Chapter Text
Even empty, the boat seemed a flimsy thing. It bobbed and weaved like a drunkard at high noon, and as the knights began to climb in, it settled low in the water. The sides rose barely a foot above the lake’s glassy surface. Shrouded in heavy canvas, the mast loomed high above the little craft. Too high, Arthur thought as Leon reached for the sheets and snapped the sails open. Top-heavy, he thought as he took his place at the stern.
He wanted to tell them to get out. He wanted to tell them that they would walk, that he would find them some horses, somehow. Instead he put his hand to the tiller.
It was raining steadily. It had been raining steadily for days, and Arthur had to commend the weather for its stubborn commitment to being awful. The quest that had brought them out from Camelot had led them further than they had anticipated, and lasted longer than they would have liked, and had ended— well, it had actually ended better than quests usually did. The monster slain, the village saved, the knights alive and unharmed.
But they were tired and hungry and far from home, and soaked through, and so the edge of victory that would normally give them strength for the journey home was dulled.
Now, the knights sat close together in the narrow benches, scabbards held awkwardly across their laps, shields propped against their feet. Curled up as they were, their armour seemed to swallow them.
Leon looked resigned, Gwaine downright mutinous. Mordred, stony-faced, gazed out at the water. None of them moved. Maybe their armour had finally rusted through and fused into a single, immobile piece.
Merlin sat in the prow, bound hands steadying the knights’ bags. He did not look at Arthur. The cuffs around his wrists rattled and clinked. Even the noise was cold.
They had been running since sunrise. They had woken to knives at their throats and strangers rifling through their bags, and their horses slit-bellied and fly-swarmed at the edge of the clearing.
We got away, Arthur reminded himself, but the thought was chased with a bitterness. With Merlin, who should never come with bitterness.
A reluctant, rain-bloated wind filled the sails, and the boat pulled forward. Arthur steered them away from the rock-studded shore and out into open water, where the wind was brisker and the rain lashed down in a sharp diagonal.
Sinking westward, the sun was dim and sullen, hanging in the sky like an unlanced boil. The knights collapsed slowly into their armour, and the lake stretched out beyond the horizon. It was ten miles across, Arthur thought. They had skirted it on their way out from Camelot, and that had taken nearly a full day on horseback. They had no horses now— but they did have a boat.
Arthur had found it beached like a dead thing on the shingled shore. He had called to his knights, beckoned them over. Look! he had said. Look what I found. This will cut our journey down by half.
He wished, traitorously, that Merlin would complain about the boat’s tenuous grasp on buoyancy. That he would tell Arthur he was bad at steering, or say it was his fault, somehow, that it rained yet. But Merlin remained steadily silent.
“What’s that?” asked Mordred suddenly.
Arthur looked up, following Mordred’s gaze, and saw— the boat listed suddenly, turning with Arthur, and he had to throw his weight to one side to wrench the tiller straight again.
“What did you see?” he asked, eyes on the horizon.“I don’t know,” said Mordred. He was half-risen, leaning out over the edge of the boat.
“Something moving. It was— fast, I think. Faster than a wave, and darker.”
The boat shifted uneasily.
“Sit down,” said Arthur, sharp-tongued.
“There it is again!”
“Mordred, sit down.”
Mordred sat. He was still looking out. The other knights were, too.
“Do you see anything?” Arthur asked.
The tiller was slick with water.
“I think it’s coming towards us,” said Leon quietly.
Arthur looked, careful not to angle his body away. Nothing. Then, cutting through the leaden water— a shadow. A patch of liquid darkness, long and sinuous and powerful. Before them, the horizon stretched flat. Blank. Empty.
“Merlin,” he called. His mouth was dry. “Merlin, can you still see the shore we left?”
Merlin shook his head. Arthur gripped the tiller hard. As if that would make any difference.
“Draw your swords,” he ordered.
The boat tipped as the knights moved, the mast above their heads swaying unsteadily. But they had their swords now. That is what mattered. Arthur let himself linger, just a moment, on the way the damp light slid along the steel. Let himself take comfort in how cleanly the blades cut through the mist.
The waves picked up, rippling out from the swiftly-moving thing in the water. They battered at the boat, tugged hungrily at the keel and the rudder. Arthur’s sword, bound in its leather sheath, rolled beneath the knights’ bench. Merlin lunged for it, moving with fluid, startling grace through the cradle of the boat’s rocking even as the cuffs pinched his wrists together. He reached the sword just as the floor swung dangerously up, and crashed into the wall to Arthur’s right.
Wordlessly, eyes fixed on the strand of water about to split, he picked himself up and held out the sword. For a single, unspooling moment between one heartbeat and the next, Arthur hated him. He hated that he could move so well even with the cold iron cuffs; he hated that when he had moved, it had been to Arthur’s side; he hated that Merlin was the sort of man who’d hand someone a sword hours after they had put him in chains. Then Arthur stood, and his hand closed around the sword, and Merlin took his place at the stern, and the boat’s course didn’t even waver.
The bottom of the boat seemed to fold, like it was made of heavy, sodden cloth. Like it would crumple beneath Arthur’s feet and close around him and drag him down. He grabbed desperately at the sheets looped around the mast as the boat shuddered.
Beside him, the knights stood with their shoulders braced together. He loved them. They were his brothers, his friends, his sons, his subjects. They would be, he realized with a jolt, his martyrs.
And then the thing rose out of the water.
Arthur saw black-glinting scales— deep-set rows of fish-bone teeth— fins like oiled glass. He saw, beneath and behind it all, the tightly coiled muscles, the abject, unstoppable might of this thing bearing down on them.
He drew his sword.
He glanced back at Merlin, white-knuckled at the stern.
“Can you—” He hesitated. Tried again. “Can you do something?”
