion. But Gwen was a clever girl; she must know that too.

"The Dragon wouldn't let us fall," he finally said for lack of a better explanation.

It did not convince her because she just rolled her eyes, annoyed, saying, "Until one day it does, and don't say then I didn't warn you!" And with that, she disappeared among the crowd gathered inside the feast hall where they had just arrived.

Merlin did not like the idea of Gwen angry with him, especially as he couldn't comprehend the reason. Perhaps he could ask Gaius about it, and just when he thought that, he spotted the old physician standing next to a long table grandiosely done up in meat dishes and a wondrously mismatched set of fancy plates and gleaming silverware. Merlin couldn't even care that most of the meat was rat; he was so hungry he would have eaten it if it still had been in its fur. But it did not; all the displayed meat looked deliciously prepared, with some vegetables and bread sparsely arranged around them, playing more the role of garnish than side dish.

But for some reason unfathomable to Merlin, no one was eating.

Merlin pushed through the throngs of people until he reached Gaius's side, trying to draw as little attention to his late appearance from others as possible. Then he cleared his throat, hoping Gaius would hear in the surrounding din. Gaius whirled around, his features already a mask of heavy disapproval even before he knew who had disturbed him. Merlin made an attempt at a silently greeting, but as soon as he was spotted, Gaius's fingers curled around his arm and he began pulling him towards the front of the crowd. Merlin's first reaction was to dig in his heels. Gaius levelled him with an eyebrow when Merlin sat down next to him, and that was enough to bring back all the buried feelings of guilt and foreboding that he had so readily forgotten at the prospect of a good night's sleep and a full stomach.

"Gaius, I have to tell you something," he hissed.

Gaius stopped dragging, but only long enough to hiss back, "Later, Merlin."

"No," Merlin insisted. "It's important."

"I'm sure it can wait until the feast. You're late enough as it is. I hear you spent your day productively." There was a tiny smile in the corners of Gaius's mouth that suggested he approved of Merlin, but they still needed to go wherever he was dragging Merlin so insistently.

"That's just it," Merlin said, not letting himself be dragged any farther. Their struggle was causing a slight commotion, so Gaius finally gave in and stood still but he did not look as though he was prepared to listen. "I didn't intend to disappear on you this morning. I went to sleep in the cot and I woke up later in a corridor. I think I was sleepwalking and my dreams they were… Gaius, I think I did something bad."

That seemed to finally check Gaius. "While you were asleep?"

"Yes. Exactly!"

Gaius fixed Merlin with a long, searching stare, then he blinked and his posture relaxed.

"I'm sure it's nothing, Merlin," he said, trying for a comforting tone. That was not what Merlin needed. "You must have eaten something that was a bit spoiled – not an uncommon occurrence when food is scarce – and it gave you some confusing dreams." Gaius patted Merlin's arm paternally. Merlin noticed too late that he only used the gesture as a diversion because the pat then turned into a grip and Merlin found himself being jerked forward once again, so quickly that this time he could only follow if he didn't intend to fall. By then, it was too late, for Uther's gaze was aimed straight at Merlin, and the iron intensity of his eyes was no less frightening now when he wasn't witnessing it through a mist of exhaustion.

"Sire," Gaius said, as though they weren't already the focus of everyone's attention nearby. Not even Arthur's smirk could give Merlin any comfort from the uncomfortable stares, especially when he remembered that Arthur had a mischievous streak he liked to direct at Merlin in the most inconvenient times.

But then Uther's eyes seemed to thaw and the corners of his thin lips pulled upwards into a painfully measured smile and his eyes glistened with what looked like triumph.

"Ah, the guest of honour has finally arrived," he said in a booming voice, which effortlessly reached every corner of the large hall, silencing all the murmured conversations at once.

"Let it be known," Uther continued, his gaze sweeping over the gathered crowd before alighting on Merlin once again, "that today's feast is held in honour of this young man, Merlin,—" When his name was said, the King's heavy hand fell on Merlin's shoulder like a warning; Merlin was hard pressed not to wince. "—who is to thank for our good luck that has Camelot's stores filled with supplies once again, and the fear of famine has been averted. For that, Camelot owes him thanks."

And then the King turned his eyes on Merlin again with an expectant air. A few seconds of heavy silence followed. Gaius's elbow poked none-too-gently into his side; it was clear he was expected to say something.

"It was nothing," Merlin muttered weakly. He had no practice in being put into the focus of everyone's attention and improvising speeches without any forewarning.

The King's eyes narrowed imperceptibly but, thankfully, he did not expect a speech from Merlin. He nodded, satisfied with Merlin's contribution, and then turned back to addressing his subjects with a grandiose arm gesture, smile frozen onto his face. "Let the feast commence."

Then the silence which had been fraught with anticipation lifted and everyone started moving towards the heavily laden tables. Merlin attempted to follow in Gaius's wake but an arm curling around his shoulder and directing him into the opposite direction checked him. Arthur's gloating laughter in his ear left no doubts about the identity of the interloper.

"Your first public appearance, Merlin," Arthur said with a grin. "Not your most shining moment."

"First and last, hopefully," Merlin muttered, pretending affront, but it was just that, a pretence, because the wonder over Arthur's gift had still not abated in his heart and because behind Arthur's teasing was an obvious attempt to ease Merlin's discomfort at having been put upon the spot so unexpectedly. Merlin's face must have betrayed his real feelings on the matter, because Arthur only grinned.

"There's something about you, Merlin. Can't quite put my finger on it," he said, winking.

"Dear Arthur, it certainly looks as though you do manage putting a finger on it just fine; in fact I'd say there's more on it than just a finger." The elegantly mocking voice belonged to the Lady Morgana.

Arthur flinched in surprise and his face turned a blotchy pink. He couldn't quite look either of them in the eye. And, Merlin noted with a curious warmth filling his chest, he made no attempt to deny Morgana's insinuations.

The Lady winked at Merlin and then extended an arm towards Arthur. "Shall we?"

Arthur finally let go of Merlin's shoulder with a shrug and a last smile, and then he shoved Merlin towards one of the long tables where Gaius was already sitting.

Merlin was glad to see that Gaius kept a space waiting next to him.

Gwen sat on the other side of the empty seat, but when she looked up at Merlin from her conversation she no longer seemed angry with him – possibly because Lancelot's presence made her forget everything else. Lancelot's friend, Percival, was there as well but Merlin couldn't see Gwaine anywhere nearby. Instead, there was a young man sitting by Gwen's other side who was introduced to Merlin as Gwen's brother, Elyan.

The courses were all well-made. Rat meat was somewhat stringy but, apart from the roast dish, it was cut in small squares and cooked into stews or soups with plenty of herbs and strong-flavoured vegetables so that one could barely discern a taste.

"Tastes like chicken," Gwen said with a flushed smile on her face.

Of what little of the meat he could taste under all the herbs, Merlin thought it tasted nothing like chicken, but everyone, even Gaius, readily agreed with her before tucking in enthusiastically.

At first, Merlin naturally turned towards Gaius for company, attempting to continue their interrupted conversation and try to convince Gaius to take Merlin seriously. This was, however, no the time and place to discuss the matter, Gaius's warning look told him that as well, so Merlin quieted the upheaval in his heart and promised himself to take time and discuss everything with the man that Balinor had entrusted with mentoring Merlin. But he did not think that if he started talking with Gaius, he could stay on a neutral topic for long, so instead he intruded on the conversation between Gwen and Lancelot. They did not seem to mind. In fact, Lancelot seemed almost glad of the reprieve, not because he did not like talking with Gwen, but because he seemed to prefer listening to her talk while he himself gazed at her adoringly in silence.

While flattered, Gwen must have felt self-conscious over all that focussed attention, for she readily struck up a conversation with Merlin, familiarising him with Camelot. The topic was of interest to Lancelot and Percival as well. They had come from tiny homesteads outside Camelot, just as Merlin was believed to have done. Gwen did not look the gossipy type, but a little while later, Merlin would be forced to revise his earlier assessment.

From where he was sitting, Merlin had a good view at the high table, so the conversation flowed naturally into talk about its occupants. Merlin learnt that Uther had become king when he had married the twice-widowed queen Igraine, that Arthur was his only child because the queen died in childbirth, thanks to the treachery of a mad sorceress named Nimueh.

"Of course, no one knew she was a sorceress then. She replaced the Queen in the office of high priestess when Igraine decided to marry. They were said to be old friends; they practically grew up together. But then she ended up murdering the queen and no one knows what happened to Nimueh after that. She was probably just crazy; all sorcerers are."

"They are?" Merlin asked, baffled, as he had not expected sweet, good-hearted Gwen to be revealed as someone who passes such a harsh judgement on someone without even knowing them.

"Well, that's how they all inevitably turn out, right?" She said as if that was not a guess but hard, unmovable fact. "No one knows why, they just start acting weird one moment, then go on a rampage and start killing children or summoning earthquakes."

Lancelot seemed uncomfortable with the direction their conversation had taken as well, because he spoke up the first time since Merlin had sat down at their table and suggested they find a less gruesome topic to go with the meal. And that was when Gwaine arrived, unapologetically late and just as obviously dishevelled and bouncy with some sort of energy that was not hard to guess at, and started asking about the "icy beauty" who sat on Uther's other side. Gwen, feeling self-conscious with the newest faux pas she had committed, dived into the next offered piece of gossip without a word of complaint.

"She's the Lady Morgana, born from Queen Igraine's first marriage. Same age as Uther, but you wouldn't be able to tell that about her. If anyone here is touched by time, it's her," she said, turning to Merlin and confusing the rest of the table with that non-sequitur, but she didn't seem to notice. "Although I heard the late Queen was the same. Who knows how long she'd have lived if not for… Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to…"

This time, it was Gwaine who came to her rescue, almost effortlessly diverting from the touchy subject.

"So, do you think she'd give me the time of the day?"

Gwen giggled. She still seemed nervous but the sound of it was enough to lift the heaviness from their minds. "Unlikely, as she's the High Priestess and has been ever since… you know."

"The High Priestess of Time must have a lot of it to give away for free," Gwaine leered. "I heard rumours that she and the King—"

"No." Gwen outright laughed as if the mere concept was unimaginable to her. "She'd never do that."

"Why not? No one had to know."

"Don't be absurd. She's the high priestess. If anything happened, it'd be impossible for her to hide it."

But Gwaine didn't let himself be beaten.

"Perhaps she has a sister."

"She does." Gwen grimaced, as though she had bit into something foul. "She has an older sister named Morgause."

"Oh, I don't mind if a lady is a bit more mature, and is this Morgause is as good looking as her…"

"She isn't." Gwen interrupted Gwaine's inappropriate fantasies. "She might have been, once. But she had been caught inside a burning building and the fire disfigured her face. She had been the one they considered for the office of high priestess before Morgana was chosen, but Morgause was unwilling to appear in public, and public appearances at the turn of every cycle are a large part of being high priestess."

There was silence, and to Merlin's surprise, Gwaine looked genuinely sad about someone suffering such a fate. Or at least about it reducing the number of beautiful girls for him to bed by one.

"Poor girl. She must have been devastated," an unfamiliar voice said, which turned out to belong to Percival. He was not a man given to excessive chatter, and so his voice had remained largely unfamiliar to Merlin despite the fact that he had made Percival's acquaintance at the same time he had met the others.

"I never met her, personally. They say only Morgana and a select few are allowed to see her but that those who mistake her for weak and try to turn to her with pity or compassion are met with her sharp tongue. There used to be even talk among the lower ranks of acolytes that she's the real governing power behind Morgana's pretty face."

"You don't think that's true, then?"

"No." Gwen snorted, then blushed and stole a quick glimpse of Lancelot, who only continued smiling at her fondly. "I don't know Morgause, as I said, but Morgana would never let herself to be controlled by anyone, be that man or woman, kin or king." She waved off the idea as clearly preposterous. "As I said, it's just talk."

"All right, then," Gwaine butted in again, seemingly quickly bored with any halfway serious topic. "How do you rate my chances with the princess?"

That provoked another snort from Gwen, and this time she didn't even try to conceal her less-than-ladylike behaviour. But that was all right because most everyone who overheard the question reacted the same way – even Gaius, on Merlin's other side.

"You mean, Arthur? Prince Arthur? Oh, Gwaine!" She slapped him on the arm. Gwaine shrugged, entirely unapologetic.

"Ah, I was hoping my eyes deceived me. Well, that's a shame. He should have been born a woman. He'd make a pretty, pretty princess with those eyes and that fine bone structure, not to mention the pretty hair."

Everyone laughed but Merlin silently agreed with that assessment, apart from the bit that lamented Arthur's maleness, because Arthur was just right exactly the way he was.

"And that sour-faced fellow Morgana's talking to?" Gwaine wanted to know when the topic of Arthur was exhausted.

"Lady Morgana," Gwen corrected but seemed agreeable enough to answer the question. "That's Lord Agravaine, the late Queen's younger brother." Agravaine looked a thoroughly unpleasant man; the smile on his face looked so false Merlin was surprised anyone would willingly seek his company.

"Who pissed into his rat soup?" Gwaine asked after Merlin observed Lord Agravaine throw a resentful glance at the other side of the table where Arthur's laughter rang out a bit too loudly, before feigning pleasantness and turning back to the Lady Morgana.

Apparently, the person of Agravaine was a popular source of gossip among the people of Camelot, chiefly owing to his own readiness to speak disparagingly of anyone he saw as less than himself, and a great many people fell short of his self-defined standard.

"He's jealous of Arthur because he wanted to be the next Pendragon," Gwen imparted the knowledge with gusto. "But when Uther abdicated the post, he named Arthur his successor, so Arthur is Pendragon now. Lord Agravaine thinks he's too young and brash, but that's not true. Agravaine expected Arthur to fail, but all the knights say the Dragon seems to favour Arthur, for they never had an easier time convincing it to do their bidding than since Arthur became their leader."

He abdicated?" Merlin asked, acting surprised and hoping to trick Gwen into talking more. "Why would he do that?" What he really wanted to do was to ask Gaius what the title Pendragon meant past the obvious: the leader of Camelot's knights. The word awoke a dark, vicious feeling in his mind, one he was hard pressed to associate with Arthur's person.

"Rumours are, ever since the Queen died, he cannot bear to descend into the Dragon's heart because that's where Nimueh… but that might be just a rumour as well. Perhaps Uther is just a good enough king to acknowledge—do you hear that?"

A peculiar noise filled the hall as the din of separate conversations gradually died down. People at other tables had been noticing it as well and wanted to know its cause. Merlin thought it was similar to the sound of when he had accidentally upended a basket of his mother's sewing needles over the floor. This noise was like a choir of tiny, sharp objects impacting on the roof, on the castle walls, on the ground, but this was no basketful, for the noise had no beginning and no end. It was a constant battery of tiny projectiles.

People were already rising; the more impatient ran towards the exit. The rest followed more sedately, not because everyone else remained calm, but because the crowd had already thickened and one could only get through though the archways after those in front had already passed. Merlin lost Gaius in the melee but managed to keep his sight on the back of Percival's head because it towered above the rest. The tension rose as the screaming began outside; everyone still trapped in the castle wanted to know what was happening, and the press of the crowd got so bad Merlin had to work hard not to fall or he'd be trampled on the spot. And then, the mob finally reached the main stairs and swarmed out to the courtyard. The crush slackened where the people in front of him had finally space to spread. That was when he first looked up, his line of sight no longer restricted to the surrounding bodies, and stopped dead.

The sky was a dark, rusty brown colour now, and water fell from up high. That was the noise everyone heard. The water was the same colour as the sky: the colour of diluted blood. It hurtled down in tiny, cold drops that pricked the skin when they hit and punched deep holes into the hard ground. In the courtyard, the moisture gathered into fast-flowing currents, digging deep furrows into the ground and rolling over rocks and the still uncleared rubble in dirty-red waves.

It was disquieting to see and feel water just fall like that; a seemingly unending torrent. Merlin's imagination was busy conjuring images of all that water flooding the fields, the castle being eventually submerged and people drowning. In Ealdor, Merlin had not witnessed anything like it and judging from everyone's reactions, it must not have been an everyday occurrence in Camelot either. But the sight and the cold and the vague fears were not the worst of it. The water had started to melt old and newly raised buildings from the thatch down. A few of the unfinished ones had already dissolved into bubbling piles of odorous slime; those that were roofed held somewhat better, but it was clear eventually the same fate would befall them as well. They made the entire town smell like dung.

People were running around, trying to save whatever they could from their ruined, unsafe homes. Children left on their own stood crying, buffeted left and right by the dirty torrents swirling around their ankles, sometimes even coming up to their knees. Red drops rolled down their messy faces, tainting their white shifts with the colour of blood. Into the noise of panic and chaos cut the deep tolling of Camelot's large bell and for a second, there was silence over the harsh drum of the endlessly falling water drops. From then on, the knights took control.

The King stood on the balcony on top of the main stairway and surveyed the order being restored, brow furrowed by worry. Gaius had seized hold of Merlin's arm, keeping him from joining the relief effort, so he now bore unwitting witness to their exchange. It was not a long conversation.

"Gaius, find out what can be done," the King ordered, his eyes following, unseeing, the movements of a shining crown moving around within a flurry of dark-haired heads.

"I'll see to it right away, Sire. Come, Merlin, you can help me with my research." The grip on Merlin's arm tightened before it slipped away; Merlin realised only belatedly that it was Gaius's code for wanting to speak with him away from prying eyes and ears and the reason was not hard to guess. Apprehension gripped Merlin's guts, colder than the falling water.

"Do you believe me now?" Merlin whirled on Gaius when the ill-fitting door to the physician's chambers slammed shut behind his back. "It's happening because of me. All of it is my fault."

"Merlin." Gaius sighed, looking troubled but whether that was because of Merlin or because of the situation in general was hard to say. "You don't know that."

"So, you're saying that this happened before and it has nothing to do with whatever I did while I was supposed to be asleep?"

"As much as the King likes to assume the opposite, the Dragon is not wholly under Camelot's control." There was a pregnant pause; Merlin suspected that this was not something Gaius would have said to just anyone. "Its behaviour is unpredictable at best. Arthur would tell you the same."

"Because he's the Pendragon?" Merlin demanded and the word sounded like a curse from his mouth. Gaius looked disturbed by it. Merlin saw that he was mentally preparing himself for a lengthy dissemination of the topic and there was no time for that, so Merlin pre-empted it by saying, "I could be helping them. Why am I even here?"

Gaius's answer was infuriatingly calm and logical. "I need you here because you're a Dragonlord. You're our best chance to work out what's happening."

"But I don't know anything! I'm useless."

"Sit down and start reading. You never know, something might come to you."

"Reading?"

"You can read, can't you?"

But Gaius did not wait for an answer. He slammed down a heavy tome in front of Merlin who, to his surprise, found that he indeed could read what was written in it, even though the writing looked nothing like the letters his mother had taught him – which had only been enough to make and read inventories.

"Gaius? Why does this writing look familiar when I've never seen anything like this before?" he asked tentatively.

"I think I have an explanation," Gaius mused. "The aboriginals had a technique called genetic memory, to pass down knowledge to the next generation."

"And what does 'genetic' mean? I've never heard of such a thing," Merlin grumbled.

"If I had another word for it, I'd be using that, now, wouldn’t I?" Gaius retorted sharply, bestowing Merlin with a pointed glance from underneath a dangerously lowered eyebrow. "It means that you are already born with all the skills and all the knowledge that marks you as a dragonlord. Normally, as dragonlords mature, their minds develop the ability to access that knowledge."

"Am I defective, then?" Merlin asked, fearing that was the case. "Can I be taught instead?"

But Gaius only smiled gently. "You are not defective, my boy. Merely too young."

"Oh." Merlin swallowed down his relief.

"I'm hoping that reading these books may hasten the process, though."

So Merlin went back to his efforts. But the text in the book made no sense. Or, it might have made sense but Merlin felt as though he forgot every sentence he read by the time he reached its end. He should have lost interest; he should have gone back and read it again. He did neither. He read the words one after another, and their meaning touched the mere surface of his mind and then flitted away by the time his eyes had glided over them, and still he couldn’t stop. It was utter nonsense, but the most fascinating utter nonsense he had ever read in his life.

Pages and pages later, he realised what was strange about it. It was as though he were reading two things at once – two different tales in two entirely different languages, formed by the same words and letters. One of them he was trying to understand with his conscious mind; the other, the one which conveyed the more important knowledge, was absorbed by his subconscious. And he couldn’t stop reading.

Gaius must have called to him several times; Merlin vaguely recalled having heard his voice, but he couldn’t tear away his mind from the book long enough to remember what it said or how long ago or how many times. When Merlin turned the last page, he shut the book but instead of stopping, he went up to the bookshelf, found the next volume (although how he could tell it was the next volume he had no inkling; all the books were untitled and unnumbered and looked the same) and began reading.

There were hands on his shoulder, shaking him, but he didn’t stir. People came into the chamber, bleeding and moaning and needing help. Gaius took care of them, bound their wounds, calmed their worries, and then sent them away to convalesce elsewhere. Merlin took in what happened within the field of his vision, stored the images away in the back of his thoughts. Doing that required only a small fragment of his attention, the conscious part of it that wasn’t helplessly working on absorbing knowledge into a part of his mind he had no access to. Vaguely, Merlin understood that this single-minded concentration ought to scare him but the part of his consciousness that processed such emotions was currently otherwise engaged.

The pile of discarded books by his elbow steadily grew larger. Gaius didn't say anything about that, although he came by from time to time and ordered them into neat columns, muttering under his breath. But he was only pretending to be annoyed with Merlin and was using the self-allocated task to check up on him. Merlin closed the tome he was reading and stood to fetch the next, the series of movements that took him from the table up the ladder, his arm lifting to pull down a book, scale down the ladder and sit back to his table, was already so ingrained he did not have to spare conscious thought on it. He didn't notice that this time around his hands were empty until he was about to sit. The volume had been deftly plucked out of them by Gaius, who was now holding it against his chest, arms crossed protectively over the battered brown front.

"Not this book!" He must have been repeating himself for Merlin had vague memories of having heard those same words very recently.

"Why?" Merlin asked. His voice sounded like a stranger's voice. His throat was dry as though he hadn’t swallowed for hours.

"I don't want you to read this book." Gaius's arms moved over the cover as though he was trying to hide it from Merlin's gaze. As they shifted, Merlin noticed the book differed from all the others because someone had drawn a stylised eye on its lid in red ink.

"What's in it?"

Gaius looked uneasy. He opened and closed his mouth several times before he settled on an answer. "I don't know, Merlin. All I know is that the knowledge it contains is dangerous."

"Why? What knowledge?"

Gaius sighed. "I don't know, Merlin," he repeated. He seemed to be hesitating, as though deciding whether or not he should tell more. His shoulders slumped as he made his decision. "I don't know what's written in it. I can't read it. All I know is that this was the book Nimueh read before she went wrong."

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

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

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

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

"But… I thought these were your books."

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

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

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

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

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

"Has there been?"

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

"And Nimueh— She was such a person?"

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

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

With that thought, everything became very clear.

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

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

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

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He waited for an attack that didn't happen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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

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

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

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

"I did not faint!" Merlin protested.

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

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

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

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

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

"Why would you think that?" he asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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

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

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes. Is that significant?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gaius's shoulders dropped and he nodded once.

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

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

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

"What do you mean?" Merlin asked.

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

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

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

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

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

"Merlin, you are not human."

"Right."

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gaius put a calming hand on Merlin's shoulder.

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

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

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

"Aesthetics?"

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

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

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

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

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

"But what about Agravaine?" Merlin asked.

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

"All right."

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

"There," Gaius said.

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

"Hm," Gaius agreed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What is it?" Merlin urged.

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

"Incantations as in… spells?"

Gaius shook his head, looking disappointed.

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

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

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

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

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

"Such as?"

"Mnemonics?" Merlin suggested.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Everywhere?" Gwen inquired cautiously.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The knights were already helping those who needed it. Gwen had already slipped away from Merlin's side, and he spotted her with a faint blush on her cheeks, buckling a breast plate on Lancelot who was blushing just as much as she. Merlin couldn't quell the smile that tugged on his lips. Then, out of nothing, Arthur grabbed his arm and propelled him away from the crowd to a smaller pile of metal that stood in a heap on its own.

"You can help get me accoutred, Merlin," he said, making assumptions as typical.

"I have no idea what goes where," Merlin objected. "Perhaps I ought to have asked Gwen for a demonstration," he muttered, observing her confident way with the metal. She finished with Lancelot and stepped up to her brother to help him with a buckle he couldn't reach, at the same time providing an explanation for Gwaine and Percival, who attempted to get each other's gear affixed.

Arthur cleared his throat, commanding Merlin's wayward attention with a playful frown. "As it happens, Merlin, I am sufficiently qualified to advise you, since I spend half of my life in this armour."

"Why do you need my help, then?" Merlin asked, and for a second, he thought he saw a faint flush on Arthur's face but in the next, it gave way to a smirk accompanied by a raised eyebrow which he could only have copied from Gaius.

"Because I don't have arms on my back," he said.

Only, on Arthur, the eyebrow looked more ridiculously supercilious than the quietly imperious which he had been going for. Merlin couldn't stifle a laugh and then he had to laugh more when Arthur's expression turned into a pout, which lasted until Merlin slapped him with the first piece of metal that he could grab and then they finally started dressing Arthur.

The large throne room was filled with a pervasive sombre atmosphere, filled with grave faces and gritted teeth, the precursor of a battle, but it felt as though the two of them were surrounded by a glowing bubble of lightness that was somehow separate to their surroundings and just for the two of them. The gloomy presences outside its reach felt like shadows of a different existence.

To his surprise, Merlin found that fastening the armour on Arthur was not as hard as he had expected it to be. His hands had the tendency to bump into Arthur's fingers as they attempted to work on the same buckle, but Arthur didn't seem to mind. Finally, they were making the last adjustments; by now Merlin could tell Arthur was only finding places to fiddle with so he could prolong having Merlin's hands on him.

A cough came from the side; the sudden intrusion from the outside burst their happy bubble, but traces of it still remained within Merlin's heart. Merlin turned towards the noise, his movement checked halfway by Arthur's fingers curled around his own, which were holding onto a strap.

The Lady Morgana had not left when the King had, but she had been keeping herself away from the bustle. Now she was standing beside them, outwardly calm, her inner turmoil betrayed only by the furious glint in her eyes. She speared Merlin with a sharp glare of annoyance that seemed to convey that his vulgar behaviour was entirely inappropriate for the circumstances at present, but it only lasted for a moment, then she blinked and her face smoothed out. She directed her words at Arthur.

"Please, save Morgause," she pleaded. "She didn't do anything, I know it." And then her brows narrowed and her glare turned thunderous. "If you kill her, I swear, Arthur, I'll never forgive you." It was clear she was not used to asking for things.

Arthur flinched away from her venomous ire. For a second, he looked entirely too young to have had this responsibility thrust upon him. Then he straightened his back and Merlin witnessed the familiar transformation take place which turned the boy into a soldier.

"Morgana," Arthur's tone was sympathetic but firm. "Morgause wasn't found anywhere inside the castle. Therefore, she must be inside the cave where Uncle Agravaine said she was." The conclusion that there was only one reason for which she could be in there remained unspoken but strongly implied.

"Oh, I don’t doubt he dragged her there himself," Morgana retorted sharply.

"Why ever would he do such a thing?" Arthur asked, bewildered.

"Well, he wants to be the Pendragon, doesn't he?" Morgana bit out. "See, he had this theory that he would be able to control the Dragon with Morgause's help. She might have awakened the crystal knights out of self-defence, but she's not responsible for the cold and the water from the sky. If it were down to Agravaine, he'd gladly let Uther condemn her for the plague before that as well."

Arthur stiffened. No wonder. Morgana, even while denying everything, as good as confirmed Agravaine's accusations. Morgause could only influence the Dragon if she was a sorceress. Yet Morgana still asked for her life. Merlin did not understand the glance that passed between the two. An unspoken conversation whose meaning escaped Merlin.

"He's known, then? Was he blackmailing you?" Arthur asked quietly.

"He promised he'd not let her come to harm." Morgana was seething. Yet, Merlin couldn’t help but feel there was something dishonest in her display of emotions. "I was naïve enough to believe he'd be a man of his word."

Merlin had not known her for long, but naïve was not a word he would have ever used to describe Morgana. She spoke in half-sentences, never outright saying anything condemnatory, just letting them make their own assumptions. Arthur's expression was fixed into a distanced politeness; Merlin couldn't tell whether he believed her.

Before Arthur could have been pressed into making a promise that might or might not have gone against his convictions the privacy of their little circle was broken by Gaius's well-timed appearance. Morgana nodded at him, her expression transforming into a charming smile in the time it took her to turn around. Gaius told her she needed rest and tried to foist some sort of sleeping potion on her, which she gracefully accepted and promised to drink it, a promise she clearly didn't mean to keep. But it gave her an excuse to extricate herself from the situation. She spared Arthur a last, meaningful glance and then she was gone.

"Gaius!" Arthur said, a little too loudly, a little too obviously relieved. No one held it against him. "Just the man I was looking for."

"Sire," Gaius nodded, pretending that nothing out of the ordinary had happened just now. "I'm assuming you're seeking my advice."

"Is there any way to spare her life?" Arthur blurted, his eyes widening as though he had not intended to make such a direct inquiry. Gaius, too, looked surprised. Then he schooled his expression.

"I suppose it might be enough to subdue her. Or if you could try and convince her to let go of her control over the warriors." He did not sound very convinced.

"And what about the crystal knights? Is there a way to kill them?" Arthur asked.

"They aren’t alive, sire. They are merely pieces of the Dragon shaped by someone else's will. They don't have free will, only a kind of limited autonomy that makes them capable of mimicking the human form."

"Well, then, is there a way to destroy them?" Arthur asked a little more impatient.

Gaius sighed. "No, sire. They don't have a life you can end with your sword. Even if you should shatter them into pieces, they might reform. I suppose you could try separating them from her."

"Should I use my knights as bait, then?" Arthur asked, his voice rife with sarcasm but Gaius answered the question as though he hadn't heard that.

"That's an idea," he said, looking thoughtful. But from the determination writ over Arthur's face, Merlin could already tell he wasn't going to do that. "Or…" Gaius hesitated, his eyes avoiding Arthur's gaze and instead drifting until they halted on Merlin.

"What?" Arthur asked. Merlin felt his breath catch in his throat. From the way Gaius was looking at him – intense and apologetic – he knew what he was going to say. He wanted to shout, to stop him, but his throat was so dry, and then it was already too late. Gaius looked back at Arthur, right into his eyes and said in a tone full of meaning, "You should take Merlin with you, Sire. He could prove useful."

Arthur frowned, looking from Gaius to Merlin, who was still incapable of speech, and then back to Gaius again, probably thinking it a joke but he was the only one who laughed; Gaius was his usual inscrutable self and Merlin still too stunned from Gaius's betrayal to react in any way.

"Sire." Gaius bowed. "I wish you luck."

After Gaius's departure, Arthur's glance swept over Merlin from head to toe, going on about how Merlin would need some sort of protection but how he was probably too scrawny for the weight of a mail armour, and he didn't know why he was even giving any serious consideration to Gaius's proposal as Merlin was probably going to be useless for anything other than providing ballast for the boat. Then he was walking towards the dwindled pile of spare armour; Merlin followed him, confused at first and then relieved and strangely disappointed at once that Arthur had not caught on to Gaius's meaning.

Merlin was equipped with a heavy flail, a helmet that looked like a bucket with a hole on it to be able to see outside, and a large chainmail shirt which hung down almost to his knees. It was just as heavy as promised; Merlin staggered and almost fell from the weight pulling down on his shoulders until Gwen took pity on him and belted the metal around his waist, which distributed its weight better and Merlin could almost stand straight again.

"Well, I thought I'd have to leave you behind after all," Arthur commented, trying for nonchalant but Merlin heard uncertainty and worry underneath. He could tell Arthur would have preferred if Merlin hadn't been volunteered by Gaius for this endeavour. Merlin didn't know how to feel about this knowledge.

And then it was time to go.

Arthur led his knights in neat rows along the corridors. The freshly recruited men followed in less orderly ranks; there was a clear divide between the two groups.

Merlin marched in the back, trying to stay as far from Arthur as he could until he figured out how much Arthur had guessed about him and what he intended to do with it. He felt an arm descend on his shoulder. He turned his head and he saw Gwaine's grin, as unfaltering as ever, directed at him.

"Let's make a deal. You have my back and I'll have yours."

Merlin nodded. His throat was too constricted to speak. Gwaine misinterpreted it for fear of the coming battle for his grin widened until he looked maniacal and he shook Merlin by the shoulder.

"Cheer up. Arthur seems like a good sort. He knows what he's doing."

"Does he?" Merlin wondered.

He knew of no wars that had besieged Camelot after humanity's fight for freedom was won. The knights of Camelot were not used to fighting against human-shaped enemy. They were used to putting themselves against the Dragon's inexorable will, which did not require wielding weapons, and to hunting animals that could sometimes be vicious and dangerous but did not employ strategic thinking. He only hoped that Morgause – if indeed she was the one controlling the crystal warriors – possessed no mind for strategy either, or that her madness was far enough advanced to have discarded logic altogether.

The lower corridors they arrived to were the same ones that had been rid of their rat population, thanks to Merlin needing an excuse. The barricades were built not far from the place Merlin had been confronted that time by King Uther's disapproving glare. Merlin saw a large pile of broken furniture blocking the entire width of the corridor. It was taller than a man, so Merlin could not see behind it, but he was told there was a similar one a little ways down. The two barricades guarded a doorway. Merlin expected to hear the noise of fighting from the other side of the barrier but there was silence, nothing moved. A band of six knights stood guard on this side of the fence; they straightened with Arthur's approach when they had looked bored just moments before.

"Everything's been still, sire," the one apparently in charge reported.

"They didn't try to leave the cave?" Merlin heard Arthur asking; he did not sound surprised. Perhaps Gaius was right in presuming that the crystal warriors had to remain near to the source. Arthur ordered the guards to make a hole on the barricade through which he could lead his men into the cave while he gathered the others around him in a half-circle so that everyone could hear his voice.

"For those who haven't been inside yet, the crystal cave is a very large place but little of it can be reached by foot." He took the staff he had brought with him to be used as a weapon, but now he used it to draw a crude map into the dust on the floor to demonstrate what he was saying. "There is a ledge, here, right after the entrance." He dragged the end of his staff through the dirt, ending up with something that looked like a pointy hat with its point curved towards the left.

"Lord Agravaine said the crystal warriors chased them to the entrance, so if we're lucky, we'll find them right there. There are only seven of them but they are strong. Don't try to wound them, they don't get wounded like humans, and certainly don't die like humans. Agravaine claims he shattered one of them with a well-placed blow but it just reformed from its pieces. Our best strategy is to push them off the ledge. That will hopefully push them outside the range of whoever is controlling them."

"But how are we going to push them off?" Percival asked. "Sire," he added when he found Arthur's eyes – along with everyone else's - suddenly turned on him.

"That is a good question," Arthur said, hesitating. His eyes flickered as his mind went through possible solutions until he found the most promising one in the matter of seconds. "We are going to form a line. At least two men-thick, those with shields to the front, prongs to the back. The front line is going to hold them back, forming a wall of shields and not letting them break through. Those with the prongs push them backwards and when we gain some ground, the shield line is going to step forward and so on until we push them off the ledge."

"And what if they do break through the shields?" That one was Gwaine who was still grinning as though this was great fun, but the fact he asked that at all betrayed that inside, he took it very seriously.

Arthur thought again. "If they do break through, we try to re-form. If we cannot, we retreat into the stairway before the cave entrance, where they might not follow, if previous precedent holds. If they do follow, at least they're not going to be able to come at us from all sides as the stairway is too narrow for that."

There were no more questions and nothing more to be said. Everyone was well aware that Arthur's strategy was based not on experience but on pure speculation. There was no sense in going further into details as the entire concept might not work at all. Still, it was something to hold onto in the face of such great uncertainty, so hold onto it they did.

But when they climbed down the stairs and came out at the end of the tunnel – which Merlin vaguely remembered from his dream-walking – they found no crystal warriors waiting. They found no sorceress. Instead they found a looping bridge of streams, flanked by a row of majestic standing crystals, that led straight to the dark pearl of Avalon, the floating Lake of the Dead.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Merlin had never sat in a boat before, nor had he seen a river. His memories from when he had been summoned here by the Dragon concentrated on the pain of confinement that was caused by human devices and the need to remove those devices to gain freedom. Merlin only saw what the Dragon needed him to see, so this was the first time he was allowed to take in the awesome beauty of the place, with its brilliantly sparkling walls, the enormous standing, hanging, protruding crystal spikes which the knights of Camelot called the Dragon's teeth, and its labyrinth of freely flowing streams. When Merlin looked at the tall pillars from closer, he discovered that their crystal was not a uniform clear colour, but underneath the surface, it contained strangely regular shapes which had different colours and seemed to be connected with each other by darker veins.

There had been no streams in Ealdor. Water was present under the surface – large cisterns that were always full and kept clean for them by some hidden mechanism that had remained from the dead Dragon.

There were five boats, three smaller and two larger ones. Arthur divided his seven knights equally between four and filled the empty spaces with the remaining ten. This way, there would be an equal distribution of men who had experience steering and those who did not in every boat. Arthur himself undertook the task of steering the smallest one, which led the rest. Merlin was ordered to sit right behind him and Gwaine followed without being asked. The launch took only a slight drop by Arthur's reckoning. For Merlin it felt like an eternity while they were falling. But then the boat alighted on the rushing water and sped forward.

"You're not going to be sick, are you, Merlin?" Arthur teased when he noticed Merlin's white-knuckled grip on the gunwale. Merlin pried his fingers away and settled himself in a more dignified way. Even if it were so, he certainly was not going to give Arthur a reason to gloat. But to his great relief, he found that his nervousness was gradually replaced with exhilaration.

"Shouldn’t you be watching where we're going?" Merlin asked instead of answering. Not that Arthur made a thing out of it; he had probably prickled Merlin's pride on purpose to distract him from his discomfort, Merlin realised.

"Nah," Arthur shrugged, grinning. "It's a straight way until the lake." The stream – river by now – chose that moment to curve downwards, gravity following its shape a little belatedly, and Merlin felt his insides shift upwards with the change.

Gwaine whooped. "If this is what knights do all the time, I want to be a knight, too!"

Merlin heard Percival agreeing loudly from the boat behind them. When he turned back, he saw Sir Leon looking perturbed and Lancelot smiling at his normally quiet friend's enthusiasm. Arthur had turned back around, so Merlin occupied himself with watching the Dragon's teeth as they passed by one by one, towering over their heads like giants. And then his attention was commanded by the dark green waters of the lake, which was getting larger and larger in the distance. Their river flowed straight into the lake. Merlin's exhilaration turned into apprehension.

The sorceress was waiting for them by the lake.

She knelt on the shore, inside a circle of standing crystals, but these were only one and a half man-tall, as opposed to the mountainous giants that stood guard on their way here. She wore an elaborate dress in green, which must have carried some special meaning because it scandalized Merlin's companions. Over it she wore a hooded cape that hid her features while her head was bowed but fell back when she looked up as they pulled the boats up on the shore. The sight of her mangled face, the muscle burnt to the bone, covered by twisted scars which were raw red and waxy in turns, did not leave any doubts of her identity. It was the Lady Morgause.

The Lake of Avalon did not have a shore. Arthur had told him that while they were nearing their goal. It was a body of water as ephemeral as any other bodies of water in this place, not anchored by anything solid, drifting over the changeable gravitational fields inside the cave. Now there was solid ground attached to it: a small, smooth ledge of black, glassy rock – obsidian. Merlin had offered the name as there were many old corridors in Ealdor lined with the same material. It was no doubt the work of sorcery.

The shore was only long enough for three of the boats to be moored; the other two had to be tied to those. The ground sloped softly upwards, which would not normally have mattered but the rock surface was very smooth and slippery, especially where it met the water. With the lake to their back, even that small elevation meant they'd have to fight from a disadvantageous position. Merlin hoped it'd not come to a fight. Arthur must have hoped for the same, for he stepped forward, keeping his shield lowered and his long prong held like a walking stick by his side to greet the Lady Morgause. But in that moment, the crystal slabs surrounding her came alive and changed their shapes into something resembling human.

Arthur flinched, catching himself before he took up a fighting pose, and ordered the men to stay behind him and keep their weapons lowered. It was a good call for the crystal warriors did not move from their positions either. There was no attack just yet.

"Little brother," the Lady Morgause said; her twisted lips moved grotesquely in her scarred face. "Have you come to kill me?" There was no emotion in her voice past a lilting curiosity; Merlin couldn't decide whether it was truly how she felt or just a front."

"Morgana sent me," Arthur answered. "She wants you to come back to her."

"Sister," she whispered, her gaze drifting into the distance for a second before it focussed sharply on Arthur once again. "I would like to come back to her as well," she said, sounding wistful before sobering. "But that's not possible, is it? They've seen me. They know. Uther has no mercy for someone like me."

Merlin saw Arthur's body strain towards her, as though he wanted to deny her words but he didn't say anything. He knew it would be a lie.

It seemed like a stalemate. Neither party wanted to be the first to attack. Arthur did not wish to kill her and she was seemingly content to wait him out. Seemingly, as it became apparent very soon that this was not the case.

The crystal warriors attacked without warning. Merlin saw Morgause's face twist into a hateful grimace and then there was a loud clash as the crystal arm of a warrior collided with Arthur's hastily lifted shield. Merlin hadn’t even seen it move.

The knights were quick to react; within seconds, a wall of shields formed around Arthur. The small number of remaining knights was just enough to form a line in front of the shore. There was a momentary confusion in the back ranks; the volunteers were slower to react to the threat, but soon there was a row of prongs pushed forward between the shields. Merlin's own flail was of no use from the second row, so soon he put it away and stepped up to Lancelot, gripping his prong and helping him hold it against the inhuman strength of the enemy.

The crystal warriors weren't fighting particularly well. In fact, all they did was to rush forward, clash against the shields and push their opponents towards the waterline. Arthur's men soon discovered that one man with a shield was not strong enough to hold up against a warrior, let alone swing a weapon at them. The knights in the first row dropped their weapons and gripped their shields with two hands, leaned into them with their whole weight, and they still wouldn’t have been able to hold their place if not for the crush of other bodies from behind.

Lancelot soon abandoned his prong into Merlin's keeping and joined Arthur's efforts in holding up his shield against the enemy trashing against the thin barrier. But then the knight at his left stumbled, landing on his backside, his shield swept away. The crystal warrior that had been pummelling away at him, instead of concluding its victory, seemed to lose interest in its fallen opponent and turned towards Arthur, who was still engaged with his first attacker.

Merlin called his name but Arthur was too busy to pay him any attention, and Lancelot's sight was impeded by the shield and Arthur himself. Merlin gripped the prong, which he had been only holding uselessly, and aimed its sharp, pointed end at the new attacker's shoulder where the crystal looked its most vulnerable, and drove it forward, putting all his weight into the thrust.

He succeeded to chip the shoulder and to unbalance the warrior, but little else. It recovered within a couple of heartbeats, but at least now Arthur was made aware of its presence. He was also aware of Merlin's presence behind his back, for he took the time to order him back and help whomever he could, but not to die in the process. And seeing how little he had accomplished with his abortive move, Merlin obeyed.

Sir Leon flanked the left side of the row, with Percival helping him push from behind, but even they struggled. Merlin moved to help but he was pre-empted by Gwaine who was already crouched down behind them. Gwaine stabbed forward between their legs with a prong, succeeding in tripping their opponent. The heavy-set crystal warrior slipped on the smooth obsidian surface and clattered against it, the crystal breaking down its middle and shattering into large chunks. Leon stepped over the chunks to help the man on his right but that move exposed his back. The crystal warrior recovered almost as quickly and came at Sir Leon from the side. He would have pushed Leon off the ledge into nothingness, if not for Percival catching his arm in the last minute. Leon had lost his shield, but the balance of the encounter was still in Camelot's favour; Leon gripped onto a crystal ankle when he fell and dragged his attacker over the edge.

Their first victory of the day remained their only victory.

After the loss of one of their numbers, the warriors changed tactic. They formed a tight ball and charged the middle of the shield line as one.

"Don't let them through!" Arthur yelled for he recognised the danger of being trapped on that small ledge with the enemy pushing them from the direction of water and Morgause behind their backs. The men shifted closer together as well, many bodies crushed together holding up better against the concentrated attack than a two-man thick line.

It was no use, though. Camelot's little battalion was no match for the crystal warriors' strength, and soon the brutal force of the attack broke through their line. There was yelling as the close press of bodies scattered, the crystal warriors trampling over the fallen. Merlin saw Arthur slip, heard him yell out in alarm, the clatter of his armour colliding with the obsidian lost within the clamour of similar noises.

"Regroup!" someone shouted. It was not Arthur, because Arthur lay still on the ground while others who had fallen had already stood. Merlin rushed to him. He was unconscious but did not seem gravely injured. His heart was beating normally, he was breathing and he was not bleeding anywhere Merlin could see.

Merlin alone was not strong enough to lift Arthur wearing full armour. Thankfully, Elyan grabbed Arthur's other elbow and they dragged him uphill. Merlin looked behind them, to see what Morgause was doing, but she was no longer there.

"Where is she?" Merlin shouted but no one paid him any attention. When he looked back to the lake, he saw why.

Morgause was sitting in one of the smaller boats, floating over the lake, already a long stretch away and getting farther away with every passing beat. The lake's surface was no longer smooth as when they had arrived, and she did not use anything to propel herself forward. Nonetheless, she was already nearing the stream that had brought Camelot's knights here, only now it was flowing in the opposite direction, away from the lake.

The crystal warriors were standing in the shallow; they were busy destroying the two bigger boats; one of the smaller ones was already in two pieces, the other one sunken to the bottom with a hole the size of a crystal warrior's footprint in its hull. The men charged the warriors in a disordered hurdle. They were lucky the warriors were only interested in destruction, not in fighting back. The attack did not do any harm to them, although it slowed them down somewhat. Then Lancelot and Percival managed to snatch one of the boats. They pushed it out onto the lake. Lancelot stood in the prow, poling it farther out with his prong.

The other boat was soon rescued the same way, though by the time it was on the water, two knights had to bail with their helmets to keep it afloat.

The warriors were charging after them, unmindful of sinking deeper and deeper into the water. They did not need to breathe. But they were slowing down – had already slowed somewhat or else the scheme would never have succeeded – and soon they stopped, standing motionless, half-submerged in the lake like strange pillars of quartz.

"It seems Gaius was right; the sorceress does need to be close to control them," Merlin heard Arthur's voice coming from his left. His head turned sharply and he saw Arthur blinking up at him. Conscious then.

"Are you injured?" Merlin asked. Arthur tried to get up but couldn't. His face went pale and drops of sweat slid down his temples. Merlin guessed he was in considerable pain but controlling himself for the sake of his men.

Arthur grimaced. "My leg is broken, I think. And a couple of ribs. Nothing major. What happened, where is Morgause? I'm assuming she isn't dead?"

"Took one of the boats," Elyan answered in a quiet, controlled voice. Merlin grabbed onto Arthur's forearm and helped him sit while Elyan felt along Arthur's shins, finding the likely place of the break easily as the leg had already started to swell inside the boot. "You're lucky. It is broken, but the bone hasn't moved so it doesn't need to be set. You should leave the boots and I'll put back the greaves for support."

Merlin sat supporting Arthur's torso with his own, so he his hands were free to check on the ribs. None of them were broken, but probably badly bruised if Arthur's painful hisses were any indication.

"What do we do now?" Gwaine asked.

But before Arthur could answer, Leon strode up to them, worry written over his features. "Sire, she's probably heading to Camelot."

"Can we follow her?" Arthur asked, momentarily forgetting about his pain.

"We rescued two of the boats, the large ones. But they cannot carry eighteen men; we have to leave some behind."

The decision was swift and brutal.

"The boats can seat six men comfortably; they can each fit two more if you are careful not to move around too much."

Sir Leon looked down. He could count as well. "That leaves only two. Perhaps we could…"

"I'm staying here," Arthur interrupted. "I'll be of no use in a fight with a broken leg."

"But Sire—"

"I will hear no arguments. I'm staying and that's final. Are there any more injuries?"

Merlin knew the latter question was asked to help determine the other person who would be left behind.

"I'm staying with Arthur," Merlin said. For him, the question had already been decided, for there was no way he would return to Camelot without Arthur by his side. It was a decision he did not make consciously but after he said the words, they felt right.

"Merlin…" Arthur looked hesitant to accept his offer. Sir Leon did as well, but likely for a different reason. The look in Arthur's eyes said he wanted Merlin safe, while Sir Leon wanted to entrust someone with Arthur's safety who looked better-suited to defend him if it came to a fight.

"I'm not going without you. You can't make me." Arthur's gaze locked on Merlin's. By all odds, Merlin should not have been the one to win a contest of wills between himself and Arthur. But Arthur had trouble concentrating his vision, he frequently blinked and his balance was off, and suddenly he closed his eyes and all the fight went out of him.

"All right," he said weakly. Merlin felt no triumph, only relief.

"Someone will come back for you, Sire, as soon as possible," Leon said; he was stalling. He found it difficult to part from Arthur. But time was of essence and he had a sorceress to catch. The boats were filled up with people; the one with the hole had been repaired to the extent where the leaking was no longer life-threatening, just inconvenient. They followed Morgause over the lake and then over the reversed stream that led back to Camelot. Merlin watched their progress until they turned into small black dots and then disappeared entirely from view.

Arthur grunted and tried to find a more comfortable position. Merlin let him stretch out on the ground, with his head resting in Merlin's lap. There was nothing to do but to wait.

Merlin's fingers were idly combing through Arthur's hair. Arthur let him. They watched the lake and what used to be the crystal warriors, now a slightly irregular circle of sparkling megaliths standing in the shallows, their sides gently lapped by the dark waters. It was nice here. Although they only had the hard rock for bed, it was not cold here and Merlin was not yet hungry, although he was a little bored.

"Can't you do something?" Arthur whined feebly.

"Are you thirsty?" Merlin was getting thirsty. "Do you want some water? I could bring some in your helmet."

Arthur did not seem very enthusiastic of the idea. "It's the Lake of the Dead, Merlin! You don't drink from the dead."

"Well, I'm going to," Merlin said just to spite Arthur. But then he didn't move. He told himself he did not want to disturb Arthur's rest.

"At any rate, that's not what I was talking about." Arthur spoke again a little while later.

"What were you talking about?"

"Us." Arthur's arm moved in a broad gesture encompassing the two of them, the little ledge and almost the entire lake as well, before he laid it carefully down on his chest, because he had forgotten that he was hurting. "Being stranded here. With no way to escape except to wait for someone to come get us. Can't you do something?"

"What would you have me do, Sire?" Merlin asked but his attention was only half on the conversation. The Dragon's song was filling his mind with its sweet, seductive melody. Merlin played with the thought to let it claim him to see what would happen but then he shook his head, dismissing it in favour of focussing his concentration on Arthur.

"I don't know… something." Merlin waited. He was right to, for more was about to come.

"Well," Arthur said, sounding, for the first time of their short acquaintance, uncertain. "That's what Gaius was trying to tell me by not actually telling me anything, right? You are a sorcerer. Can't you magic us out here?"

"I…" Merlin was bowled over by the directness of Arthur's words. He felt light-headed and for a few seconds, he had trouble making a sound. But there was no mistrust or accusation in Arthur's tone so Merlin's pulse soon calmed enough for him to regain his ability for speech. "Sort of? It's complicated. And magic isn't real," he added as an afterthought.

Arthur scoffed at that. "Of course, I know that. It was just an expression." But he did not let himself be diverted from his original question. "And what could be complicated about it? You either are or aren’t one. It's simple. Do you hear the Dragon?"

"I do," Merlin said, quiet. "But I'm not a sorcerer. I'm a Dragonlord."

"Don't be daft, Merlin," Arthur said. However, Merlin heard a slight tremble of uncertainty in his voice which suggested he had not dismissed Merlin's words. He was just trying to make a conversation and apparently being a prat was an essential part of it. "There haven’t been any Dragonlords in Camelot for generations."

"I'm not from Camelot."

"Well, obviously, I didn't just mean Camelot but also…"

"No. I am not from Camelot." Merlin repeated, emphasising each word.

And when he said that, the distant crystal walls of the cave blinked out and they were surrounded by the night sky with its myriad of little stars. There was the blue planet, its own star hiding behind it so that its rings were lit up, sparkling like a diamond-studded coronet, and there was the irregularly shaped moon which sheltered the little colony Merlin called home. The tunnel that still connected it with the Great Dragon looked like an umbilical cord drifting through space.

"See, I'm from there," Merlin whispered, a little awed, and pointed a finger towards Ealdor.

"Oh." It seemed Arthur had been robbed of speech as well. But the way he looked at Merlin when he could finally take off his eyes from the view, it was not a look of distrust and hate; it was a look of shock and wonder and amazed delight.

"All right," he said, his voice scratchy and intimate. "I believe you."

"It's strange," Merlin mused. "You cannot see the planet from Ealdor. The first time I saw it was right before I left. It's so much bigger than the sun, and almost brighter as well!"

"It's not bigger," Arthur said. "It's just closer. I've seen a dozen suns in my life. Most of them were yellowish and seemed more radiant but Gaius teaches that these blue ones are the largest and hottest of them all. Never before had a Blight destroyed life outside the castle so completely."

"It happens a lot, then?" Merlin asked, disturbed by the possibility of something similar befalling in Ealdor. Even if human lives were not in danger, for they only worked the fields at night, by the light of glowtorches, they would still lose an entire season's produce. Everyone would starve to death.

"We make it happen."

"Whatever for?" Merlin asked, finding the idea outlandish.

Arthur looked at him, thoughtful. "People in Ealdor must be fortunate," he finally answered, "to live in a stable environment. In Camelot, nature changes fast. It continually spawns new species of plants and animals, but the plagues are the worst. Illnesses come and go, and most of them are nothing more than an annoyance. Some people die but those who survive are stronger for it. There are times, though, when the latest disease cannot be stopped and no cure can be found. That's when we have to ask the Great Dragon to make a Blight. Radiation kills the disease. Without the Blights, there would be no more people living in Camelot."

Merlin nodded, shaken by what he had heard. For a while, they stayed silent, following with their eyes the tiny rock that was Ealdor as it wove its way between the rings, and then they watched as the blue sun rose behind the planet and lit its turbulent surface with its unforgiving light.

"But if you can command the Dragon like that, why can't you get us out of here?" Arthur broke the silence when he got bored with the watching.

"I did not do it. At least if I did, I was not aware of doing it." Merlin grimaced to himself, wishing it were not so, or at least that Arthur hadn’t asked, so he had not had to tell that to him. "I don't command the Dragon yet."

"Then what use are you?" Arthur grumbled. His voice was slurred. The injuries were probably taking all his strength. Merlin was not doing him a favour by keeping him from his rest.

"Only fully matured Dragonlords have the ability to command the Dragon," Merlin defended himself. That was what both Balinor and Gaius had told him.

Arthur stared at him, slightly appalled. "Are you saying you're a child?" Merlin blushed.

"Shut up. Being a Dragonlord is different. And I'm probably twice as old as you are," he grumbled and swatted Arthur playfully on his side, forgetting about his ribs. Arthur hissed and grabbed his hand, but he did not let it go, instead he held it over his chest. Merlin felt his heartbeat through the prickly barrier of the chainmail. Then Arthur broke the moment by moving his head in an attempt to get more comfortable, and putting it back down in the exact wrong place.

"What was that?" Arthur jumped, probably because, under Merlin's trousers, he felt a hidden part of Merlin's Dragonlord anatomy slide curiously against his cheek.

"Sorry." Merlin blushed.

"You are quite a bit different, aren't you?" Arthur grinned at him. Merlin thought he had sounded interested, rather than intimidated. He expected Arthur to draw away, but he just laid his back in Merlin's lap, this time more careful about where he put the weight.

Then a few heartbeats later, Arthur rolled his face into Merlin's thigh and groaned. But he did not seem to feel comfortable that way either, so then he resumed his earlier position.

"Are you all right?" Merlin asked and then scolded himself for asking stupid questions.

"I feel dizzy," Arthur said, shutting his eyes against the pale light of the blue sun; due to the lack of an atmosphere outside the Dragon from where its image was projected inside the cave, the sky around it remained dark and it failed to give them daylight. It was barely even larger than the other stars. "And I'm a bit nauseated."

"You must have hit your head when you fell." Merlin frowned.

Arthur answered with a sigh, this time careful of his aching ribs. "I hit my head all the time, Merlin. It's nothing."

"You could always try to sleep," Merlin suggested after a pause. Arthur's eyelids were already dropped halfway. "I'm going to keep watch."

Arthur yawned. "That is actually the first good idea you had today."

Merlin did keep watch, lounging under the starry sky and listening to Arthur's even breaths. It was a quiet time, good for introspection, but the Dragon was keeping quiet as well. But from the place in his mind where the Dragon normally existed, a peculiar feeling of dread crept up on him. Something wasn’t quite right; something somewhere was going horribly wrong.

It was still quiet; nothing had disturbed the silence, it had been no noise that had scared him. The view of the dark sky slowly faded and the many-faceted walls of the crystal cave were slowly regaining their substance. There was still only just the two of them, Arthur's head heavy on Merlin's thigh.

At that thought, the vague feeling of directionless anxiety intensified and gained focus: Arthur. There was something wrong with Arthur!

Merlin shook him awake.

And then shook him again, with a bit more force, calling out his name. Arthur did not stir. His breathing was shallow; Merlin no longer heard it over the lapping of the waves swirling against the obsidian, only when he leant very close. His heartbeats were weak under Merlin's palm which Arthur had pressed to his own chest before he fell asleep, but now his fingers were loosened; they slid limply from Merlin's hand.

"Arthur!" Merlin cried again, choking on fear. "Arthur!"

But whatever he tried, Arthur remained unconscious.

Merlin was thinking frantically, but all he could think of was what they ought to have done, what they could have done but did not do. Taken Arthur on one of the boats, send someone back as soon as they arrived at the other end, or Merlin could have done something, tried harder to reach the Dragon, be of some use, but now it was too late! He couldn’t think of anything he could do now, either, apart from calling Arthur's name and reaching for those hidden depths in his mind where the Dragon's presence hummed with oblivious contentment.

Arthur was dying, Merlin suddenly understood. He was dying, and Merlin could do nothing to stop it.

Merlin had never prayed in his life; he had always been quite content to ignore the existence of higher beings as, he believed, they ignored his. But now he found himself praying to the only higher force he knew: the Dragon. Even as he did it, he knew prayers were of no use.

This was not the way to ask the Dragon for help. There was another way, the right way, and his legacy as Dragonlord should provide him with the knowledge. But if it did, it was buried somewhere deep in his mind. He knew the Dragon was capable of healing Arthur; he had read about it in Nimueh's book. She even wrote down a mnemonic for it. Merlin remembered it well, and now he found himself distractedly saying the words under his breath.

For a second, pain unlike anything he had ever felt assaulted his senses. He did not know what was happening but it felt like being caught in an explosion that had happened inside his skull. He couldn't see; his ears rang and he couldn't find his balance. There was only the smell of burnt flesh and the taste of blood in his mouth from where he had bit his tongue. His flesh felt as though it had been set on fire. He heard someone scream.

A heartbeat later all sensations ceased; Merlin felt disconnected from his body. Another beat and his senses took leave of him as well. Merlin fell into darkness.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The Lady Igraine was one of the ones blessed with the longevity of the Aboriginals, although in every other sense she seemed human. Uther was her third husband; she had been married to two kings before him, but out of those marriages her marriage to Uther was the only love match. She was Greenwitch, of course, when she was just a princess, and then when she married, the Lady Nimueh took over that post. The first marriage of Igraine had no issue; then from the second she had the Lady Morgause and the Lady Morgana. Igraine was expected to live for many more years, perhaps to even survive Uther and marry a fourth time.

Alas, that was not to be. She was determined to give Uther a child. Perhaps she was getting too old, perhaps her previous pregnancies had weakened her too much to carry a child to term. She had two miscarriages and a stillbirth before she got pregnant with Arthur. By then, both she and Uther were desperate for just one child. She was very sick during that pregnancy. She lost weight and had been forced to bed rest from quite early on. It was clear she'd lose that child as well; the only thing uncertain at that point was whether she would survive giving birth.

But she persevered, clinging to life until her child could be born. When she was so weakened that she was on the verge of just slipping away, the High Priestess Nimueh visited her in her sick bed and they talked. No one knows what was said, but Nimueh later came back when everyone was asleep and took the Queen with her into the Crystal Cave. The King went after them with his men, but he was too late. They saw Nimueh walk into the Lake of the Dead with the Queen and disappear in its depths.

It is said the King sat vigil by the lake for a long time, hoping against hope that it would give him back his wife. And after a while, her body floated up to the surface, naked and with her big belly bulging upwards. But every time he tried to pull her out, the lake closed around the body and hid it from his eyes. So the King did not try again and just waited. He waited for almost a whole cycle. Once he fell asleep and when he woke, Igraine's body was gone and he heard the cries of a newborn kicking in the shallows, with the umbilical cord and the afterbirth still attached.

The child was Arthur.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Merlin woke still feverish and weak, but his body bore no evidence of injury. That last memory of the explosion must have been part of a fever dream.

Next to him was only an empty space where he could still feel Arthur's heat, half-remembered how, lying next to him, Arthur's brow was too hot to the touch as though he were burning up, but Merlin did not have enough strength to do anything about it, just as he couldn't help himself. The only cause Merlin could think of was that they must have eaten something off before coming to the cave and Arthur's injury-weakened state hastened the illness, but it seemed he was also the first one to recover.

Then Merlin spotted his body floating in the water, right in the centre of the standing crystals. He must have been driven delirious by the fever and waded out there to gain some relief in the cold water, but there his strength must have left him and now he was about to drown. Merlin jumped after him into the surprisingly deep water, his fever-sore muscles suddenly filled with vigour, and managed to reach Arthur before he submerged too far for Merlin to spot the shadowy outlines of his body under the dark, rippling surface.

"Arthur, are you all right?" Merlin asked when he finished dragging him back to land.

"Merlin?" Arthur turned his head blindly in the direction of Merlin's voice; his eyes were glassy with fever still. And then he slipped back into unconsciousness.

Merlin stayed awake, keeping close watch over Arthur's sleep until he spotted the lone boat drifting over the lake. Sitting in it he could make out two figures paddling. Then it got close enough for Merlin to recognise Sir Leon and Elyan. Merlin woke Arthur and they watched it get nearer. They waved at them to signal they were all right and Sir Leon responded by lifting one of the paddles into the air.

"Why are my clothes wet?" Arthur asked idly.

"You fell into the lake earlier when you got up to relieve yourself," Merlin told him in jest. Arthur looked at him aghast. "The real question is," Merlin continued, his eyes probably alight with mischief, "why you're still wearing any, as you seem to have a propensity for losing them whenever you get into an altercation with water."

"Don't be absurd, Merlin," Arthur said. Of course, Merlin knew he had a set that would endure an exposure to water to be worn inside the cave. "One gets the impression that you let me fall into the water on purpose."

Merlin gulped, hard. In that second, the boat slid onto the shore. Arthur kept his eyes on Merlin for one more beat, as though he had a hard time tearing them away. Then he turned, visibly composing himself, to greet his knights.

Sir Leon was the first one who stepped over its rim and began to speak right away a nervous babble of apologies for not coming sooner.

"I don't suppose you have any food with you? Or water," Arthur interrupted.

Sir Leon blinked, struck speechless but Elyan rose to the occasion, presenting them with a full waterskin and some hard boiled eggs. Arthur took a large gulp of the water first. Merlin let him, for he had refused to drink from the lake, no matter how thirsty he was. They decided to eat on the way back.

"You shouldn't put weight on your leg," Elyan warned when Arthur was about to get into the boat. "You don't want that break to get worse."

"It feels all right now," Arthur said. He limped a bit but Merlin thought it was an act, for he seemed to have forgotten about his injury until Elyan reminded him of it. "Must have only been a bad sprain." He shot a speaking glance in Merlin's direction when he said that, then let himself be helped into the boat by Elyan, and pretended not to see his disbelieving looks.

Leon and Elyan paddled on the way back; they did not let Arthur help, even though he tried to insist. In the end, the argument was decided by the fact that there were only two paddles.

"You must be starving," Elyan injected, mostly to stop the squabbling. "You should eat before we reach the stream; we've got a rocky road before us."

"You got here just in time for me to work up a bit of hunger," Arthur assured Sir Leon and at the same time pre-empting further apologies that he saw coming.

Sir Leon looked taken aback. "Sire, a fourth of a cycle has passed since we had followed Morgause back to Camelot." And even Merlin, with his hasty introduction to Camelot's chronometry, could tell that was a long time. He did not know how they would explain that, but to his surprise, the explanation had already been provided by the Old Religion.

"The Dragon was protecting you, Sire," Sir Leon told them with conviction Merlin had not expected from him. "It made time go faster for you so you wouldn't starve. Even those in agreement with Lord Agravaine's views cannot doubt now that you're deserving of the title of the Pendragon."

The stream they were paddling towards was a different one that had carried away Morgause and Camelot's knights. And, Merlin noticed when they got close, it was flowing in the wrong direction! How they planned on travelling back to Camelot on it was a mystery to him since the current was too strong to paddle upstream.

Arthur grabbed Merlin's belt and knotted it onto one of the ropes whose ends were fastened to the boat's bottom. "It's best you grab onto your seat," he said and before Merlin could have asked what he meant, there was a great lurch and the boat went over the side of the lake, not where the stream connected to it but a little to the side where the currents drove some of the stream's water down the lake's side and carried the boat with it. Merlin squeaked and held onto the flat board with white knuckles as the vessel tipped over and slid down the outer curve of the lake.

It did not last long but for those few heartbeats, Merlin thought he was going to die. The world turned upside down, the rope tied to his belt went taut as his backside separated from the seat. He heard Arthur's delighted laughter from very close.

"Don't be afraid!" Arthur yelled.

Merlin wanted to yell back an insult but was prevented from doing so by his teeth clashing together as they landed on top of a stream which flowed near the lake and for which Leon and Elyan had been aiming. From then on, it was a smooth ride back to Camelot, although a longer and more circuitous one than the path they had taken to the lake.

"What happened to Morgause?" Arthur asked around halfway. They were drifting slowly over a broad, gently curving stream. Arthur had taken up one of the paddles and played with it, dipping it into the water and pulling idly. It did not do much good; paddles were only effective on top of the streams when they pulled upstream. Do the same thing downstream and it would only gain them a few minutes and sore arms.

"She disappeared," Elyan said, the bitterness so foreign from his usual non-judgmental calm tones. "We found the boat berthed but we found no trace of her. No one saw her leave the cave."

"She might be here, still," Arthur mused, although Merlin could tell he himself did not really believe that.

"People reported sightings of them leaving Camelot," Leon broke his self-imposed silence.

"Them?" Arthur asked. But he answered the question for himself. "Morgana?"

Sir Leon gave him a sympathetic look. "We don't know for sure; no one saw the face clearly," he said but then admitted, "it is likely. She, too, cannot be found, even though the beginning of the new cycle is near." Sir Leon looked hesitant; it was clear there was something he was not saying, perhaps he did not know how.

In the end, Elyan said it for him. "And Agravaine's body was found in her chambers."

Upon their return to Camelot they were assaulted by a cold so bitter that it turned the moisture soaked into their clothes into hard, brittle chips of crystal that crunched at their movements and prickled their fingertips when touched.

"It's called ice," Sir Leon told them. "Gaius says it only forms in extreme cold."

Merlin felt sorry for Elyan who out of everyone seemed the most affected by it. He was a blacksmith, as his father before him, and worked deep down in the Dragon's guts where the heat was so enormous that it melted down even rock.

After the long journey back, all of them were hungry. They started walking to the kitchens so that they could be fed only to be accosted by a group of knights delivering summons from the King. Uther had immediately sent for Arthur as soon as he had learned from the guards that he was back.

"Sire!" One of them went up right into Arthur's face and the rest crowded the corridor so that no one could pass. "You need to come urgently!"

"I suppose, whatever it is, it cannot wait until I had my meal." Arthur sighed tiredly.

"A strange woman was caught," the knight answered him, looking contrite. "The King thinks she's the sorceress responsible."

"Not Morgause?" Arthur asked, letting himself to be diverted onto the path to the throne room. Merlin followed him without a word, Sir Leon and Elyan as well. No one tried to stop them.

"Not her," another one of the new arrivals answered. "No one knows who she is and she is clearly insane, only speaks gibberish." Arthur nodded his tired features hardening with grim resignation.

Before the throne room's entrance, they found Gaius waiting for them. He must have been summoned as well.

"A word, Gaius," Arthur caught Gaius's elbow and waved their entourage onward, directing Sir Leon to make his report to the King while Arthur talked with Gaius. "Go on, we'll only be a short while."

He pulled Gaius and Merlin, who at first wanted to follow the knights, and waited until they were alone. "Gaius, what's been happening?" he asked then.

"You've surely heard about Morgause by now?" Gaius inquired.

"And Morgana and Agravaine," Arthur confirmed. Gaius nodded; he looked troubled.

"Apart from that," Gaius took a deep breath as if to fortify himself against what he had to impart. "The temperature grows colder each day. I must warn you, sire, not to fall asleep in an unheated room on your own, you as well, Merlin." Merlin nodded when Gaius turned to him. "Sharing body heat is the best way to prevent freezing to death in one's sleep, but I suspect neither of you is going to find it hard to scrounge up a bed mate."

Merlin felt himself blush and Arthur cleared his throat and quickly found another question to ask. "And what about this woman? Do you think it might be the sorceress?" It was more likely, Merlin thought, that the poor woman was merely another innocent victim of the King's obsession. From Arthur's tone, Merlin thought Arthur suspected that, too.

Gaius lifted a customary eyebrow which eloquently expressed his doubts on the matter but he only said he had not seen her yet as he had just now been summoned as well.

"Has this ever happened before?" Arthur rubbed his arms for warmth; ice chips crunched and flaked off from the movement.

"Only once that I can remember," Gaius said. "But then it only lasted for a very short time."

"How do we combat it? Isn't there something in one of your books?" No one had told him, but Merlin had worked out by now that Arthur was one of the few people who knew of Gaius's true nature. Thus, when he asked about books, Merlin was fairly certain Arthur usually meant in Gaius's experience. Not now, though.

Gaius looked pained for a second. "Dragonlords were not in the habit of writing books. All I have is from secondary sources and is, effectively, guesswork."

"Why not?" Arthur's voice was full of reproach, as though those dragonlords had only existed to inconvenience him. "Did they want to keep their knowledge a secret?" Arthur looked bewildered.

"There would have been no point, Sire," Gaius lectured gently but hurriedly, not having forgotten that the King was waiting for them. "Even knowing how dragonlords controlled the Dragon would not make someone who is not a dragonlord able to do the same. Dragonlords are not made; they are born."

"But wouldn't they need to write down their knowledge to pass it to the next generation?" Arthur wanted to know.

"Dragonlords inherit their knowledge passed down from their predecessors in the same way your mother passed the colour of her hair onto you." Gaius explained, his eyes softening when he mentioned Igraine; Arthur, Merlin noticed, only stiffened with discomfort.

Arthur scratched his head, and stole a tentative glance at Merlin. He seemed genuinely curious but, Merlin realised, it was, for once, not only because Camelot was in danger and he wanted to know how to combat that danger, but because he wanted to know more about Merlin.

Then he came to a decision. "Gaius, I'll be frank," he said, lowering his voice just shy of a whisper. "Isn't there a way to help Merlin gain control over the Dragon?" Arthur asked, serious, leaning even closer to Gaius.

If Gaius was surprised at the directness of the question, he did not show it. Of course, Merlin thought, he was the one who had as good as betrayed him to Arthur.

"We've already tried that," Gaius confessed. "We tried to nudge that knowledge but…" He looked at Merlin, silently inquiring.

Merlin's mouth was dry. "I— I tried one of those mnemonics," he muttered weakly. "I don't think it did anything." He shrugged.

"Of course it did," Arthur interrupted. "My leg was broken." They looked down where Arthur was standing on two perfectly healthy legs.

Gaius opened his mouth to further inquiry Merlin, probably about how it happened, but in that moment, Sir Leon stepped out of the throne room, looking nervous.

"Sire," he called, his voice full of repressed urgency. "The King…"

Arthur straightened his back, suddenly remembering their original purpose of being here. "I'm coming," he said and strode forward, Merlin and Gaius following in his wake.

The throne room was even colder than the corridors; it was more spacious and large, windowless arches connected it to the outside world which also let in the moisture still sporadically falling from the sky. It froze over the long pillars surrounding the windows, their intricate decorations were hung with long, sharp icicles.

The throne was covered with furs, but the King was not sitting in it. He was striding up and down the throne room. The woman was surrounded by a circle of knights who hovered over her kneeling form. She shivered in her thin clothes and said something to Uther who looked at her with disgust written over his face. Merlin did not understand her words for they were meant for the King's ears only and not for a greater audience, but from her tone he thought she was pleading with him. Uther looked unmoved.

And then they got closer and one of the knights stepped out of Merlin's line of sight, and Merlin recognised her.

"Mother!" he shouted and ran to her. The ring of knights opened to him, and Merlin was on his knees, hugging her thin form and asking why she was here.

"Merlin," she said, her voice shaking with relief. "It's good to see you. I tried to tell them I was looking for you, but they didn’t understand."

But before he could ask what she meant, Arthur was there, calling his name, and the King yelled orders to restrain him.

"What's the meaning of this?" Uther bellowed. "Arthur!" For Arthur was already there, shoving aside the crossbows aimed at Merlin and Hunith's huddled forms.

"Merlin?" Arthur asked.

"It's my mother, Arthur," Merlin said, beseeching Arthur. He knew not even to try it with the King, for he had no mercy for alleged sorceresses in his soul. "She's not a sorceress. Please, don't hurt her!"

"Your mother?" Arthur asked, but it seemed he had no capacity to deal with that additional revelation just yet. "You understand what she's saying, then?" he asked, looking baffled but also relieved.

"Of course I do," Merlin said, equally mystified. "Don't you?"

Arthur glanced at Hunith but she remained silent, so he turned back to Merlin.

"Can you ask her why she came here? What she wants?" Arthur looked as though he felt stupid asking that. Of course a mother had every right to come after her child. Uther, though, was expecting an explanation. However, Merlin felt the matter was not at all as straightforward as it seemed. He turned to his mother, waiting for her to answer the question but she only looked at him expectantly.

"What is it, Merlin?" she said after a beat of silence. "What did he say?"

"You can't understand them either?" Merlin asked.

Uther lost his patience then. "I do not know what kind of sorcery this is," the King said in a dangerous tone, "but you can spend some time in the dungeons, boy, if you won't make her talk soon."

"Father!" Arthur began to say but his objections were stifled with a glance from Uther.

Merlin swallowed, fear gripping his insides. "She means no harm, Sire," he said. Hunith must have sensed that the situation was going downhill; she tugged on Merlin's shirt to gain his attention and then began to speak in a rushed flow of half-whispers. His blood ran cold when the meaning of her words penetrated his mind.

"She says she came after me because they need help," he translated, his voice shaking with disbelief. "Ealdor is overrun with the dead. Two strangers came through the tunnel and woke them. The Dragonlord has been taken, perhaps even killed, but she thinks they need him alive. Last time she spoke with Balinor, he said the Dragon was going to hatch soon; a Dragonlord would need to call it from the egg." He turned to the King. "That's what she's saying."

The King, though, did not look satisfied. If possible, he looked even more enraged than before.

"Lies!" he roared. Then he leant close to Merlin, eyes flashing, and spoke to him in quiet, menacing tones. "You think you can deceive me with such poorly constructed lies?"

"They are no lies, I swear!" Merlin yelped.

"Dragonlord, what Dragonlord?" Uther growled. "There are no Dragonlords anymore! And where is this place called Ealdor? It must be very far from Camelot if you don't even speak the same language," he added shrewdly, looking to catch them at an obvious lie. "Or could it be," he asked without expecting an answer, "that the two of you are sorcerers, speaking the language of magic?"

"What?" Merlin blinked, too taken aback to think of an answer.

"Answer me!" Uther roared; no one dared interrupting him. "Are you the sorcerers responsible for releasing the Great Dragon? Are you the ones who caused the water and the cold and the deaths?" Then his eyes narrowed to slits and his voice became icy calm. "Are you the ones who kidnapped the Lady Morgana?"

"I—" Merlin did not know what to say. After all, he was probably accountable for the things of which the King had accused him. Uther did not even need his confession, as he could probably read the guilt in his eyes.

"Sire, perhaps we should think through…" Gaius attempted to employ the voice of reason but Uther dismissed him with a wave. It was clear he already had his mind made up on the matter.

"It is clear that these two," he gestured towards Merlin and Hunith still kneeling within the threatening ring of knights, "are sorcerers and are trying to deceive us with their lies. Throw them into a dungeon cell; see if some time spent in the cold will loosen their tongues."

Two of the guards grabbed onto Hunith's arms and another two pulled Merlin from the floor and dragged them away.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Merlin had always imagined dungeons to be dark and dank. Camelot's dungeons were neither. The big room which housed the cells was like any other room in the castle. It had no window but the walls radiated light. It was a pale, barely-there light which did not provide any warmth. There were four cells in a row, separated by iron bars from the rest of the room and each other. There was no furniture in them, not even a heap of straw. In fact, the floors were cleaner than any place which was populated by people. Whatever traces the previous occupants had left there had long disappeared, which indicated that the cells were not regularly used.

Merlin and Hunith were put in separate cells with one empty cell left between them, probably to prevent them whispering among themselves. It was a futile effort as they could have just talked normally if they wanted to and the guards would not understand anything of their words. It also took away any possibility of keeping themselves from freezing by huddling up next to another body, even with cold iron bars separating them.

They did talk a little, as Merlin had to explain his mother why she had ended up in a cold cell when she came to appeal to Camelot's benevolence. He had to explain about sorcerers and Hunith of course did not believe any of it at first, so Merlin had to assure her that magic, was quite real indeed – or at least things that people called magic but were actually the Great Dragon's dealings. And then he had to confess that despite Balinor's hopes and claims, he was very far from being a real dragonlord yet and the King might be right about it all being his fault.

Of course the guards did not like them talking, but they could do nothing to enforce silence apart from ordering them to keep quiet and, when that achieved nothing, beating their prong shafts against the bars. They had stopped after a while; not because they were intimidated, but because their teeth had started chattering too much to articulate properly.

Some time later Gaius came to visit with Gwen by his side. She brought them food and blankets but the guards would not let them have any of it, until Arthur turned up as well and ordered them to stand down. He had no weapons or knights with him but they obeyed his words anyhow, even looking slightly chastened.

"Sire?" Gaius asked.

Arthur shook his head. "I tried but he wouldn't relent." He looked disappointed and annoyed but Merlin could see no fear in his eyes, which he took as a good sign.

"I'm sure he'll see sense in the morning," Gaius muttered. He only stayed long enough to ascertain himself of Merlin's health and then left to do research at the King's bidding.

Arthur had been carrying even more food and blankets.

Arthur then tried relieving the guards from their duty, taking all responsibility for the prisoners upon himself, but they did not dare disobey the King's direct orders to that extent, even though they looked as though they would like nothing better than leave for someplace warmer. In the end, Arthur told Gwen to give them blankets (Arthur had only brought one. Merlin recognised it as having been liberated from Arthur's own bed and of a much better quality) and distributed the rest between the two cells. Gwen gave Merlin a hot rat pie and it was the most wonderful thing Merlin had ever eaten. The filling in the middle still maintained some warmth.

"I already told him everything that happened in the cave," Arthur told Merlin after he had let himself into his cell. "We're going to stay here, so you two won't freeze in your sleep."

The guards tried to protest, but Arthur just took their keys and did not give them back even after he had let Gwen into Hunith's cell and opened Merlin's. The doors remained unlocked. Arthur sat next to Merlin and wound the thick fur blanket around their bodies, while Gwen and Hunith curled up in another one two cells down.

"I'm not going to let anything happen to you or your mother. This I swear." Arthur looked straight into Merlin's eyes; he was entirely serious about his promise. It should not have reassured Merlin so easily, but it did. He believed Arthur and he believed in Arthur, despite knowing that Arthur was just one man, even if he was Uther's son and the Pendragon. What could he do if the King decided he wanted Merlin's head off?

"Against all appearances, he actually does like you, Merlin," Arthur said, watching Merlin eat.

"And if that's not enough?" Merlin looked at him.

"We'll go to Ealdor."

Arthur's body was like a living furnace after the cold wall against which Merlin had been leaning for the past hours. It proved very hard to keep himself at a respectable distance and eventually futile as Arthur just brushed aside propriety and pulled Merlin against his chest with an arm around his middle.

They did not talk after the food was gone. Gwen and Hunith were hard pressed to communicate with words, so instead they used smiles, and they both seemed to be well enough versed in this language to get over basic introductions. After a while, they both drifted off to sleep, and a little later, their guards were snoring as well. Perhaps there had been something in the food.

Arthur's body was wonderfully solid and inviting, pressed against his own and cocooned by soft fur. Despite sitting in a cold dungeon cell, Merlin thought he had never been more comfortable in his life than at this very moment. Arthur's palm moved slowly over Merlin's stomach, soothing him, relaxing his apprehensions stroke by stroke. Merlin sighed and sank into the freely offered comfort, letting his eyelids slip closed. He burrowed his nose into Arthur's throat to take a deep breath of the scent which had become familiar to him from nights spent sleeping in Arthur's bed, surrounded by it. He felt Arthur's own breath hitch under his cheek.

"I had plans, you know," Arthur breathed into Merlin's ear. "You, me, my bed; there might not have been much sleeping on the agenda, and I don't just mean stargazing." His voice, quiet and rasping, sent shivers down Merlin's spine. Or perhaps his words did. Merlin lifted his head from Arthur's shoulder until they were face to face.

"How many innocents you must have lured into your bed with that excuse, I cannot imagine," Merlin smirked.

Arthur snorted. "As if there could be anyone else besides you," he said, and Merlin knew he must have meant the bit where people were generally afraid of stepping foot into his room, but it ended up sounding as though he had meant something entirely different. Merlin's heart gave a sharp thud, for something in Merlin, deep down, wanted it to be what it sounded; an impossible thing.

He wanted to say something back; something light-hearted, teasing, to relieve the unexpected heaviness of the moment. But Arthur's face was right there, his breath shallow and his eyes betraying the hope and uncertainty which the confidence of his tone had concealed well enough that Merlin had almost fallen for the charade.

And then Arthur scrunched up his eyes, as though in fear, and closed the last distance between their lips. The kiss did not start out well, it went a bit sideways, but Merlin was happy enough to tug on the soft hair that grew on Arthur's nape and navigate him into the right position. Arthur's mouth opened right away and there was a little bit too much tongue, but Merlin did not mind. His mind was too busy cataloguing all the ways it felt good and right to pay any attention to small things such as technique.

He did not notice when their position changed from half-sitting up to lying down but it happened quite without their notice and the kissing never stopped. The furs sheltered them from the cold and Arthur's body was a warm weight over Merlin's own. He could feel Arthur's erection straining against his stomach, but Arthur did not try to do anything with it; instead he focussed his full concentration on Merlin's mouth, one hand cradling Merlin's chin and the other stroking sensuous lines over his throat. Merlin's arms held onto Arthur's waist, played with his hair and kept him close enough to taste.

Some time later, the kisses tapered off into lazy, tired touches and small caresses, soft, heavy-lidded smiles. And then they slept, curled around each other, warm with the intimacy of the small, safe world they created inside a blanket, isolated for the moment from the harsh reality of the outside world.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

They woke to shrieking.

At first Merlin thought the noise had just been the last figment of his dream. He had dreamt of Ealdor besieged by the Dead; pale, emaciated bodies shuffling forward, killing with a touch. Nothing but fairytale monsters. He was comfortable, wrapped in furs, with Arthur's smell filling his nose, and overhead there was the infinite blackness of space with its shining carpet of stars; the sun hid behind the planet and everything was shrouded in darkness. He thought he was waking up in Arthur's sleeping chambers after a few restful hours of sleep.

Arthur was already up, woken as the first screams rose, and was talking quietly with the guards who looked more than a little unnerved.

When he noticed Merlin was awake, he came back through the wide-open cell door which he did not even bother closing behind him, and knelt so that they could talk without making too much noise. Just then new screams sounded and the pounding of running feet soon mingled with them. There were yelled words but they were not clear enough to understand.

"I have to go, see what's happening," Arthur said. "But I'll be back, or I'll send Leon if I cannot come personally."

Merlin nodded. He noticed then that his mother was also awake, just sitting up, but Gwen was still asleep.

But one of the guards started objecting. "Sire, the skies have opened up, we cannot stay here," he said. "We cannot stay here!"

He sounded panicked; he no longer cared about the prisoners he had been charged with; he could not take his eyes from the sight of the starry sky bared over their heads. His yelling had woken Gwen, who looked just as terrified.

"All right," Arthur decided. He stood and raised his voice to make it clear his next words were addressed to everyone present. "There is no time to waste. I'm going to Father, and you're all coming with me." This included the guards as well, which they accepted with relief rather than with protests; they would apparently rather choose to face their king's ire than to be left on their own, under the naked sky.

The King was found in the throne room, in the circle of his advisors, listening to the knights' reports. Merlin wondered whether he had spent all this time there, but that seemed rather unlikely. Arthur told them to stay out of sight behind one of the large pillars that lined the throne room and walked down the length of the chamber to the King on his own. Uther noticed his presence, but ignored it in favour of letting the knight finish his report. Arthur was content to wait in silence and listen, as he wanted to know what was happening as well.

"Few places are still unaffected, my Lord. The lower corridors are most likely to be last to change, but their ceilings have begun to turn as well. And that's not the worst of it."

"Tell me about the worst," the King ordered warily.

"Panic is breaking out everywhere." The knight shook his head; he was a middle-aged man, looking on the brink of panicking himself. Merlin had seen him around but did not know his name. "Presently, we have the situation under control but I don't know how long that will last."

More reports followed in a similar vein while Arthur was left waiting, and although some of the knights and advisors threw him curious glances, they did not dare address him until the King had done so.

Merlin learnt that the people of Camelot were concerned about the stars showing in the sky. The sight of the vast, open blackness frightened them; most of them had never seen anything like it before. Some started talking about the Dragon making ready to wipe out humanity – to throw them out among the stars. Others thought it was the harbinger of another Blight, and this time it would be so bright that it would eradicate all life inside the Dragon, and there was no hiding from it even inside the castle. Understandably, panic was rising among the populace. Those present were not exempt of this fear either.

Merlin carefully wiggled around the pillar to better hear what was being said but he must not have been careful enough, as one of the knights spotted him moving in the shadows and called out to announce his presence.

Uther had not acknowledged Arthur but when he spotted Merlin, he turned his full attention on him without hesitation.

"You! What are you doing here? How did you get here?" Uther hissed. He must have been overworked already for his temper flared at even this slight provocation. He strode down the length of the throne room towards Merlin's hiding place.

"He's with me, father, I brought him here," Arthur said, hurrying after Uther, but the King took no notice.

"Did you do this?" he demanded of Merlin instead. He was already only paces from Merlin when he stopped and gestured to encompass the entire ceiling. "Answer me, were you the one who opened up the sky?"

Before Merlin could have gathered his wits for an answer, Arthur stepped in front of him. "He is not and you know it," he said.

The King did not seem pleased by his interference.

"Do I?" he asked. He looked Arthur up and down as though he was seeing him for the first time. Merlin stepped forward silently, putting a supportive hand on Arthur's back and feeling the tense muscles relax under his touch. The King did not miss any of this interaction; his eyes narrowed and he asked, "Can I even trust my own son anymore? For all I know, you're under their enchantment."

Arthur huffed and shook his head in exasperation. "Now you're just being ridiculous," he groaned, surprising himself with his own words, but he recovered quickly enough that Uther did not seem to notice the slight stutter, perhaps because he was too enraged to pay attention to small details like that. "There has never been a sorcerer who could command people's minds; they can only influence the Great Dragon."

"How do you explain your behaviour, then?" Uther asked, grim, seeming on edge. "You were ordered to make them talk by any means necessary."

Merlin paled and felt Arthur straighten his back, the muscles shifting and pulling taut under his palm. But when Arthur spoke next, he sounded calm and confident, even though Merlin could feel him shaking; he did not know whether it was from fear or rage. Merlin knew which emotion he himself was affected by.

"And I did." But only a moment later, Arthur no longer sounded composed. "And you know what? It only took someone willing to listen instead of flinging around accusations and pointing fingers. Making someone out as a scapegoat never solved any problems."

Uther's face twitched. "They inflict diseases on Camelot; they make everyone freeze to death; and now this! What more do you need to believe me that sorcerers are dangerous? They killed Agravaine and took Morgana!" he roared and with that last accusation, all fight seemed to go out of him and then there was silence.

"Father," Arthur said gently for he must have seen something on Uther's face which Merlin did not recognise but Arthur did. "No one took Morgana."

Heavy silence underscored that statement.

"What do you mean?" Uther sounded confused and no longer angry, just lost. His face changed; the rage melted off it as though it had been only a coat of paint covering his features, and what was left was tiredness and uncertainty.

"You were going to execute her sister," Arthur said. "What did you think she was going to do?" Arthur shook his head. "As for Agravaine, he was blackmailing them. It was probably Morgana or Morgause who killed him when he tried to stop them."

"But where would they go?" Arthur had no answer for that.

"They are in Ealdor," Merlin said, suddenly remembering her mother saying something about two strangers having appeared right before the troubles began. "Ealdor has no Dragon, so there is nothing for her to influence. On the other hand, there is a dragonlord and a dragonlord's presence prevents sorcerers from influencing the Dragon." Everyone looked at him as though he had grown a second head. Then Arthur's lips curled into a tiny, approving smile.

Uther, though, only understood one thing from it. "See? Even Morgana does not trust her. She is a sorceress! Sorcerers are…"

"Not evil. Just uncontrollable." Arthur sighed, the tension gone from his shoulders now that the confrontation was over. "I don't think they knew any of that. I suspect they just wanted to be gone from Camelot and then accidentally found the tunnel."

"What is this tunnel you speak of?" one of Uther's advisors asked. He was an old man, although probably not as old as Gaius – who was, Merlin only noticed now, inexplicably not present, but also not as spry. He dared stepping closer, now that the King's ire had calmed down. "Where is this Ealdor?"

"Is this Ealdor safe from all this?" Another advisor asked, gesturing at the sky. "Can we go there?" Merlin did not know what to say to that; he had not even considered the possibility.

Just when he was about to say that, a sliver of light cut into the darkness overhead. It formed a crescent, which slowly stretched wider and wider. Merlin recognised the sight from having watched the sunrise that first time in Balinor's inner chamber: it was the first rays of sunlight shining through the top layers of the planet's atmosphere, making it appear as a thin slice of brightness which cut into the dark velvet of space, in the seconds before the planet turned enough that the sun could illuminate its turbulent surface. But as Merlin watched, he felt that something was wrong, out of place.

The shining sickle in the sky just grew and grew and Merlin had never seen it this big before, not even from the crystal cave. And then the sun finally rose over the horizon, its rays sweeping over the planet's surface, and Merlin looked on, cowed by the awesome sight before him. The planet was much larger than it was supposed to be. But planets don't grow, Merlin thought, stupefied, watching as sunlight revealed more and more of the planet.

An awed silence filled the throne room, as though everyone were holding their breath, and then Merlin suddenly realised that the planet had not grown but was closer, much closer than Merlin had ever seen it, even from Ealdor. It was more than twice its usual size, so they must be twice as close, well inside the rings, even when Ealdor's orbit was just outside them.

Except that it no longer was. The sun rose higher and more of the planet became visible, and then Merlin saw Ealdor. It was not safely established in its orbit behind the rings but wedged into a thin lane between the third and the fourth ring. The Great Dragon, which used to be closer to the planet when Merlin first saw it, was now above it, the dark cord of the tunnel pulled taut between them.

It took a few heartbeats for the meaning of that sight to sink in, and when it did, Merlin's heart began to beat in double-time. Ealdor would be drawn closer and closer towards the planet and Camelot would follow it, share its fate to be burned up in the planet's thick atmosphere.

Merlin tugged on Arthur's sleeve and drew him away from the group, though they went only far enough to get some privacy. "Arthur, we need to find Balinor. He's the only one who knows how to stop this." Merlin noticed his voice was shaking with fear, but this was not a time to care about appearances.

Arthur's hand landed on his shoulder and gave a reassuring squeeze. "But did your mother not say he's been taken prisoner by someone? He might no longer even be alive." He paused. "What about… you?"

Merlin had known what Arthur going to ask even before the words were out of his mouth; knew and dreaded it for he knew his answer would not satisfy. He shook his head, crestfallen, feeling the most useless he had ever felt in his life. "Let's hope Balinor still lives."

Arthur gave his shoulder another squeeze and nodded. Merlin was thankful he had not let his disappointment show on his features.

"Look," Arthur said, making his voice be heard by everyone, his authority wrapped around him like a cloak. "I am the Pendragon, and I say you don't have to be afraid of the sky. There is not going to be a Blight and no one is going to fall out of the Dragon. That, however," he pointed a finger in the direction where Ealdor was making its dangerous way within the rings, somehow avoiding constant bombardment by the rock fragments, but a flash of explosion now and then signalled that they did not elude it completely, "is a problem."

"What is that?" the same advisor who wanted to know if they could relocate to Ealdor asked.

"That is Ealdor," Arthur answered, his voice grim.

"It is pulling us into the planet!" the man exclaimed, horror-struck. There was no need to point out that Ealdor seemed to be a less safe location even than Camelot.

"And what do you intend to do about it?" Uther blustered, having found his voice once again. "What can we even do?"

Arthur pulled himself up to his full height, meeting the confrontation as an equal.

"I'm going to take some of the knights," he told Uther; he was not asking for the King's permission. "We are going to Ealdor and find the Dragonlord. Then we will bring him to Camelot, and he's going to command the Great Dragon to change its course."

"This is suicide, Arthur. You cannot go there," Uther gestured towards the half-submerged asteroid, shaking his head. "I cannot allow this!" Arthur, though, was adamant.

"We can either make an attempt to save Ealdor or let Camelot follow it to its doom."

And that was that.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Life in Camelot resumed as before, although people still threw fearful looks above their heads; others were studiously keeping their gazes directed at the ground. Although the blue sun, Ascetir, did not provide as much light as Camelot was used to, it was still bright enough to see by, and the cold was less biting when it was out. The icicles did not thaw, but after they had broken the ice in the wells, their surfaces did not harden again until the sun disappeared behind the planet around lunch time. For Merlin, it was his familiar schedule resuming once again, though Arthur complained that it got dark again in the middle of the day.

It took longer than expected to prepare everything for the voyage. The first difficulty arose when it came to selecting the knights who would accompany them. Arthur stumbled into unexpected injuries and scheduling problems. In Camelot, there was generally no need for everyone to follow the same rhythm, as there was no difference between nights and days; the knights were the only ones who were sorted into groups and were expected to coordinate their sleeping and waking hours with those who were in the same group. During his stint in the Crystal Cave, it seemed Arthur had got out of synch with everyone in his own group. Or at least that was a serviceable excuse.

"They are afraid," Arthur explained to Merlin. "And I don't blame them."

In the end, they ended up with some of the same complement of people who had accompanied Arthur into the Cave, with the addition of Hunith and Gwen, who insisted on coming.

"I couldn't possibly ask that of you, Gwenhwyfar," Arthur exclaimed but it was of no use, as she would not be dissuaded.

"I couldn’t just sit here, knowing I can do nothing to prevent what's happening," Gwen said. "There at least I can be of some use. And I might see Morgana," she added, trying to make it sound like an afterthought but not succeeding very well, then shrugged, knowing Merlin had seen through her.

"Do not be afraid, Sire," Lancelot spoke with all the earnestness in the world. "I'm going to protect her from harm."

"I can protect myself," Gwen retorted sharply, and it was for the first time that Merlin witnessed her looking anything else but smitten with Lancelot. It was very clear he was not going to win her affections by acting this way.

"Oh, she's not half bad," Elyan agreed with a proud smile on his face, and thus defused the situation before it came to someone's feelings getting hurt.

They packed warm clothes and blankets, and Arthur convinced the kitchens to pack them food enough for several meals. Gaius gave them herbs to be brewed as an infusion against colds and a basket full of bandages and other things which they could use for treating wounds.

"Gaius, why is it that I never noticed that people in Camelot speak another language?" Merlin asked, busying himself with opening a cupboard and keeping his back to Gaius.

A huff came from behind his back. "You cannot think of an explanation on your own?"

"I reckon it has something to do with Balinor and the memories I'm supposed to have inherited from him," Merlin said. He closed the cupboard and crouched to look into the lower half of it.

"You most certainly have them," Gaius said. "But I think this is different. I think it is entirely possible that this was the first language you learnt. Before Balinor gave you to your mother to raise, I think he might have spoken to you in his native language. So when you heard it next, it came to you naturally. Merlin, what are you looking for?" Gaius asked as he finished putting together the medicine basket. Merlin had been running around in his chambers, looking under tables, cupboards, lifting blankets, searching frantically in every obvious and less obvious place. "If it's the underwear you discarded after you slept with Arthur in the sick bed, I burnt it."

This finally got Merlin's attention and he stopped, feeling himself redden as he remembered that night. He also remembered that, while he had indeed spent a couple of very pleasant hours wrapped tightly around Arthur's naked body in order to warm him up, nothing had happened that would have justified the burning of his clothes.

Gaius chuckled. "You are too easy, Merlin," he said. "So, are you going to tell me what you are searching for?"

"Right," Merlin said, his face still burning but he could not stop himself from smiling and he knew Gaius noticed it. "I cannot find Nimueh's book," he said for he remembered there was something with which Gaius could help besides making fun of him.

"Did you look in the bookcases?" Gaius asked, raising his brow.

"You know, my mother always used to tell me if I did that too many times, my face would stay that way." Merlin grimaced.

Gaius's eyebrows slanted even more in response.

"All right, don't say I didn't warn you," Merlin grinned and then, "Yes, I did look in the bookcases. And on the tables, in the sick room, under the tables, on the benches, in your medicine cabinet…" He would have continued on but Gaius lifted a hand to show he could stop.

"Have you looked in Arthur's room?"

Merlin shook his head. "I never took it out of this one."

Gaius pouted, which looked very strange on his face. "Perhaps the Dragon does not want you to have it," he suggested after a while.

"So what, it just disappeared?" Merlin made a face when Gaius just shrugged and did not contradict his conclusion. He never even thought of the possibility that it might have been Gaius who had hidden it, and when it did occur to him, he could no longer ask because they were already halfway to Ealdor.

Then Arthur came and asked about what Merlin thought they were about to face in Ealdor, where they would find the Dragonlord and how they would effect his release.

"He's called Balinor," Merlin said.

"Balinor," Arthur repeated, thoughtful. "Camelot's last Dragonlord was called by the same name."

"That's because it's the same Balinor." Merlin confirmed what Arthur must have already suspected. "I don't know how he came to Ealdor, but he said the Great Dragon had helped him flee." Which was the truth, even if it was not the entire truth. Merlin did not feel bad for leaving Gaius's role out of it. He reckoned Gaius could tell Arthur if he wanted him to know.

They went to dinner where they were told they would find Hunith and, with Merlin translating, Arthur asked her to tell him about how they could find Balinor and whom they might need to fight in order to get to him.

"It's the Dorocha," Hunith said in an undertone, fear making her voice shaking. "The Dorocha came in the dark," she indicated the sky where the sun was still hiding behind the planet. "They broke into the shrine when the lights in the domes went out. They came for Balinor, but they also killed all the volunteers. Some of them were eaten." As she went on explaining, Merlin felt the blood drain from his face.

"What!" Arthur shook Merlin's shoulder urgently. Of course he understood nothing of her words but he saw the change in Merlin's countenance. "What does that mean: Dorocha? What did she say?"

"Dorocha means dead. She says the Dead came when it was dark." Then Merlin had to explain about how life in Ealdor was divided by regular light and dark intervals, which Arthur thought strange and inconvenient. And then Merlin had to translate the last bit of his mother's words and the fragrant rat stew on his plate suddenly looked unappetising. "They kill without mercy and sometimes they eat what they killed."

"You mean they eat people?" Arthur looked horrified and Merlin did not blame him. He could only nod in answer. "What are they? How do you stop them?"

"I don't…" Merlin hesitated. He did not ask his mother for he doubted she knew more about it than Merlin did. "There are tales about them: the old Aboriginals that died together with their Dragon and left Ealdor to us."

"Their Dragon… Ealdor? Ealdor used to be a Dragon?" Elyan asked, amazed. He, alongside Gwen, Lancelot, Percival and Gwaine had been eating at another table but when they noticed their arrival, they picked up their meals and settled on both sides of Merlin and Arthur. Sir Leon arrived a little later and joined them as well. "Dragons die?"

Merlin shrugged; he had no way to truly know. "That's what the tales tell us. But how else do you explain humans living in an isolated rock?"

They could not. Arthur shook his head as this was not what was important right now. "Tell me about these Dead. How come they walk and attack people if they're already dead?"

"They are not really dead," Merlin obediently began to list everything he remembered from the stories he had been told as a child. "Not in the physical sense. Their souls are dead as they cannot exist without a Dragon, and the name we call them, Dorocha, means dead. They were said to only exist on a vegetative level, mostly asleep." Although that seemed the case no longer. "Some of them go wandering the unused corridors where no light can penetrate when they get hungry, and eat anything they can catch because they don't know the difference between animals and people. They don't have a consciousness, only instincts."

"You mean like animals?"

"Less than animals."

Arthur pondered on this, seeming only more bewildered. "Then what do they want?" he asked.

"I don't know." Merlin really could not think of anything that could have driven them out of their hiding places – provided the tales were right about them – besides hunger. He shuddered. And then remembered something else. "The tales say they are waiting."

"Waiting for what?" Arthur wanted to know.

"For another Dragon?" Merlin guessed. The tales did not really say, but it was only logical.

"The Great Dragon?" Gwen exclaimed. Merlin felt eyes turned on them and some of the looks were not exactly friendly. His skin prickled with cold sweat. They probably knew about Uther's accusations by now, he thought. They might even know that Merlin was a Dragonlord, although a useless one. If they decided to attack him, he might not even be able to defend himself with anything other than his fists. Merlin hoped he would never have cause to find out.

Arthur's hand slid over his fingers which were clenched around his spoon, thumb rubbing comforting circles over Merlin's whitening knuckles. Merlin looked up at him, and as he beheld Arthur's calm, strong features, the fear receded as quickly as it came. The people trusted Arthur; he was their Pendragon. Even if Merlin was no longer their favourite person, they would not dare attack him as long as Arthur was protecting him.

Sir Leon coughed. Arthur pulled back his hand, focussing his attention on cleaning his plate, and Merlin suddenly remembered he had been asked a question. The answer was not hard to find. In retrospect, the Dorocha waking up because of the Great Dragon's nearness was a possibility to reckon with. They had an argument about whether or not to forewarn Camelot of the likelihood of an attack. Arthur did not want to cause another panic and Sir Leon was on his side but the others were very vocal that the people deserved to know. Merlin disagreed with Arthur but he had never felt more keenly that he was an outsider. Camelot was not his home; it was not his place to argue, so he stayed out of it.

Instead he turned to his mother and translated what had been said, as she understood nothing of their conversation except for the frequent mention of the word Dorocha.

"They are afraid of light," Hunith said. She stroked Merlin's wrist, as she had always done when he had needed comforting, after Will had told him he was too old now for hugs. (Her fingers could still close around his wrist.) "They only attacked in the dark."

"Of course," Merlin nodded. That's what the stories warned about: the dangers of wandering in dark corridors. "Light could work as a deterrent then. Too bad we don't have any glowtorches." In Camelot, the place of eternal daylight, no one would need such a thing. Not that they could not make glowtorches. There was enough crystal in Camelot, but glowtorches needed to be charged up by putting something heavy on them and that could take much longer than what time they had.

"These Dorocha – are they magic?" Elyan asked.

"I don't know." Magic was absent from Ealdor, since they did not have a Dragon but who knew what the Great Dragon's presence made them capable of? "They might be."

"But can they be killed with mortal weapons?" Elyan inquired further.

"They do bleed, if that's what you're asking," Merlin said, though he did not know for certain, only hoped it was the truth. They must, for they were flesh and blood just like humans. Elyan nodded, looking pleased with the answer.

In the end, they agreed that fires would be the best solution, as they would provide warmth as well. Only Gaius, and Arthur's most loyal knights had been made aware of the additional danger Camelot might be facing. Not even Uther knew, which meant he had to leave some of the knights behind.

"It will be faster to travel as a small group," Arthur argued with Sir Leon, who did not welcome this sudden change of plans.

"And how do you propose to win against the enemy if we're this far outnumbered?"

Arthur shook his head but remained steadfast. "I suspect five more people aren't going to change that. The Dorocha are too elusive and Ealdor's corridors are too narrow for a head-on attack. Stealth and agility will work better. Besides, Elyan said he'd have something for us." But when Sir Leon asked what it was, Arthur could not tell him, only that he suspected it must be some kind of weapon, for Elyan was a blacksmith.

"I'm not staying behind." Sir Leon frowned. Arthur nodded.

"I'm not asking you to."

They were packed and ready to go and the sun chose that moment to rise again over the planet's surface. Merlin, who had been afraid to see Ealdor already submerged into the planet's atmosphere, noted with relief that it was in almost the same spot where he had spotted it during the previous sunrise.

"Perhaps the Great Dragon is already pulling on it," Arthur told him.

"Let's hope not," Merlin said. "That would mean its power is not enough to reverse our course, and then we are making this journey for nothing." Arthur gave him a tight nod and did not try to convince him otherwise, which Merlin appreciated.

They were still waiting for Elyan, who had to make a short trip outside Camelot to the smithy which had belonged his father and now was his when the King arrived at the top of the staircase just outside Camelot. He was alone. When he looked up at the emerging shape of the planet, Merlin saw terror in his eyes, but when he then directed his gaze on Arthur the emotion did not diminish. Instead turned into a different kind of fear.

"Arthur!" Uther called. He did not seem to notice or care that there were others around; his attention was focussed solely on his son. "About Morgana… I…" Uther's jaw and throat worked as though he had to swallow something large lodged in there before he could speak; Merlin guessed it was his pride. "I promise Morgause will live if you can persuade her to come back to Camelot."

Arthur stared at him. "She might not want to come back."

The King had no answer for that.

Elyan returned with a cloth-wrapped bundle under his arm which he presented with a huge grin on his face.

"What is that?" Lancelot asked, apparently curious enough to interrupt his profuse apologies to Gwen. Merlin was glad, for it was a pain to listen to any longer.

"These, my friends, are something that I'm hoping will be of use on our mission."

Elyan unwrapped the bundle. It contained an assortment of knives, six to count, but they were knives unlike the ones used in either Camelot or Ealdor. They were much longer and thicker, and Merlin could not imagine what it was they had been made to cut.

"These are swords," Elyan answered their unvoiced question. "They always fascinated me as a child. When I was just an apprentice, my father allowed me to experiment in my own time, even if he thought my experiments useless. Well, now I might have found some use for them."

Of course, Merlin had heard of swords; they were the weapons of the ancients; but he had never seen one in Ealdor. Camelot had no need for weapons like these either: they were not good for hunting; knives, spears and crossbows served much better. Their only use was against people – or, in this case – against the Dorocha.

They gathered around the swords, inspecting them from closer. Not two of them were alike. They marked the steps on the journey from the emerging talent of an apprentice towards the skill of a true master. The smallest one looked the oldest, a short, heavy piece that was nonetheless solid and sharp. Then came others, all of them differing in length and shape, each one of a better quality and a more elaborate work than its older companions.

Elyan picked up the most intricate sword. It had the longest blade, with beautiful patterns carved into the metal. Merlin expected Elyan to keep it for himself but instead, he presented it to Arthur.

"I'm calling it Excalibur," he said.

Arthur looked bewildered but also awed.

"An interesting design," Lancelot said, brushing the pad of his finger carefully over the intricate engraving of the blade. Merlin did not miss the yearning, proprietary glint of his eye as he regarded the sword, but it was immediately followed by a flash of shame, after which he pulled away his hand and took a step back.

"It came to me in a dream," Elyan answered, looking mightily proud of it. He caressed the hilt, and Merlin noticed that the dark material was inlaid with coloured crystal shards ordered into a geometric pattern, both to provide a better grip on the slippery leather and to ornament it.

"You ought to take it yourself," Arthur protested. "It's your work, after all."

But Elyan shook his head and extended the sword towards Arthur, with his right hand gripping the hilt and the blade sitting on the palm of his left. "I'm not a skilled fighter, Lord. Excalibur should have a master who can wield it properly."

"He does not need fine weapons. His stink alone will scare off any attacker," Gwaine joked, breaking the solemn mood which only seemed to embarrass Arthur. Elyan did indeed smell bad; he was wearing furs against the cold and they must have been newly out of the tanning pit, because they exuded a strong odour.

Arthur stopped protesting then and accepted the gift with reverence written over his features. The remaining swords were distributed between Lancelot, Percival, Gwaine and Elyan. Gwen got the last one as Sir Leon preferred his prong and Arthur would not let Merlin have it – a decision which had Merlin's mother's full support.

"What am I going to do if I'm attacked?" Merlin asked, feeling indignant at such blatant discrimination even if, under other circumstances, he would have been the first to admit that a sword did not fit well in his hands. "How do you expect me to protect myself?"

"That's what I am for," Arthur informed him in a tone which suggested that Merlin only proved himself to be slow of mind even asking the question but then he had not expected anything else from him. That was the end of the discussion, and then they were on their way.

They took a different route than the one on which Merlin had travelled on his way from the tunnel. Apparently, he had walked in a wide circle around Camelot before happening upon Arthur and the unicorn in the forest. Although this road led along a forest as well, so that if they needed wood for a fire, it would be on hand.

Those from Camelot found the constant darkness bewildering and hard to bear. Although the blue sun, and the gigantic planet which reflected back its light almost more radiantly than the star itself, gave enough illumination to see by, it was not enough to lift the darkness entirely, only to create a greyish twilight. The Great Dragon was in the position where Ealdor used to be, so the light and dark periods were approximately of the same duration. But while Ealdor's crystal domes faced outward from the planet and towards the sun, the Great Dragon's plane was tilted, so that the sun never rose above their heads, just circled over the horizon. On the other side of the Dragon, the planet's rings reached above the land like the back of a large lean-to, their ghostly outlines visible even during the night.

After several weeks of getting drenched in water, plants had begun to grow again from the soil, only for the fresh green shoots to be killed by the frost. Blackened nubs sat on naked branches, surrounding them with the sweet smell of rot. The road under their feet was not ideal for travelling. When the sun was out, the cold eased off some, and the moisture in the soil thawed and turned the dirt into mud which sucked their boots and made the trekking ponderous. In the time of darkness, the mud froze again, becoming hard and slippery, though sometimes it was only the top layer that froze, with enough sludge remaining underneath to cause a nasty surprise to those who were not careful. Merlin fell into its trap several times.

The first time it happened, Arthur laughed at him while pulling him out of the icy mud, but soon he did not feel like laughing for he, too landed on his backside several times. The one whose clothes remained dry for the longest was Gwen. In the end, no one came away unscathed, but the worst of it was tiredness and a few bruises, so after eating, they continued on their way towards the tunnel.

During the second light period, water started falling from the sky again, and then, come nightfall, the temperature dropped and the water turned into chilly white fluff which lit up the sky and danced in flurries. Merlin had never seen anything like it before. Next to that wonderful view, he could almost forget the threat that was Ealdor pulling closer and closer to the planet.

They spent that night in a cave which was the entrance of a long unused smithy and the heat rising from deep down made it a good place for sleeping. It was still a little cold, but the tunnel that led into the Dragon's depths was too narrow for camping, and it got hot very quickly just a little lower down. Arthur lamented the fact that there were no such deep tunnels near or inside Camelot, but Elyan laughed and said he would soon come to change his mind about it if he had to live next to one when the weather was normal.

That night, his wet clothes together with the others' laid out to dry in the lower parts of the tunnel, and Merlin, naked and shivering but curled up with Arthur within the protective warmth of his woollen blankets, dreamed. But he knew it was not a dream but a memory.

In this memory, he was not the man he was now but neither was he a child; he was nothing more than an overgrown tadpole swimming around in a pouch full of fluids, sucking nutrients into himself from a teat, his mental development being carefully monitored by thin, flexible feelers. He welcomed the feelers because they were his only source of information for which he had possessed an insatiable curiosity – a quality which, to his mother's grief, he never quite lost and which had got him into trouble countless times. He knew – vaguely, as one in a dream knows certain things – that he had spent twenty-odd revolutions in Balinor's pouch before deciding to grow the body parts that would enable him to live a human life, but that would come later. Right then, he was but a brain with a tentacle; he did not need much more for that life and he did not yet want more. He experienced the world through sensations and emotions filtered down to him from his parent and these experiences were full of wonderful things.

Some of these wonderful things, he recognised, were dreams. These dreams came not from himself and not from Balinor either, but Merlin felt them through their parental connection. They were ripples on the surface of an enormous mind which was only now developing and Merlin – the Merlin who dreamt this, not the Merlin who had been present in this memory – thought they felt very familiar, but he could not tell from where. The emotions he felt through those dreams were often turbulent and chaotic but they were dulled by distance.

There was one time, though, when he felt them from much closer. The time when Balinor left the quiet solitude of his shrine and trekked through dark corridors, hiding in silence when he felt something else approaching from the other direction, then continuing on his way in haste until he reached his destination.

In the deeper reaches of Ealdor, far underneath the colony, there was a vast chamber. If Merlin had had eyes and ears, he might not have seen or heard anything out of the ordinary in there, just rock and darkness and echoes of noises travelling through a cavernous space. But the sensations he received through Balinor were not limited by the constrains of human perception and what he sensed in that chamber was something enormous but not quite material, the light of a consciousness so bright as though it came straight from the sun, and the dreams – they were so much stronger here, Merlin did not know how long he would be able to stand the assault of violent emotions.

Then Balinor stepped even closer and lifted Merlin carefully out of his pouch. He did not use his hands for fear of harming Merlin's vulnerable skin with the bluntness of his fingers. Feelers wrapped around him carefully and brought him right up to the shining presence whose thoughts flowed through Merlin like molten lava, and then he was encouraged to touch it with his own feeler – he only had the one, but he did not think it strange at the time. Merlin was afraid but Balinor's gentle reassurance that he would come to no harm made him brave enough to do so.

And in that moment, everything stilled. His touch sent ripples through the being's mind and they seemed to calm the violent eruptions of thoughts which had previously dominated it. It only lasted a second but in that one second, what Merlin felt in response of his touch was recognition. He had been recognised not only for what he was – a Dragonlord's progeny and thus sharing an innate connection with the being – but also for who he was. Merlin.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Merlin was roused by Arthur shaking his arm.

"What happened?" Merlin asked, staring up at Arthur blearily. He was no longer cold; it was toasty warm inside the blankets and Arthur's body pressed to his own kindled a different kind of heat in his belly. His lips pulled into a coy smile but Arthur remained unaffected by it. His eyes, trained on Merlin, held worry.

"You were thrashing about. Did you have a nightmare?" he asked.

"I dreamt," Merlin said, trying to remember what the dream was about, and when he did, he shuddered.

Not because it had been a nightmare, precisely, but still he felt disturbed by it. For he knew for a fact that it had indeed been a memory and it was a bewildering feeling to suddenly recall being something that now felt utterly foreign to his very being, yet knowing it had been him. If he concentrated now, he could still feel that vast presence, those turbulent dreams – but they were different now, he realised, because they were not just memories. He felt them now, in the present. And it was not hard to guess what they were.

The Dragonlord guards Ealdor's bright future – Merlin had heard it all his life. Did that mean that the Dragon of Ealdor was not dead after all? It might have been just sleeping. If that was true, perhaps it was waking now and that was what had awoken the Dorocha as well. Perhaps that was the reason they had taken Balinor, although what exactly they needed him for Merlin could not have guessed.

It was just a feeling he had, but he had to tell Arthur about it. "I think I know where they brought the Dragonlord," he said.

Arthur blinked, taken aback by what must have been a sudden change of topic to him. "Can you lead us there?" he asked a few heartbeats later.

Merlin shrugged. He thought he could but he was not entirely certain of it. Arthur must have seen it in his expression for he did not ask again, just accepted the promise Merlin left unspoken: that he would try his best.

"We have to go soon, don't we?" Merlin asked. But Arthur just lay back down and tugged the blankets around them more snugly.

"Everyone else is still asleep," he whispered, closing his eyes and shifting closer to Merlin. "You can sleep some more, too."

Indeed, no one else moved. The silence around them was complete and darkness still shrouded the land. Merlin felt Arthur's body brush against his own while he wiggled into a more comfortable position, and the forgotten fire in his belly lit up with renewed force.

"I have a better idea," Merlin whispered shakily into Arthur's ear before he bit down boldly on the fleshy rim to hide his uncertainty. "If you can stay quiet, that is."

Arthur's body went rigid within Merlin's embrace and his eyes widened with surprise. Then he smiled and let out a slow, shaky breath. "I can," he rasped, his voice rough with what Merlin hoped was awakening desire.

They fit together like this, face to face, front to front. The bare rock under their blanket was uncomfortable, and they dared not make too much noise so they barely moved, but it could not have felt better if they had all the comfort in the world. The only thing that mattered was that it was Arthur touching him and allowing Merlin to touch him in turn, his fingers trailing fire over his skin and his breath filling Merlin's insides with liquid heat.

It was over too quickly. Both of them were impatient, too greedy to bother with finesse, to make it last. But while it did last, it felt like the greatest thing in the whole world, and afterwards, Arthur looked at him with such wonder in his eyes that Merlin could not help but smile back at him. As he fell asleep, the memory of that emotion kept him warm against the night's chill.

Soon it was day, however, and everyone was up, even though Ealdorian nights were too short to get fully rested during the time that passed from sunset to sunrise. But everyone was restless and aware of the fact that time was of essence. After he had risen, Merlin saw, embarrassed, that his mother had lain just a few paces from them. He hoped they had not woken her; she had always been a light sleeper.

They had a quick breakfast. Gwaine and Percival started play-fighting with their new swords while the rest of them finished getting ready for the last leg of their journey. It was obvious that they had no soldier's training; Percival wielded the blade like a bludgeon – though with the force he put into his blows, they were still very effective – while Gwaine held his sword as though it were a butcher's cleaver. Elyan tried to show them a few moves, correcting their stance, but when it came to show how it was done in practice, Elyan proved not much better at it either. Arthur went a few rounds against Sir Leon's prong, and it seemed either his knight's training paid off or he had a natural talent for sword fighting, because he quickly got the hang of it.

"We ought to go," Merlin said, getting impatient of waiting when the packing had already been done and all he had to do was watch the sun glide along its heavenly path over the horizon.

Arthur had just finished pushing Sir Leon into the mud for the third time, putting the tip of his sword under his chin as an afterthought, but now he looked up at Merlin and smirked with all the cockiness in the world. "You don't like watching swordplay, Merlin? Or is it that you can't wield a sword?"

"I can wield any sword you put in my hand," Merlin retorted, feeling annoyed, but Arthur's only reaction to it was to get a contemplative look on his face, his eyes slipping downwards almost absent-mindedly until they reached Merlin's midsection. There they remained fixed for a few heartbeats until Sir Leon cleared his throat and made Arthur jump and look away with cheeks tinted pink. Merlin bent down for his back pack, using it as an excuse to conceal the hot blush on his face. He knew others did not miss the interaction from the way Gwaine nudged Elyan in the ribs and winked at him. Thankfully, his mother pretended not to have noticed anything, although she had this mirthful glint in her eye which betrayed her.

After this, Arthur did not want to linger there and gave orders to leave. Hunith had a good sense of direction. Now that it was day again, she recognised the landscape as a place she had passed during her journey to Camelot. She had assured Arthur that they would reach the tunnel the latest by nightfall and the coming darkness proved her right, for indeed the tunnel was only a hundred paces from them when they spotted its black shape, well-hidden within the dark wall of rock which extended to the horizon in both directions. Had it been left to Merlin to guide them there, they would likely still be wandering around aimlessly along its rocky expanse for another day at least.

She also had more forethought than Merlin because she led them not to the tunnel entrance but to a large rock which lay a short way from it, and asked Percival to shift it. Percival set his shoulder to it and pushed, and from underneath the large rock, Hunith pulled a glowtorch, by now fully charged. Its faint light could not compete with the twin glow of sun and planet but it would be invaluable later, to help navigating their path through the dark and narrow passageway where a torch made of wood would be unsafe and would burn itself out too quickly.

"I found another one," Merlin heard Lancelot's voice. He stood on the other side of the tunnel, holding another glowtorch in his hands, only this one no longer gleamed.

"Too bad it's no longer working." Merlin thought it must have been the one he had lost upon arriving. At the time, he had been too relieved to be out of the tunnel and had not even thought of looking for it. He still took it from Lancelot. If worst came to worst, he could use it to club the enemy in the head; the fist-sized piece of crystal at its end was heavy and hard enough to brain someone.

And then it was into the tunnel, and Merlin still had not warned them of what they should expect, once they were a little way away from the entrance. Although he suspected Gwen knew, for he spotted her talking with his mother in that pidgin language that they made up between themselves: half-Camelotian, half-Ealdorian – apparently the two were very similar. What they could not express with either language, they told with hand signals and facial expressions. On one hand, their conversations were entertaining to watch. On the other, Merlin was amazed how quickly they found a way to make themselves understood by the other.

In that moment, no one was talking. The moment was wrought with anticipation, and Merlin made the mistake of looking up, needing one last glimpse of the small, dark rock teetering on the edge of the horizon, on which he had trained his eyes all though their journey. And suddenly Merlin could not bear to waste more precious seconds, yet he could not tear away his gaze from the sight of Ealdor wading through the last reaches of the thin belts of rock and ice circling the planet, just shy of emerging on the other side of the rings to then continue its descent through the emptiness of space, into the highest reaches of the thick, soupy atmosphere, hurtling towards its inevitable doom.

He reached out and grabbed Arthur's arm to stay him when he would have ducked through the tunnel's entrance.

"No, let's… let's wait for a bit," he pleaded. Arthur did not ask for what. He followed Merlin's eyes towards the slowly blackening sky and waited without a word until the outlines of the moon became one with the surrounding night.

But even after Ealdor was no longer visible, Arthur seemed reluctant to proceed, as though he had only now remembered something important.

"Percival should stay behind," he said finally, looking uneasily at the large man as though he really had not wanted to make the suggestion but could not see a way around it.

"What for?" Percival asked, a furrow between his brows expressing his dismay at the request.

"So you can find some large rocks and bar the entrance of the tunnel," Arthur explained.

"That's not a good idea, Sire. We are going to need every man," Sir Leon said.

"Besides," Merlin added before Arthur could protest, "How are we going to come back if the exit is blocked?"

"You forget," Arthur said, addressing everyone by slowly shifting his eyes from person to person until he had caught everyone's gaze with his own. "We are not the only ones who can come back this way."

"I don't think the Dorocha are going to come this way," Merlin's words cut the silence, which had suddenly turned heavy in the wake of Arthur's disconcerting prediction.

"Why wouldn’t they?" Arthur asked and his tone carried none of his customary teasing undercurrents. Good, for that meant he was taking him seriously for once.

Merlin took a deep breath and let it out in a sharp huff, eyes trained on Arthur and Arthur only.

"You see, I think the Dragon in Ealdor is not dead after all; it's just sleeping," he said and did not miss the gasps that followed his proclamation. "It was sleeping so deeply that the Dorocha couldn’t hear it anymore, which is why they went mad. But now I think the Great Dragon had awakened it, which is why the Dorocha are more active now. But they won't leave Ealdor. "

Arthur considered his words in silence, but then he shook his head, dismissing them entirely.

"That's just a hunch, Merlin. I cannot risk Camelot's fate on a hunch."

Merlin frowned. Arthur would not accept it for proof that the knowledge had come to him in his sleep, even if what he had seen in his sleep had been more of a memory than a dream. But Merlin knew his intuition was right. Had Balinor not told him over and over to listen to it? He shook his head.

"No, it's not just a hunch. See, it happens sometimes when two Dragons mate: they exchange organic matter between them but whatever gets transplanted from one ecosystem to the other rarely survives, and the Dorocha know that. If their Dragon is truly awake now, they would never abandon it for another."

"How do you know these things?" Arthur asked, looking bewildered.

Merlin was just as perturbed. He was convinced of being right. But his conviction came from somewhere deep in his mind and the reason for it had been unclear even to himself until he put it into words. He shrugged. "I think it must be that genetic memory thing Gaius mentioned. Things are starting to come back. Or it could just be that we are getting closer to Ealdor."

For a short while, Arthur stared at him bemusedly, and Merlin was beginning to fear that this would be the minute when Arthur reached the limits of his tolerance.

Earlier, when they had made love, Merlin had been apprehensive that Arthur would flinch away when he was confronted with Merlin's physical differences, slight as they were. That he would regard him with unease or even disgust; that he would no longer want him if he knew. But Arthur had been full of acceptance and touched Merlin with the utmost reverence. And the little extra mobility had served them well within their close confines.

"You don't believe me," Merlin huffed, for Arthur had still not said anything.

Arthur then shook himself, as though only now awakening from a dream. "No, I do," he insisted, but he did not look Merlin in the eye.

"I believe you," Gwen suddenly spoke up. Her declaration was followed by similar affirmations from the others, and from each one the words sounded more convincing than what he heard from Arthur's own mouth.

Arthur looked embarrassed, as though he had been outdone by people who had fewer stakes in the matter – and in a way, he was. "It's not that I don't believe you," Arthur blurted. "It's just…"

"What?" Merlin asked, perturbed by Arthur's unexpected hesitance, and not a little hurt by it, although he tried his best not to show that.

Arthur cleared his throat and straightened his back in a way Merlin had seen him do when he had been facing up to his own father. "If what you're saying is true, then we are in an even greater danger than we expected. Likely the Dorocha took the Dragonlord because they needed him to control their Dragon – to wake it up perhaps? But if that's true, then they are not going to just let us storm their lair and retrieve him. And what if the Dragonlord is no longer alive? Then they are going to want the next best replacement," he said with uncommon defiance, and he did not need to say who that replacement was going to be.

And Merlin suddenly saw his reluctance to accept his words as the truth for what they were deep down: a fear for Merlin's own safety and a deep-set doubt in his own ability to protect him from the fate he might come to at the Dorocha's hand.

Merlin felt himself react to it unconsciously, his mouth curving upwards in reassurance and his gaze likely reflecting exactly what he was feeling on the inside: a sudden and unending affection for the man standing before him.

"They won't hurt me," he said. "And if they try, I can protect myself."

"Merlin, you could not protect yourself from a one-legged unicorn!" Arthur huffed, sounding both desperate and fond at the same time.

And to prove him wrong, Merlin lifted the spent glowtorch in his hand and touched a finger to the crystal. At once, it sparkled into life and lit up so brightly that it painted behind flickering spots on the back of Merlin's eyelids. Then its strength waned down to the familiar pale glow.

The mouth of the cave was still as small as Merlin remembered it being. He was the first to crawl through, followed by his mother and Gwen, then Elyan and Gwaine, which was a good thing for they needed the manpower to pull Percival through the opening when his shoulders got stuck. Arthur came in last. He installed himself as the rear guard, appointing Merlin and Hunith into the lead, but it was obvious that he set it up this way because he wanted as many people as possible between Merlin as himself. Arthur had not spoken to him directly ever his little demonstration earlier, and Gwen was beginning to look upset, the furrow between her brows deepening and her lips bitten, by the sudden tear in their friendship. Merlin, too, would have worried that Arthur was angry with him, perhaps for flaunting his magical nature in such a public way, but the expression Arthur wore betrayed to Merlin that Arthur's silence had more to do with embarrassment over his own behaviour. For now, Merlin let him be.

He expected the way back through the tunnel to start out with a steep climb, but the first few steps he took felt nothing out of the ordinary and the passageway continued in a straight line with just a little incline, just like the first time, when he had entered it from the other end. A little further on, the tilt became more pronounced but at the same time, gravity fell away.

"Be careful of your heads. Don't use too much force!" Merlin called back but the surprised, painful grunts and yells signalled that his warnings either came too late or went unheeded.

Arthur and Leon, as knights, knew how to deal with the sudden loss of gravity, but their yelled instructions and suggestions only confused the others more. Not to mention that Merlin heard just as many grunts of pain from them as from everyone else, for they might have been used to anticipating the unpredictable gravity inside the Crystal Cave but were not used to navigating a narrow passageway while not being able to stand on firm ground. In the end, everyone worked out a way to do it for themselves, just as Merlin and Hunith had done.

Their arrival on the other end was similar to Merlin's first time. Though he was now careful to brace himself against the sudden forward slide of his body at the first sign of gravity beginning to reassert itself, and shouted to the others behind him to stop and be careful, it was all in vain; for it only took only one person to fail, and Percival was that one person. Once in motion, his bulk was unstoppable and drove everyone in front of him down the last leg of the tunnel. They landed in an ungraceful heap in the middle of Balinor's windowed chamber, with Merlin on the bottom of the pile.

That was how Gwen, Hunith and Arthur, the only three who had not been swept away, found them and came to investigate whether any of them suffered a serious injury. Thankfully, that was not the case. Merlin felt the weight pressing him into the ground lessen as those above him extricated themselves from the pile and rose, leaving him the last one lying there. When he opened his eyes, he saw Arthur standing above him with his mouth pulled into a mocking grin and amusement in his eyes.

Unthinking, Merlin reached out to him, but before he could retract his hand, Arthur gripped his wrist and tugged him off the ground. Once upright, though, instead of letting go, Merlin grabbed onto Arthur's forearm until Arthur reluctantly looked him in the eye. What Merlin saw there, set him at ease. There was no anger or disgust in Arthur's gaze, just guilt and perhaps a little sheepishness for making a big issue out of a small thing and making everyone worry. They exchanged no words, but Merlin gave Arthur's arm a squeeze meant to reassure, and a little teasing smirk, and at that, Arthur's mood brightened considerably.

Outside the window, a new day dawned on the blue gas giant. Its rings sparkled in cold indifference as the Great Dragon was pulled among their ranks by the dark cord of the tunnel stretched out between them.

They found the outer chambers of the Shrine deserted, and although there was no furniture there which could have been broken or displaced, they clearly bore the signs of past fighting, for the walls smeared with blood. A dead body lay across the exit from the outmost chamber, with its legs and lower body on the inside while the torso pointed outside. His eyes were open and his features twisted into a pained, terrified expression. His arms had gone limp by then, but they had clearly been clutched around the dark pit in his white shirt, as though he had been hoping to hold his broken ribcage together and stave off death that way. He had not succeeded. The blood from the wound which had killed him had long dried into a rusty mess.

Merlin knew those features but it took Hunith to say his name for Merlin to reconcile that horrible face with the image that lived in his memories of the head-volunteer of the Dragonlord's shrine, Julius Borden.

"Poor fellow," Percival murmured. "His death was not quick." He was right. The wound was deep, but no vital organ must have been injured and he eventually died of blood loss. Perhaps he was still hoping for someone to come by and save him until the moment that he realised that this was going to be the end and he still tried to hold his chest together while fear consumed every other emotion and wrote its stark mark over his face.

When someone died in Ealdor, they threw the body in with the compost and held a feast in his or her name. There was not much ceremony over the funeral as only those who were used to the smell could stand to spend much time around compost; the obituary and every other tradition that people held important when someone died took place by the feasting tables, usually in a drunken state. Merlin did not doubt that by the time this was over, there would be need for many such services and Julian Borden would be only one of the dead remembered, if indeed there would be anyone remaining to remember. For now, they would just leave him where he was.

They stepped over the corpse one by one, and followed Hunith who led them through the dark corridors towards Ealdor.

Soon the glowtorches became superfluous. Daylight flooded the passages, carried down from the domes by well-placed mirrors. They were very old. Some of them were just large crystal sheets on whose backs molten metal had been poured; they were not clear enough to see one's image, but that was not their purpose. Arthur and others from Camelot exclaimed on the strangeness of lighting up the corridors this way, but soon they forgot about that and found another thing to be bewildered about when they learnt that in Ealdor there were no houses built over the surface and people lived underground, in chambers fully surrounded by rock.

When they got there, however, they found no living people in Ealdor; instead they found more dead ones. Some of the bodies strewn around were horrifically mutilated. Gwaine thought he saw teeth marks, and suggested the wounds could have been caused by wild animal attacks. But they knew they had not been, for Ealdor lacked predators, and everyone still remembered Merlin's description about the Dorocha.

"What now?" Gwen asked, the furrow between her brows indicating her distress. Despite the situation, she remained as practical as ever.

"Where are all the people?" Lancelot asked. "Everyone could not have been killed."

"There aren’t enough bodies," Merlin agreed, restricting himself to only noticing the facts. Had he allowed himself to dwell on the reality that these were people among whom he had lived his entire life, whom he had seen grow up or grow old, and who now were lying dead by his feet, he would not have been able to keep his last meal down. He knew he probably looked as though he was going to throw up any moment, for his mother and Arthur both tried to comfort him, and he could see Gwen restraining herself from giving into the same impulse. But he shied away from everyone's touch; if he had let himself, he would surely have fallen apart, and there was no time for that.

"They could be hiding?" Leon suggested.

"But where would they go?" Arthur asked. "These chambers are easy to defend because they can be barricaded. This should be the safest place in Ealdor. There is even natural light!"

In that moment, the ground shifted under their feet. Merlin grabbed onto Arthur's arm to keep his balance. The walls trembled, and new cracks appeared along the older ones which Merlin just noticed now. There was a loud rumbling, as though great expanses of rock were shifting and rubbing off against each other. The shaking grew stronger for a few heartbeats, until Merlin thought his bones would be ground to dust, but then it stopped as suddenly as it had started, and only falling dust indicated that anything had happened.

"Perhaps everyone went up to the domes," Merlin suggested, because he could not imagine that anyone would want to stay down here. He could now see the evidence that this had not been a solitary occurrence, but must have been going on for a while: the larger pieces of rubble, which he had thought to be a result of the fighting, gained a new, frightening meaning when observed together with the deep fissures that ran along the walls everywhere. The domes were the only other place with natural light.

They conducted a quick search in three teams. Sir Leon found some children hiding in a shed inside the dome which usually got most of the sunlight; his team was attacked with glowtorches and farming tools and it was fortunate that Merlin's mother was with them and could talk sense into the frightened boys and girls, or else it could have ended bloodily.

To their surprise, they found the Lady Morgause there as well. She sat alone in a corner and remained entirely unresponsive when Arthur and Gwen attempted to talk to her.

She was not the only adult among the children. There were a few others, but they were either old women or rendered incapable of standing due to some grievous injury. The Dorocha had come back after Hunith left and while their main force was stopped by the men blocking their way through Ealdor's main corridor, splinter groups sneaked into the village through side passages and dragged away the women, children and the older men who couldn't fight well. By the time the fighters realised what happened, they could not do anything to stop it.

Morgause and her sister had come to Ealdor before this happened, but at the time of the attack, they had been hiding in the unused corridors. A few of the women had spoken to Morgana and told her that it was not safe out there, but she had insisted that Morgause did not like being surrounded by people and they would rather remain secluded. Then a few days earlier, the poor lass had been found alone just outside the occupied area, screaming her head off. They had managed to calm her down, but she had not talked to anyone since and from all that blood smeared on her robes when she herself had only been lightly wounded, they had concluded that her sister must have been taken by the Dorocha.

Arthur did not take the news well. He told them he was going to take a walk around the dome and use the time alone to think. Merlin thought it looked more like brooding what he was doing, though people less generous than Merlin, like Gwaine, called it sulking. While Arthur was away, Hunith took his place in asking questions, wanting to know what happened in her absence, and where the other people of Ealdor were.

They were told that those who survived the Dorocha and were able-bodied, under Kanen's lead, decided to march into enemy territory and free their captured brethren – and the Dragonlord as well, if it could be done.

"Well," Hunith said with a dejected sigh. "It's just our luck that Kanen has survived. He's been forever a troublemaker, and a charismatic one at that. He must have persuaded everyone to this foolish plan of his."

"Will at least ought to have had more sense than to follow him," Merlin said. He could not help but be upset with his childhood friend.

The old women cackled at hearing Merlin's words. "Are we talking about the same Will?" one of them, Enna, asked. She used to watch over the children of Merlin's age while their parents worked, so she knew them well. "Because he was the loudest of Kanen's supporters."

"When have you ever known Will to have a pinch of sense?" Hunith said, though she sounded more resigned than anything else. "Besides, ever since you left and he realised you had been telling the truth about having been sent for by the Dragonlord, he's been trying to prove himself."

"What for?" Merlin asked. Although if he was honest with himself, he should have expected it. His mother only gave him a wry grimace, probably guessing that Merlin had already figured out the answer on his own.

The Dorocha were not the only ill to befall Ealdor recently. The children talked about times when the ground itself moved under their feet, and the adults confirmed their words, adding that it was no longer safe to go underground, into the corridors and living quarters. In the first big quake, four people died when the ceiling fell and buried them under its weight, others suffered broken bones; old man Simmons died from being trampled by his panicked ponies. And it had not happened just once but it was happening more and more often, with more severe causalities. After the last quake, the floor under one of the domes split open, and heat rose from the gap, so scorching, the very air might cook a man as he stood if he stayed there for even a short length of time. It all would have seemed too fantastic to believe, had Merlin not experienced some of it just a little while before.

There was another earthquake only a little later, and this one was much stronger than the previous one had been. It began with a resounding groan which came from somewhere deep below, like a great wounded beast bellowing out its pain. With it came a feeling of utter wrongness. In the silence which followed, Enna began to yell at him to get down, but Merlin was not quick enough to act, and before he knew, he had been bowled over by the violent vibrations which shook the dome's foundations right after. Arthur came running back, somehow managing to stay on his feet, only to get knocked off them by the next wave. The poultry locked into a kennel nearby made a mighty fuss and the smallest children began to cry but all of that noise was drowned out by the thundering rumble of rock grinding against rock, the earth shifting and complaining under their feet.

"When did this start?" Arthur asked after the quake had passed and the noise had died down enough to hear one's words.

"The first one was just a few days ago," one of the older children told him. She had taken quite a shine to Arthur and seemed to want to stay near him at all times, and Merlin could not say that he blamed her. But Arthur noticed nothing of the attention he was getting. He nodded, as though this was what he had been expecting to hear, his brow clouding with worry, but when he realised that he had gathered quite numerous an audience, he refused to tell Merlin what he was thinking. But whatever it was, Merlin had no doubts that it must be bad.

The village people decided to restore their mood after the great fright with food. The children collected the dead and wounded livestock and the old women cooked a stew out of them, and though Arthur was anxious to continue on their quest, he, too, acknowledged the necessity to eat and rest. Besides, they still had to decide how they would proceed.

Arthur regarded the stew with suspicion, which Merlin thought was funny after he had seen him devour roasted rat with gusto. But after the first bite, his brow cleared, and he began to eat with obvious appreciation.

"It tastes like chicken," he told the others from Camelot, who all looked to be waiting for Arthur to pronounce the food for edible.

"I should hope so," Enna injected, but her normally biting sarcasm softened to a tease as she beheld Arthur. "What else does chicken taste like where you come from?" It was typical, Merlin thought with a surge of fondness. They had not known him even for a day, but Arthur had already won over their hearts.

Arthur looked taken aback but, being Uther's son, he made a quick recovery. "It's just a saying we have," he explained with uncharacteristic sheepishness. "There are no chickens in Camelot."

As they ate, Merlin told Arthur what he heard about the missing people of Ealdor, and Arthur decided their best plan was to follow them. It was not a promising plan, but it was the only one they had.

Thus, it seemed they would follow Kanen and his band of fools into the Dorocha's lair. Unfortunately, no one could tell Arthur where that place was and how they could get there. Kanen's group, they said, had followed the screams of the captured, and the corridors had been filled with those screams then. Now, in the aftermath of the last quake, the corridors were only filled with deathly silence.

Still, when Merlin listened more closely to that silence, he found that it was not silent at all, although it seemed that he was the only one who could hear the constant, low hum that came from very far. It was a pulsing song, an ephemeral call, and it felt very familiar to him. And of course it would, for this was how a Dragonlord felt the living link manifest between himself and his Dragon.

"I know where they are," Merlin said, but his voice was so low that Gwaine inadvertently drowned it out when he started talking at the same moment, lamenting their lack of scent hounds. But Arthur, who stood nearest to him, heard him well enough.

"Are you certain?" Arthur asked, but it was not Merlin's competence he questioned. "What if Ealdor does not have a Dragon? What if it's something else – a trap?"

Merlin did not think it could be anything else, but there was a way to make sure of it. He took his long-extinguished glowtorch in hand, and just like the first time outside the tunnel, it flickered to life from his touch. The crystal was slower to respond, and its light was less bright now, but Merlin also was not trying to show off as he had been that first time.

"Without a Dragon I shouldn't be able to do this, right?" he said. All his life he had been taught that Ealdor's Dragon was dead; now it became more and more obvious that that was not the case.

"All right," Arthur decided. "Lead us, then."

Arthur reckoned they would be heading into a battle, and Merlin did not want his mother in the middle of that. Hunith was easy to talk into staying. She thought the children needed more adult supervision than the infirm and the elderly could provide, and the wounded needed better care than a few teenagers were capable of while also having to keep an eye on the younger children. But when he tried to employ the same reasoning with Gwen, she characteristically refused to be dissuaded from coming.

"I still want to find Morgana," she told Merlin doggedly. "Besides, you forget; I still have this." She meant the sword Elyan had given her. Although one of his more recent works, it was the lightest one. The blade was long and thin, with a slight curve in it, and it looked more like a toy or an ornament than a real weapon.

"You could give it to me," Merlin wheedled.

"You don't need a sword. You have your Dragonlord powers," she told him matter-of-factly, and Merlin wished he possessed her surety as well. The only such power he could be certain of was the ability to light a glowtorch and he could not see how that would be of real use if it came to a fight. Although the Dorocha were rumoured to shy away from light – something Merlin was less inclined to believe after he had seen what they had done to Ealdor – a single glowtorch would have no hope to defeat an entire army of them.

They took their leave from Hunith and the remaining people of Ealdor. She wished them luck, her eyes brimming with anxiety, and then she made Arthur promise that he would take care of her son. Arthur of course made that promise in all earnestness, but Gwaine leered at Merlin in a way that left no doubts about how he thought Arthur would fulfil that promise, and Merlin felt himself redden in acute embarrassment. He ought to have known that their activities during last night would not have escaped everyone's notice, even if most of their companions were too decent to bring it up.

During their stay, daylight in the dome had began to weaken, though it would remain strong enough that they would not need glowtorches until they reached the abandoned lower corridors where no mirrors were installed to carry down light. At Hunith's insistence, they took half the available glowtorches from Ealdor – two for each person: one to use on their way there and one as backup, despite Merlin's insistence that he could easily recharge the ones that went dark.

Merlin had never before thought of Ealdor as small, but after the castle of Camelot with the town and the fields extending as far as one could see outside it, not to mention the almost inconceivable dimensions of the Crystal Cave, Ealdor looked like a very small place indeed. It seemed to him that it took barely any time to leave behind the familiar corridors of his childhood and set foot into the dark, unknown parts of Ealdor which the tales told by his mother had populated with horrifying monsters that devoured lost children. There were no such monsters around now, of if they were, they did not show themselves. Merlin did not think it was the sight of their group of armed warriors or the glowtorches they were carrying which had kept them away, but rather that they were kept busy with the battle – or massacre – which was taking place elsewhere that very moment.

If the walk out of Ealdor felt short, the walk through the darkness seemed to take forever. It was probably just his imagination, but he could tell he was not the only one who felt impatient and on edge, for the entire journey was spent in tense silence. At first Gwaine tried to alleviate it but no one laughed at his jokes, and soon he stopped making the effort.

Merlin did not mind the silence for the call in his head went very faint sometimes, and he needed to concentrate on it strongly to hear it. He did not even see where he was walking; he only knew they were going ever deeper into the moon's depths from the floor's slight downwards angle. He found he had closed his eyes when he tripped over something and went down painfully on one knee. Arthur pulled him upright wordlessly and then kept a hand on Merlin's elbow to prevent similar accidents happening.

They knew they were getting close to their destination when the bodies started appearing. Merlin almost stepped on the first one; Arthur barely stopped him, pulling him back at the last second. The body had belonged to a narrow-faced, long-nosed man with hair so impossible that Merlin and Will had forever made fun of him, saying that he must be wearing a hairpiece made of a pony's coarse tail.

"It's Matthew," Merlin said. His mother had told him Matthew's wife had been among the first ones to be killed by the Dorocha, and according to the ones left behind in Ealdor, he had been eager to avenge her.

Arthur tugged on Merlin's elbow again and he stepped over Matthew's stiff-limbed, glassy-eyed corpse. He did not linger by any of the other dead bodies he stumbled into on his way; he only looked long enough to make sure none of them belonged to Will.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The last corridor did not lead into a chamber; it did not lead anywhere. It just ceased being a corridor. The smooth regularity of the walls slowly melted back into roughly hewn rock. The floor tilted downwards at an even greater angle, becoming both smoother and bumpier, as though the rock they were walking on had once been liquid poured down the slope and solidified in thick, twisted, rope-like trickles. The walking became harder, because one wrong step could result in a twisted ankle or a stubbed toe.

The cavern around them widened until the light of their glowtorches proved too weak to illuminate its edges. They walked in ever-growing darkness for a while until faint, reddish light began to spread gradually through the darkness. The distant noise of battle reached their ears and became ever louder as they continued onward. By the time they were close enough to see it as well as hear the battle, the light grew bright enough to make out their surroundings, and they saw that they had arrived in a large cavern. It was so large, its measurements could only be compared to the size of the crystal cave within the Great Dragon's core. But the crystal cave was bright and filled with water; this one's depths were filled with molten rock, and the light emitted by the churning magma was only bright enough to backlight a constantly shifting mass of shadowy figures in the distance.

As they continued onward, the ground on both sides of the slope fell away sharply, forming trenches, which were filled with cooling lava. The resulting land bridge was only wide enough for ten men to stand in a line. Down the other end of the sloping bridge was a wider landmass, connected to the wall of the cavern on one side, but the other side was completely surrounded by a lake of bubbling, liquid basalt, which went on as long as the eye could see.

"I've never seen anything like this," Percival muttered.

"The smithies in Camelot are similar to this place," Elyan explained. "But much smaller, of course."

They watched in awe as the molten lava churned and bubbled within its basin of solid rock. And as they did, they saw that the sides of the basin were glowing red-hot, and slowly melting away into the scorching pool, their mass increasing the lava's volume and slowly raising the liquid's level. The diminishing plateau in the middle of the slowly widening bowl was overflowing with a host of supple-limbed, vaguely human-shaped creatures whom the heat forced outwards and ever higher up the bridge. Halfway up, they met the disorganised band of Ealdorians in frantic, messy melee.

The Dorocha moved with slow but unstoppable deliberation. The Ealdorians had weapons. They were not weapons made for killing, like the swords with which Elyan had outfitted the Camelot group, but their scythes and flails still proved effective enough as they cut a bloody path through the Dorocha whose only defence against them were their sheer numbers and mindless fanaticism. Those seemed to work all too well on their own, and the men's lack of strategic thinking would be their undoing as they were too desperate to reach their captured loved ones. They pressed forward, paying no heed to the fact that the Dorocha were slowly surrounding them. Soon, in the dense crush of bodies, they would be unable to move enough to swing a blade and would be defeated with their weapons still in their hands.

But some of the Dorocha were not pushing up the slope, towards the battle. They stayed behind, near the lava, and Merlin could only vaguely make out a difference between them and a small group of differently dressed people enclosed in their midst. Merlin realised that those were the captured people of Ealdor.

The Dorocha surrounded their prisoners. They were not numerous, but they only needed to guard their charges from three sides. At their back was the slowly disappearing bank beyond which waited the scorching flow. Merlin watched as a woman, forced too close to the heat by the press of white bodies, flailed her arms in a frenzied attempt to escape. All she achieved with it was that she got pushed even closer to the lava and then pushed into it. She had been too far away for Merlin to even recognise her face, and the noise of the fighting was too loud for her screams to reach them, but Merlin saw her fall and get roasted alive as the lava touched her body, and he felt sick.

The people from Ealdor saw it happen as well.

"They are sacrificing our women and children to the Dragon!" someone yelled, and even through the noise of the battle, Merlin heard Kanen repeat the baseless accusation and use it to inflame his people's lust for war. Fanatic zeal born out of desperation could inspire even less experienced men to become invincible in a fight. But the kind of recklessness which went with it hand in hand also made men take unnecessary risks; it robbed them of a clear head and made them no better than cornered animals. Even Merlin knew better than to believe that attacking blindly and without strategy could prove an effective tactic against such a large enemy force.

As he had feared, after the first frenzied surge, the attack fell apart entirely, submerging into chaos as every man attempted to stand against the enemy on their own.

Arthur's eyes had been focussed only on the battle before him; he had not noticed the goings on in the back, but when he heard the cries, he narrowed his eyes and looked intently until he found the small group of captives, just in time to witness an old man fall into the churning lava in much the same way as the woman before him.

"What are we going to do?" Gwen asked. "We need to help them." Whether she meant the men of Ealdor battling the press of creatures lower down the saddle, or the penned-in captives, bore no importance; their path ran in the same direction.

Arthur nodded curtly. "Let's go, then," he said.

He ordered them to form a wedge putting himself at its point and Merlin behind his back, protected from all sides. Merlin could see that it made sense to protect the Dragonlord in their midst but he knew Arthur had other reasons for thinking up this setup and that made Merlin less happy to accept it. But he did not want to be the cause of more time wasted, so he stayed silent and did what he was told to do. For now.

They ran down the slope, loosely keeping their positions so they would be able to reform quickly, once they were stopped. By then the fighting Ealdorians were fully surrounded by the Dorocha, and as they got closer, for the first time, Merlin was able to take a good look at them and afterwards he wished he had not done.

They truly looked like the dead. They wore no clothes. Merlin shuddered in revulsion as he took in their dirty, white skin stretching wetly over their skeletal forms and their too-many jointed limbs, which resembled nothing as much as overcooked noodles. From close up, they were even less human-shaped. Even those who were, were slightly differently proportioned, or had extra limbs, long, flexible tentacles growing from different parts of their bodies which they used to grab and yank and restrain.

Arthur's tactic failed, as the Dorocha noticed their coming long before they reached them and had plenty of time to bar their way. More and more of them gathered to block the bridge from Arthur's advance, splitting off from the group that kept the men from Ealdor crushed into an impotent mass of bodies and began to drive them down to the plateau like cattle, probably to the back where the other captives were kept.

At Arthur's command, the knights' carefully ordered wedge expanded to render it more difficult to surround them. Arthur told everyone to use their weapons to push their opponents off the bridge as soon as they got the upper hand, but leave the dead there to block the way. Their line was not strong enough to span the entire width of the saddle, so Arthur's plan was to create a gate out of dead bodies which would be easier to defend. But Merlin knew however long they lasted, they would never win that way.

"Seems we got ourselves into a bit of a pickle," Gwaine said, giving voice to Merlin's fears, but he sounded more exhilarated than intimidated. Most likely he was just very good at hiding one with the other. "Ought to have got out while we still had the chance," he murmured. "Oh, well."

And taking that as his own cue, he lunged forward with his yet unblooded sword at the nearest Dorocha. The blade skewered the creature in the belly. Then Gwaine yanked the sword back, pulling with it a mess of wet entrails, which spilled onto the ground, splattering the toes of their boots. Bile rose in Merlin's throat, and he heard the muffled sounds of Gwaine swearing, his voice thick as though he were busy swallowing back what wanted to come up his gullet. But his victim did not seem to react in any way to having just been disembowelled, just dropped down to their feet like a puppet with its strings cut.

And then, as though a horn had been blown, all the Dorocha swung into action at the same time and butchery began.

Merlin was not allowed near the enemy at all. His glowtorch did not frighten the Dorocha, so he stopped waving it around aimlessly and hit a few skulls with it until Arthur's skull got in the way more than once and he demanded that Merlin stop and do something useful instead, like wield his powers. He still remembered a few of Nimueh's mnemonics so he tried those, but nothing happened – not that he had expected them to work. Then he attempted to feel for the faint link which had led him here, and though it was there, latched onto the back of his mind, he could not get through it to establish a true connection. But that was nothing new. He was used to feeling frustrated and powerless from his failed attempts at getting through to the Great Dragon.

Arthur fought beautifully, as though he had been born to wield that sword. His sword arm was painted red to the elbow with blood and the pile of dead bodies in front of him grew larger with every heartbeat. Sir Leon wielded his prong with methodical efficiency, though he used it more as a staff, to hit, than to stab as one does with a spear. The other men held their ground well enough, if fighting did not seem to come to them as naturally as it came to Arthur, and even Gwen was of use, though Elyan insisted she stay behind his back and only engage the ones that got past him. They worked remarkably well as a team. Merlin was the only one among them who seemed to be of no use.

It was his frustration which made him angry enough to start tugging on that faint connection with the Dragon. Perhaps he was trying to tear it out, make it disappear if it would not help him, just sit there at the back of his mind, forever mocking his impotence. But that was the wrong thing to do – or perhaps it was the exact right thing to do, for his action finally elicited a reaction. It was not the reaction he would have chosen to elicit but it was better than doing nothing.

A shudder ran along the bridge. Merlin felt it in his soles; the others probably felt it as well, for Arthur shouted for everyone to brace themselves and the order came not a moment too early. As soon as the first wave had passed, another one started up in its wake, but this one was not a mere shudder. The ground shook under their boots, forcing them to their knees – Arthur as well, though he had not stopped hacking with his sword at the last of the enemy that still had its legs under it. At Arthur's sword thrust, it flew, wounded, down the left side. The thin crust of solid rock, under which the magma was still liquid, broke under its weight and they heard its strange, wailing scream, and a sizzle of fat as its flesh was charred off its bones. Percival almost followed it down, but Elyan and Lancelot grabbed his cloak and belt, and pulled him back with great effort.

The Dorocha looked as though they were not even aware of what was going on. The inhuman faces showed neither fear nor surprise when a violent quake flung one of them off its feet and right into the churning abyss. Arthur, though, was not yet satisfied and as soon as the first bout of shaking was over, he urged everyone to their feet.

"Grab the one standing next to you and let's form a chain," he told them. "We are going to run down and join the other group. When one of these things gets in your way," he said, meaning the Dorocha, "knock it over the side. Don't leave any of them behind our backs."

The people of Ealdor were closer to the lower end of the bridge by now. Anyone falling off it from this height would probably break a couple of bones but live, if not for the lava at its bottom. They huddled together, crouching, and this, unintentionally, proved a more effective tactic against the Dorocha than anything else they had tried before. Like this, the Dorocha could not herd them further downwards, not even by crowding them in more, and when they tried, it only resulted in more of the creatures falling over the edge.

Arthur did reach them before the last great surge of tremors started. By that time, a few of them had noticed that reinforcements had come, but Merlin saw the confusion in their eyes when they failed to recognise them. Merlin did not blame them for it; in Ealdor, everyone was known to everyone else from birth to death.

Merlin saw Will the same time he was seen by Will, even though Merlin was still mostly hidden behind Arthur's back. He called out Merlin's name, making everyone else aware of his presence, and this was enough to turn the scowls into smiles and surprised greetings. And then the first sentence out of Arthur's mouth was enough to turn them back to scowls.

"Do you know where Balinor is?" Arthur demanded.

He had an eye for recognising leadership; he found Kanen among the men right away and directed the inquiry at him. Privately, Merlin thought he would have had better luck choosing anyone else. Kanen was a man whose stubbornness could rival that of a rock wall, and he instinctively disliked people who questioned his authority, as Arthur's direct questioning had done, as he rarely had the chance to wield any.

"We don't care about Balinor," Kanen spat in disgust while he took Arthur's measure. "He had chosen to ally himself with the enemy, together with the Witch."

"Witch?" Arthur asked, but Merlin did not hear the answer because Will then grabbed his arm and demanded his attention.

"What in the blazes are you doing here, Merlin?" Will asked. "And who is that?"

"It's Arthur," Merlin said then shook his head. "I'll tell you later." There was no time for long introductions. The tremors were winding down and the Dorocha slowly finding their feet one by one, and Arthur was butting heads with Kanen.

"We don't need to fight them," Kanen told Arthur; he had always possessed a flexible voice and was now playing it to its full effect to express his own superiority. "They don't attack us, and they are leading us right where we want to go: to our people. Once we're reunited with them, we'll attack to get back here and flee."

"And where do you propose to flee?" Arthur asked, his tone hard with disgust over Kanen's near-sightedness. "No place is safe in Ealdor, and not just because of the quakes. Those are just a symptom of Ealdor being slowly pulled apart. Indeed, soon there might not be an Ealdor."

"And what do you know about it?" Kanen spat. They had both stood and by then they had the attention of every man crouched down around Kanen. The Dorocha were once again crowding around them, but they could do nothing else for no one else had risen, they were so focussed on the clash of wills playing out before their eyes: Kanen, a loud-mouthed troublemaker rather than a true leader, but still one of their own, facing up against the heroic, macabre figure of Arthur, with his shining golden brow, decked out in his knight's armour and bathed in the blood of his slain enemies. A stranger whom no one had ever seen before but whose bearing was nonetheless commanding, who seemed capable, and, above everything else, whose arguments rang true.

"What I know," Arthur said, and this time his words were directed at everyone, "is that Ealdor is falling toward a planet as we speak and the pull of that planet's gravity is so great that it's already melting rock." He nodded at the lake of red-hot lava. "See that? That's all that'll remain of your home if you don't act to stop it, and the only way to stop it is to find the Dragonlord who can command the Dragon."

"And why should I believe you?" Kanen asked, but his voice was so faint that it was barely heard underneath the by now constant, low groaning that came from the rock around them. He knew he had already lost, but perhaps it only dawned on him now that if he continued on his course, he may save the people from the Dorocha but they would all die nonetheless.

When he next spoke, Arthur looked into everyone's eyes, his voice ringing clear and commanding. "So I ask again, do any of you know where the Dragonlord is?"

"There." A man stood and pointed a finger at the side of the cavern that was farthest away from the lava pool. In the protection of a jutting rock, shaded from the reddish glow of the bubbling minerals and shrouded in darkness, was a naturally formed recess. It was only small compared to the measurements of the cavern, but it was small and dark enough to fade into the surrounding rock.

No wonder Merlin had not seen anything worth his attention there, though now, when he looked closer, he saw the ghostly gathering of white bodies drawn together tight into a protective circle around a rounded bulk. The inside of the circle was free of them but far from empty: two small figures stood there, nearly dwarfed by the huge object, which Merlin at first thought to be just another rock, but as he watched, a stray ray of light caught its surface and reflected back from it multiplied. It was a crystal.

One of the little figures had started walking towards the border of the circle. She was trapped by an impenetrable barrier of Dorocha, Merlin thought; they would not let her free. But the mass of bodies parted in front of her, granting her free passage. She was coming in their direction, and at her approach, the Dorocha shuffled aside, opening a free aisle enclosed within two hedges of living flesh, which slowly extended itself to the bottom of the slope and then further up, until it reached the group of humans trapped there.

As she stepped out of the shadows, Merlin was finally able to see her better: she was garbed in a simple dress of tan leather over pale linen, and wore her dark hair down, two thin plaits keeping her long tresses from falling into her face.

"What is she doing here?" Arthur sounded bewildered, and Merlin would never have recognised in this woman the haughty, elegant Lady Morgana with her beautiful, lavish dresses and elaborate styles, had he not been clued in by Arthur's reaction.

Merlin had no answer to Arthur's question but he did not doubt that Kanen must have meant her when he had talked about a Witch. They watched her walk with unhurried steps through the corridor lined with the Dorocha, up the slope and straight to Arthur. As she was getting closer, Merlin lost sight of her in the throng of heads, and then he saw that the men of Ealdor had straightened from their crouch, wanting to see what was happening, but the Dorocha were just standing around unmoving; they did not attempt to herd them down to the others.

And then the crowd before them parted and Morgana's white-clad figure emerged from the gap like an apparition. Her pale skin gleamed in the orange light and her features radiated an otherworldly calm.

"Morgana," Arthur called to her; his voice radiated urgency. He probably wanted to ask her what was happening, but she turned to Merlin and ignored Arthur entirely.

"Merlin," she greeted him. "Balinor told me much about you. Come, there is not much time left." Morgana extended a hand, as though she expected Merlin to clasp it. "Come," she said again when Merlin hesitated and wiggled her fingers in a manner of playfulness which seemed utterly alien from her very nature.

"Something's happened to her," Arthur murmured. "She's not herself." His words would not have been audible at all, had he not been standing so close behind Merlin – and when had Merlin stepped in front of him? But then Morgana – and there was nothing of the lady in her now – was holding onto his hand and tugging, the protective circle of the Dorocha parting before her, and Merlin felt himself take a step forward as though in a dream.

Morgana passed between the first two Dorocha, standing there like two living pillars, and pulled Merlin after her. Merlin's eyes sought Arthur, who just stood there, too stunned to move, but when their gazes met, he grabbed onto Merlin's other hand. He did not pull him back. Instead, he began to push after Merlin, so close as though he could make the Dorocha believe they were the same person. The Dorocha did not care; they did nothing to stop him, and Merlin pushed his fingers between Arthur's and linked them together tight.

They had only taken a couple of steps forward when the ground began to shake and grind on itself again. It went on for a long time, rendering their steps unsteady, but the narrowness of the corridor formed of the Dorocha's bodies kept them from falling. As they got closer to the shadowed corner, Merlin noticed that the lump of crystal in its middle was a slightly asymmetrical ovoid, rather than a ball, with its rounder half resting on the ground and the peak pointing upwards. It resembled nothing as much as a freshly laid chicken egg – if there had ever been a chicken which could produce an egg of this size.

Merlin should not have been surprised when he saw Balinor standing in the egg's shadow, yet he was. Not by the Dragonlord's presence, but his appearance. Merlin had expected him to look bedraggled, bearing the marks of his mistreatment by the Dorocha, yet he looked completely unscathed, and not only that but he looked carefree, excited, as though the suffering of the captured people of Ealdor had not touched him at all. He greeted Merlin with a smile on his face, and looked honestly happy to see him. He grabbed him, impatient, out of Morgana's hold, and dragged him forward.

Morgana did not look as though she minded; in fact she seemed to have forgotten about Merlin entirely. She stepped closer to the crystal and flattened her palm against its smooth surface, then her eyes closed and her smile suffused with rapture.

"What's happening to her?" Arthur cried, and his grip became like the iron around Merlin's fingers.

"She's no Dragonlord, but the Dragon likes her presence. It responds to her." Balinor spoke approvingly. He looked to be speaking to himself, though, rather than answering Arthur's question.

Arthur regarded the crystal with little surprise, accepting the revelation of its nature as something not entirely unexpected. He stood by Morgana's side, fitting his hand next to her smaller, paler one. After a heartbeat, he looked at Merlin and shrugged, pulling back.

Merlin was going to try the same but Balinor suddenly became invigorated. He gripped Merlin hard on the shoulder.

"No time to play around," he said. "I am very glad that you've finally arrived, though you were not in a great hurry. I sent out the summons weeks ago!"

"Summons?" Merlin asked. "You mean my mother? You sent her to Camelot?"

Balinor looked at him as though Merlin had had spoken in a language entirely unknown to him.

"Of course not. I asked Kilgarrah to fetch you."

"Who's Kilgarrah?" Merlin asked. The Dragonlord, even now, was his usual confusing self.

Balinor then swore – Merlin had not thought he was even familiar with the concept.

"The stubborn old thing!" Balinor pushed his fingers into his hair; it was greasy and matted, and looked as though he had not washed it since Merlin had last seen him, which was probably the case. "Stubborn, old, mad thing," he repeated, more thoughtful than unhappy now, his anger already dissipated. "Of course, I can't blame it for going mad. It's been on its own for too long. Dragons aren't meant to live in a solitary existence."

His musings were interrupted by another bout of quaking. In its wake, the already softened ceiling above the ever widening lava pool split open, fresh lava pouring down through the crack and filling the natural basin to its capacity. Screams sounded, audible even over the ear-shattering rumble, as molten rock spilled over the rim and splattered over the people and Dorocha who had not been quick enough or not been able to run away from it, as the way was still blocked by the hoard of slimy, white-skinned creatures. Many of them did not stand up again. Thankfully, the flow halted as the lava solidified a little further away from the heat's core, and formed a dam which kept the rest of the scorching liquid within its confines.

"Why aren’t they letting them go?" Arthur exclaimed, his tone rife with frustration. "Why did they take those people?"

"They are trying to protect them," Balinor answered as though the answer were obvious.

"Protect them?" Arthur asked. "But they are killing them."

"One or two dying makes no difference for them," Balinor explained with an almost cheerful callousness and an utter lack of empathy. "They don't see humans as people; they see them as cattle. Why do you think they took women, children and older men? To preserve a breeding stock. But they left the most troublesome ones behind. Those, of course, won't survive."

"My mother—!" Merlin cried. They had left Hunith behind; Merlin had believed her to be safer, and now it turned out that she was facing certain death. Arthur took his hand again and squeezed.

The walls shook again and the force this time was enough to start tipping over the crystal. Only Morgana's slim body pressed against its underside stopped it from rolling out of the natural indentation in which it had been resting.

"Balinor!" Arthur yelled, for Merlin was still choked with grief over the thought of his mother dying. "What can we do to stop this? There must be a way!"

"Stop it?" Balinor laughed at him with utter delight. He, too, had to yell to be heard over the growing mayhem. "We're not going to stop it! We're doing just the opposite: helping it get ready!"

"Ready for what?" Arthur yelled back.

"Ready to be born, of course!"

Those words were followed by sudden, portentous silence, as the ground's shaking and groaning ceased right then.

"You mean to say that this is not the Dragon of Ealdor but a Dragon egg?" Arthur's voice intruded into the quiet. It was too loud, obnoxious and utterly irreverent, and just the thing Merlin needed to hear to counter the paralysing anguish. It turned into a numb sort of acceptance, and Merlin took comfort from Arthur standing by his side and not trying to placate him with empty words.

"Don't be ridiculous," Balinor retorted gleefully. "Dragons aren't hatched from eggs like chickens. Their existence is predestined. You could say they are born out of destiny." Merlin thought that sounded ridiculous; Arthur must have agreed for he murmured something under his nose from which Merlin only heard the words 'destiny' and 'chicken'. It made him laugh, and then he felt horrible that even with the acid knowledge of his mother's fate eating into his guts, he could still laugh.

"Are you ready, Merlin?" Balinor asked. Merlin swallowed and nodded. He stepped forward, letting go of Arthur's hand.

"I don't know what to do," he said. "Can't you do it?"

"I tried." Balinor frowned. "But Dragons tend to imprint on one Dragonlord, and I made the mistake, if you can call it that, to introduce the two of you early on. Now this little one doesn't want to have anything to do with me."

"You mean, same as the Great Dragon didn't want to have anything to do with me?" Merlin asked. Anger was easier to bear than the crippling desolation, so Merlin welcomed it and let it fill the empty black spaces left behind in his soul by the latter; held onto it.

"Kilgarrah was going to warm up towards you eventually." Balinor waved a hand, dismissing the criticism implied within Merlin's question, and it could not be more obvious that he believed none of what he had said.

Merlin gave him a hard look, and tried to decide whether he should believe him anything at all, but in this situation, his choices were rather limited.

"All right." He shook his head. "Tell me what I have to do."

"You need to make contact, call it on its name, and wake it to life."

"And how do I do that?"

"He needs to touch it with his feelers," Morgana informed Arthur before Balinor could speak. There was a glint in her eyes and her tone was teasing, even though they were probably only heartbeats from a horrible death in an explosion of molten rock.

"Well, what are you waiting for? Go on and touch it!" Arthur urged, taking Merlin's hand and pressing it against the egg.

"Oh." Merlin waggled his fingers; the crystal felt inexplicably cold to the touch. "These are not my feelers," he said. "The feeler is my—" Merlin coughed and left the sentence unfinished. He felt warmth on his cheeks which had nothing to do with the heat of their surroundings. A moment later Arthur, probably hit with sudden remembrance, started blushing as well.

"Ah," he nodded.

"I see you've already made the acquaintance of Merlin's feeler, Arthur." Morgana cackled merrily behind their backs. Arthur rolled his eyes.

"Shall I turn around?" Morgana asked Merlin. When she got no answer, she continued to watch Merlin even more intently until Arthur grabbed her arm and tugged her back from the egg none-too gently, so that Merlin could have some privacy.

And then Merlin did what his mother had, under threat of punishment, warned him never, ever to do again.

The first touch against the clear crystal surface felt electric. Merlin closed his eyes to eliminate superfluous information from his unnecessary senses, and focussed all his concentration on the Dragon. The first impression he had of the unborn Dragon's being was that of the same distant unfamiliarity which he remembered from his attempts to establish a rapport with the Great Dragon. But then a part of it began to shift and mould against Merlin's mind until they aligned perfectly. Merlin was recognised and accepted. The connection was made.

It had happened so swiftly and painlessly. Merlin had expected to have to fight for it, to force his will on the Dragon and to taste bitter rejection over and over, to have his overstrained consciousness snap under the weight of foreign thoughts and ideas, pain whipping along his raw nerve endings and sweat gliding down his back.

But what happened instead had been so beautifully simple, and Merlin now knew what it was like to be a Dragonlord – a true Dragonlord, adored by his Dragon with the easy adulation that came with an innate and harmonious connection which served to benefit both parties.

Merlin felt wonderful. He forgot about the world outside his own mind. He forgot about the dangers they were in, forgot about Ealdor falling into a planet, forgot about his mother, forgot even Arthur. In that moment, nothing existed. All the questions of the universe were answered and the answers lay at his feet, he only needed to pick them up and whatever the nature of his problems, they would be solved.

But there was something that did not fit. Something felt off. The universe ought to be infinite and still expanding, not be locked into an immutable shape. And that was where he came in, Merlin suddenly remembered. It was his task to change that: the only problem Merlin needed to solve, and then he would be free. But how?

Balinor had told him he needed to call the Dragon to life, to know its name and use it to command it. But Merlin knew instinctively that simply commanding the Dragon would not work. This Dragon was not a Dragon like all the others that came before it. It had never known any other Dragon. It had not been nurtured by other Dragons, had not been taught, and thus, had been denied the beginning of its life for too long. Even though the Great Dragon's presence had woken it from its deep sleep and coaxed it to begin the long, gruelling process of preparing itself for life, Kilgarrah proved not much of a help otherwise. The Great Dragon, too, had been on its own for so long, it had closed off its mind to protect itself and no longer knew how to open up, how to share the knowledge buried in it. The little one could only depend on itself. And on Merlin.

Merlin's eyes snapped open. Around him, the world was falling apart.

His previously-muted senses were being assaulted by the roar of rock tearing and crumbling to pieces as his surroundings shook and shuddered. Heat licked along his skin and baked his flesh through the leather of his soles; sweat prickled his scalp and under his arms. Some time must have passed since he had closed his senses to the outside world, and Merlin knew instinctively that this was the end, or very near to it.

The ground jumped and he almost fell, but Arthur caught him. He saw none of the others around: Balinor and Morgana had disappeared somewhere; all he could see was the living wall of the unmoving Dorocha surrounding them and the egg.

Merlin looked at Arthur and saw overwhelming terror in his eyes. It warred with a glimmer of hope. Arthur had put all his hopes into Merlin, and if nothing else, Merlin was not about to fail him. He did not know if he was capable of saving anyone at all, but he sure was going to try.

He turned to Arthur. "Give me your sword," he shouted over the din of the world collapsing around them.

For a moment, Arthur regarded him with surprise, then withdrew Excalibur from its sheet and laid the blade carefully into Merlin's hands. Its sharp edge nicked his skin but Merlin did not care. He gripped the hilt with both hands, his palm tingling when it made contact with the crystals inlaid in the black leather.

The crystal was right in front of him, brilliant and terrifying. What Merlin was going to do would either save the Dragon or destroy it.

Merlin took a step backward and lifted Excalibur over his head. He breathed in, forgot the chaos around him. And then he called out a name never before heard, and struck down with all his might.

At first, it seemed nothing would happen. The point of the blade clinked against hard, smooth surface – and was stopped. Merlin pushed harder. A crack appeared under the sharp steel, it ran away from it in two directions, ever deepening. Underneath the crack, the crystal darkened as small fractures spread inside it, ever deeper, multiplying. And then the sword's tip sank into that very first crack it had made, dug deeper, split the crystal clear down the middle until the entire blade disappeared and Merlin fell forward from the sudden loss of resistance.

Arthur caught him again and they watched together as the egg broke and splintered into smaller and smaller pieces. But even so, it somehow managed to stay mostly in one piece.

The space filled with howls and growls, and at first Merlin thought that it was the cry of the tortured rock, but he was wrong. For in the next second, white bodies from all around the cave sprang into motion and started running and jumping with speeds nearly untraceable to the eye. And they all had one target: Merlin.

There was only enough time for him to glimpse the inhuman snarl twisting the features of the nearest creature into the face of a horrific nightmare, and then it was on him. But Arthur was there as well, Excalibur somehow already in his hand; he pushed Merlin aside and took the creature on the point of his blade. But the next one was there right behind it, flying at Arthur in a sinuous dance of limbs. Arthur was fast and wielded Excalibur with an almost inhuman agility, slaying his opponents with one strike, chopping off limbs and parting flesh, not letting anything reach Merlin. He fought like the ancient God of War, Tsacnoryth, but in the end, he was still only one man.

It happened within the space of a heartbeat. One of the Dorocha came at him with a long, thin sliver of crystal clutched in his feeler. Arthur pushed Excalibur into the parry but he was just a fragment of a second too late. The spike of dark crystal, thin, hard and rigid, slipped between two loose links of his armour, pierced flesh, and then broke into two. In that moment, time seemed to come to a halt.

Merlin was still close enough to catch Arthur as he fell, his face registering surprise. His body was heavy, muscles slackened and failing at keeping him standing, and under its weight Merlin slowly sank down, his knees knocking hard into the shaking ground.

"No!" Merlin cried, his vision blurring with tears. He rubbed them away, annoyed.

"It's all right, Merlin," Arthur's hand patted Merlin's arm in an attempt of reassurance. "I can get up."

But Merlin heard the hitch in his voice and saw that the white linen shirt under Arthur's chainmail was stained dark already, and the colour was spreading as the material became soaked in Arthur's blood.

"Help me stand," Arthur asked. Merlin looked around, at the messy of dead bodies piled up in a half-circle around them, and then a little further away at their world which was slowly disintegrating, turning into a molten mass, and nodded. He had tried to save them, and failed. They were going to die, there was no way back now. The least he could give Arthur was to help him stand during their last moments.

Slowly, laboriously, Merlin lifted Arthur to his feet. Arthur swayed and stumbled. Merlin propped him up against the cracked egg. But the crystal was so fractured inside that it could not bear even the smallest weight, and this proved its undoing. It shattered into million little pieces.

But not only shattered; it exploded, spraying the air with a host of tiny glittering splinters. They flew through the air, reaching into the farthest parts of the cavern –somehow avoiding Merlin and Arthur altogether, even though, as close as they were, their bodies ought to have been shot full with the tiny, sharp needles.

The crystal looked nothing but white dust, but it seemed to be everywhere. It stuck to the rock, mixed with the lava inside the cavern. And then it took on a life of its own, beginning to grow and thicken and take form. In a matter of seconds, all the surfaces were covered with a thin, transparent layer of mineral: the walls, the ceilings and even the softened rock under their smoking boots. The heat did not seem to affect the crystal adversely – it only seemed to help it grow faster, separating the necessary minerals out of the surrounding rock.

Within a short time, crystal was covering every surface. Then it began to grow inwards, its shape becoming more and more symmetrical. As the crystal thickened, from the flat surfaces long, thin spikes sprouted with incredible speeds. The temperature rose higher as the rock which had not melted until then became liquid as well. The churning, red lava covered everything behind the crystal; it flowed in darker and brighter currents, forming patterns behind the clear barrier. But when Merlin thought they were going to get cooked alive, the heat lessened. Mist rose from the walls, all the liquid which had been contained in the air, even the moisture from spilled blood gathered within a cloud over their heads. And as it cooled, the dew did not fall down but drew together, forming larger drops and then those drops coming together in slowly floating jets of water, dancing around in beautiful, chaotic patterns between elegant fingers of crystal.

Merlin recognised what was happening before their eyes: the thin trickles of water were far from the roaring rivers within the Great Dragon's core, but that was exactly where they were: a newly formed crystal cave: the delicate centre of a newborn Dragon.

"Oh," Arthur sighed in wonder and then collapsed into Merlin's arms.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Later, Merlin could not recall much of the following events. The birth of the Dragon did not end with the forming of the crystal cave; it had only begun then. That had only been the first step of a lengthier process, and those who were present, were witness to everything, but Merlin was blind to whatever wonderful sights unfolded before him. It did not even register that the Dorocha had halted their attack and were stumbling and swaying around the cave in insensate, mindless daze. He only had eyes for Arthur, who lay unconscious within his arms.

The molten lava behind the crystal cooled and hardened, expanded and built up more as the Dragon sucked up gasses from the planet's surrounding atmosphere. Its fall had halted soon after the core had formed and the water began to circulate, its patterns evolving from the simple towards the more and more complicated with dizzying speeds. Soon, the Dragon possessed all the rudimentary senses of its kind, and that was when the crystal of the walls turned from merely translucent to perfectly reproducing the images of the Dragon's surroundings. It was not a necessary step in the Dragon's evolution. Aithusa wanted them to see.

It showed them the turbulent swirl of the gas giant's atmosphere, the slow expansion of rock as the Dragon built its body, the first glimpse of the star-splattered darkness as Aithusa emerged from the planet's atmosphere and took its place next to its older and far larger companion.

It knew Merlin was in distress but it could not help. It tried to accommodate him as well as it could nonetheless, by speeding up the process of its maturing. Merlin should not have encouraged it. He should have felt its distress as it stunted its growth in order to evolve its structure faster, so that Merlin could get Arthur help. For Gaius was in Camelot and he was the only one who could save Arthur's life.

Soon after the stars, they saw the sunlight again for the first time since the Dragon's birth. It rose over the planet, sparkled the rings and woke Arthur briefly. He smiled at all the beauty with which they were surrounded. But then he looked at Merlin to share his delight, he glimpsed his tear-stained cheeks, and his mouth twisted into that unsightly halfway-grimace of his which he got whenever he thought that something – most often Merlin – was being ridiculous.

"Don't be a girl, Merlin," he said and patted the back of Merlin's head none-too gently. "Everything will be all right. You'll see." And then he fell back into unconsciousness.

As the day slipped by, Arthur seemed to fall deeper and deeper into fevered dreams, but during his brief lucid moments, he repeated the same thing.

That day, Merlin saw Balinor and Morgana again. Balinor was much in the same state as the Dorocha; he walked by Merlin but did not see him, for his eyes were directed upwards, at the whirling maze of streams. Morgana came and sat by Merlin. She stayed with him for half the day, then she suddenly cried out her sister's name and disappeared. Sir Leon found them soon afterwards. He had seen Arthur fall, had thought him already dead and was relieved to learn he still lived.

"You must take him to the Great Dragon," Leon insisted. "Into the crystal cave. The Great Dragon always liked Arthur better than anyone else."

And that was what Merlin was going to do.

In the next moment, there were arms holding Merlin in a tight embrace and fingers smoothing through his hair. Merlin looked up and saw his mother's tear-drenched face smiling at him but he could not make sense of her appearance. Hunith did not try to talk to him. She took one glance at Arthur's unconscious, fever-hot body and understood that Merlin was not in the right mind to talk.

Later, he learnt that when the rock melted, and Aithusa was born, the sun domes sealed up and all the available crystal, and everything it contained, was drawn towards the core. Thus the village of Ealdor was destroyed, its corridors and chambers melted down and their material mixed into the matter out of which the new Dragon's organs formed, but the people survived.

And then, when the first day died, the tunnel between the two Dragons was re-formed, and it was finally time to give Arthur his chance at survival.

Merlin knew not how he got Arthur through the tunnel or down into the Cave. From there he took a boat, laid Arthur into its bottom and tipped it over the ledge. Merlin did not know how to steer over the streams, and the usual way would not have been fast enough to carry him to the Lake. He knew where he wanted to go and demanded Kilgarrah's help. The Dragon's consciousness was a heavy, abrasive mass against his own, but Merlin did not care about the pain. He set his will against it until it yielded.

The boat's fall changed directions midway down, and it shot sideways until the force pulling them in that direction faded. Then the boat drifted until it slipped into another field of gravity and was dragged into another fall, which pulled them yet again closer to their goal, and this continued until they reached the Lake without the bottom of the boat ever becoming wet.

Arthur was barely breathing by the time they reached the lake. The corners of his mouth caked with pink; the crystal had punctured his lung from his body being moved around so much on the way to the cave. Merlin lifted him out of the boat as carefully as he could, but the pain still woke him. They were already in the shallows, but Arthur put a hand on Merlin's arm and stopped him.

"Not yet," he said, and tried to look at Merlin, but his vision must have already been going from blood loss.

"We must go," Merlin sobbed. Arthur bestowed on him a warm smile.

"Just… just hold me for a bit." And Merlin did, and then watched Arthur's eyes roll back and listened to air whistling through Arthur's pierced lung one last time.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

As Geoffrey of Moonmoth writes in his Historia Dracones, the Dragons were once a proud and numerous species. They are by far the oldest sentient species which exists in our Universe. But Geoffrey erred in his assessment that their species is of the same age as the Universe itself. He is also in error saying that their disappearance and near-extinction was caused by a natural catastrophe or the process of natural selection – however, the latter statement is very close to the truth.

To understand our argument, one must know beforehand that the species Draconis had evolved into symbiosis with the organic life forms by which they had been implanted after colliding with asteroids. In the beginning, this organic life was bacterial, but within the Dragon, the lifeforms found an environment which benefitted their development, and so they had evolved into more complicated forms of life.

Evolution drove them to influence their environment through influencing the Dragon. When they succeeded, the dynamics of their symbiosis with the Dragon turned from mutually beneficial to parasitic. But the last nail in the Dragons' coffin as a species was when some of the higher life forms to which the Dragons had provided a home developed an intellect…

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Arthur opened his eyes and found himself surrounded by water.

He felt wonderfully calm and well-rested; there was none of the pain he remembered from the last moments of his life. He knew the wound was no longer there on his chest; though he was not yet breathing, he knew his lungs were healthy, his body entirely remade, even his memories were intact. They seemed to be, at any rate, for he did remember the pain all too clearly. Next time he would perhaps ask the Dragon to change that.

Along with memories of pain came the memories of Merlin's sadness as he had lowered Arthur's body into the water. Even though his heart had been filled with hope until no place remained for any other feelings, Merlin had not been certain he would get to see Arthur again if he let him go. Arthur had not been able to reassure him without telling him that he remembered dying once before – and being brought back to life the same way. And even if he had told him, it might not have changed Merlin's distrust in the Dragon – not then.

But later. Arthur only vaguely remembered the time that had passed since Merlin had brought him back here, but he could remember feeling Merlin close to him all during that time very clearly: not just being in his thoughts but physically close, and mentally. Merlin had not only waited for him to come back, but had been waiting with him.

While Arthur had slept, Merlin had talked to him about the Lady of the Lake. Nimueh had been teaching him to understand the Great Dragon better, and though Arthur still mistrusted her – a remnant of his upbringing, no doubt – he had been grateful to her for providing Merlin with a reason to stay close to him.

Suddenly, all this thinking of Merlin made Arthur anxious to see him again.

He rose from the lake, his feet barely touching the soft sand of the bottom.

The first thing he heard was a voice, speaking. "Gaius said another Dragon lives there, and there might be other people in it," it said. It was too young to belong to Merlin – unless Merlin had emerged from the wait changed in ways which Arthur was unwilling to contemplate. "Do Dragons eat people?"

"No, Mordred, they do not. And you're not supposed to be here."

The voice that answered, though… throaty and deep and suffused with shallow annoyance, which made Arthur smile, because he could just imagine Merlin's expression that went with it, and the familiarity of that beloved voice hit Arthur with an intensity which he had not expected.

He started swimming in the direction from which it had come. Avalon was on its own this time, no rivers connected to it, and there was no land at its shores, but it was floating near the cave wall; within the crystals, Arthur saw the lake's deep green ovoid reflected back at him from multiple angles and in varied sizes.

There was one crystal which did not show the lake, but it showed the face of a young boy, magnified to the size of Camelot's castle. Merlin was sitting in a boat in front of the strange crystal. He looked frustrated.

Arthur swam to him but remained unnoticed. He gave Merlin a fright when he pulled himself up over the gunwale and rolled into the bottom, and then laughed and laughed at the ridiculous face Merlin made in surprise, and then he laughed because Merlin decided to take revenge, and tickled Arthur's naked sides until he could barely breathe from laughing so hard. They ended up in a tangled heap, only avoiding tipping the boat over by a hairsbreadth, with the eerily blank face of a giant observing them from above.

The large, pale eyes blinked, and Arthur became aware of his lack of clothes. He quickly covered himself with Merlin's cloak, and then wondered why Merlin was wearing a cloak belonging to a knight of Camelot.

"Who are you?" the face inquired.

"I'm Arthur," Arthur said, feeling oddly unmanned by the unblinking gaze. "And who are you?"

"This is Mordred, your…" Merlin hesitated.

Arthur noticed that the boy had dark hair like Merlin's, an angular jaw with an otherwise heart-shaped face, and large, pale blue eyes. Arthur tried to look for his own likeliness in that face, but he only saw the barest resemblance.

"Well, it depends on the person you ask," Merlin said and shrugged. "Either he is your brother or your nephew."

"And what is this…" Arthur waved a hand to indicate the boy, or rather, the way his image was projected by the crystal.

"Oh, this is the way we communicate with Ealdor," Merlin told him. "On the other side is Aithusa's core. Mordred is not supposed to be there, are you?" The last one had been directed at Mordred, but it failed to make any impression on him because the boy's face remained impassive.

"I'm your brother," Mordred declared after several heartbeats of silence.

"Are you now?" Merlin said.

"Yes. Because I'm not supposed to be here, and whenever I'm naughty, Mama tells Father I'm his son and he has to deal with me."

"My father remarried?" Arthur asked as the meaning of the word brother finally hit home. The very idea seemed bewildering.

The boy grimaced and looked Arthur up and down. "Why are you naked?" he asked.

Merlin coughed, the corners of his mouth trembling as though he were trying not to laugh, and waved his palm in front of the crystal. "Go home, Mordred," he said. "Your parents must be looking for you. You are going to get into trouble."

And then the boy's image disappeared.

"By the way, Merlin? Why am I naked?" Arthur asked after the crystal's surface went blank. He could see no clothes prepared for him inside the boat.

Merlin winked at him. "Because I like you that way."

Arthur raised his eyebrows. "You forgot, did you not?"

Merlin shrugged and then unbuckled his cloak and gave it to Arthur, along with his belt so he could fasten it around his waist.

"So my father lives in Ealdor, now." Arthur said while he dressed. "With Morgana. And they have a child?"

Merlin nodded. Arthur felt his eyes on his body but he was more than happy to allow it. "Yes, Mordred. He's a pest but he makes your father happy – according to my mother. He says you grew up too fast. And Morgana likes being near to Aithusa, so they moved there. I'm not sure there had been a wedding ceremony, though."

As Arthur listened to Merlin's chatter, he felt his heart become lighter. He felt as though he had arrived home. Then he took a fortifying breath and asked, "And who is king of Camelot?"

"You are," Merlin said, as though it had been the only possible answer to give to that question. Arthur's heart skipped a beat.

"But I was dead," Arthur said.

Merlin sighed, making light of the subject. "After we got back, your new knights all sang your praises – no, I'm not joking, they actually made songs which exalted your virtue in battle – none of them can sing, save Lancelot – and Gwen told them how heroic you looked with Excalibur in your hand, and then Leon foretold your return. After that, Camelot would not accept anyone else as their king."

He indicated to Arthur that he should brace himself as they were about to depart. But Arthur saw no rivers to take them back to Camelot. And then he remembered something similar from the way here.

"Oh, let me guess, this is the trick again where you don't need paddles?" he said.

"I never have learnt how to steer a boat over a river." Merlin grinned. Arthur nodded and did his best to swallow down his nervousness. "Come and sit next to me," Merlin said and Arthur was quick to comply.

"So what is this I hear? We are going to find another Dragon?"

"We might. It's there, but very far away."

"So not in my lifetime."

"Likely not in this one." Merlin shrugged. "Might not even be the next, but perhaps third time is the charm. If you can unlearn this annoying habit of dying too soon." Merlin's tone may have sounded teasing, but Arthur could see in his eyes that it was something which bothered him quite a lot. Arthur sighed and pressed a kiss to his cheek in apology.

"Fair enough," he said.

"Well," Merlin said, slipping his left hand into Arthur's and gripping the gunwale with the other. "Let us go, Sire. Your kingdom awaits."

The END