They had not spoken of it yet. They had barely spoken at all, but even their silence had seemed to bend around this, to shy away from this. From that morning, from the knives at their throats— and from their sudden absence. From the bodies breaking against the ground.
Merlin looked at Arthur like he had then, pale and silent. Betrayed, Arthur’s mind supplied, and he dutifully ignored it. The fear in Merlin’s eyes was an animal’s fear. A vermin’s.
Arthur did not wait for him to answer, but staggered towards him. The key missed the lock, once, twice, three times. Then it went in. It turned. Arthur tore the open cuffs away and stuffed them into his belt.
Merlin opened his mouth, and the boat shattered. It lifted from the water, and seemed to fold in on itself, a strange elasticity, and then it shattered. Splintered. Wood once more.
In the second before he hit the water, Arthur thought, Merlin.
But it wasn’t Merlin. It was the beast. The flat-headed, wide-mouthed, serpent-like thing had split the boat in two and circled now around the knights, the king, the sorcerer in the water.
Arthur’s armour was heavy. Too heavy, even, to take off. He turned towards his knights just as the beast reached them, and watched— could do nothing but watch— as it seized Gwaine in its needled jaws and dragged him down.
He didn’t even have time to scream before the water closed over his head.
“Gwaine!”
Mordred dove after him.
Arthur struck out towards the spot where they had disappeared, but he could barely stay afloat. There was water in his eyes, in his mouth, in his lungs.
With a gasp, Mordred surfaced.
“I’ve got him!” he cried. “I’ve got him.”
Gwaine was limp in his arms, pale and glassy-eyed, and around them spread a stormcloud of blood. The beast’s tail whipped out as it circled faster and faster.
Arthur turned, reaching out blindly. His hand closed around Merlin’s shirt and he wrenched him close.
“You said it was for me,” he managed through sharp, panting breaths, “only for me. Were you lying?”
Merlin’s hands reached for his wrists.
“Not about that,” Merlin said desperately. “Never about that, never about you.”
“Prove it, then,” Arthur snarled. “Save us.”
Merlin’s face went carefully, deliberately blank. His hands trembled as he pried Arthur off him, and for one long, terrible moment, Arthur thought he would just leave. He could, he realized. He could just leave them there.
And then Merlin was swimming out towards the beast. He moved to one side just before the serpent reached him, and caught it as it plunged past by one knife-like fin. He crawled up along the beast’s side, clinging to the thin, tight-packed scales as it twitched and writhed. He came to its face, braced himself there— and drove his hand hard into the centre of one white, rolling eye.
The beast screamed.
A thin, high sound that stripped the air from Arthur’s lungs and made the tossing white water shiver. Then the surface did fold.
It puckered, and twisted, and fell with an awful swoop into a tightly coiling funnel, dragging the beast, and Merlin, and the knights, and Arthur swiftly down to the bottom of the lake.
Arthur hit the ground hard. It was hard, and dry, like the mud there had been baking in the sun for decades. He crawled over to Gwaine, who lay like a broken wing beside him.
“Gwaine!”
He turned him over. Blood streamed from the neck of his armour, from the gap beneath his arm, but he was alive.
Arthur looked wildly around. Leon was picking himself up on the far side of the lake bed-clearing, Mordred helping him up. Between them and Arthur was Merlin.
Merlin had the beast pinned by its blood-burst eye to the bottom of the lake. Its tail thrashed above them, whipping the water into a dizzying column of bone-white foam.
Another cry, pitiful and broken. Merlin’s arm jerked, and the beast fell still. Its black-scaled coils crumpled to the lake bed in a jagged circle, along the perimeter of the clearing.
Merlin stood. His right arm was coated in blood and a strange, translucent liquid.
Gwaine slumped into Arthur’s side and cold terror gripped his throat.
“Merlin!” he cried.
Merlin stumbled over to them, falling to his knees with a sharp crack.
“Lay him down,” he said.
His hands were deftly, infinitely gentle as he removed Gwaine’s armour. Beneath it, his shirt was stained a dull, muted red where the blood had become diluted; by his shoulder, though, it burned in its brilliance.
Mordred, standing behind Merlin, swore, then blushed furiously.
Merlin spoke to Gwaine in a low, soothing voice as he peeled the shirt back to expose the ragged edges of the wound.
“There, see?” he murmured. “It’s not so deep.”
“I think this might be the one that sticks.”
“Do you?” Merlin laughed, packing the wound with a rag Arthur hadn’t even seen him take out. “Shows what you know. Mordred, can you hold this here for a moment?”
He scooped up Gwaine’s discarded helmet, and climbed over the body of the beast. He dipped the helmet into the wall of water beyond it.
Arthur followed him and caught him by the elbow.
“How bad is it really?”
Merlin ducked his head. He gripped the helmet with both hands.
“It’s bad, sire,” he said quietly.
“Can’t you help him?” Arthur demanded.
“What do you think I’m doing?”
“I meant with— with magic. Couldn’t you heal him?”
Merlin’s head jerked up, and Arthur’s hand went slack. Before him, set deep in Merlin’s pale face, were two blazing points of fire. Endless, unyielding gold.
“Yes,” Merlin hissed. “Yes, I could, if we were on dry land, and I wasn’t keeping an entire lake from coming down on us. But unless you want that to happen, Arthur, I suggest—” He stopped. Took a breath. Stepped away. When he spoke again, his voice was stiffly light. “I’m sorry, sire. I didn’t mean to speak sharply. No, I can’t heal him with magic, but I will do all I can.”
And he returned to Gwaine’s side, and started washing his wound. Arthur let himself drop onto the beast’s scaley back.
The clearing was wide. Twelve, thirteen paces, Arthur thought. Scuffed where the bodies, human and monstrous, had fallen, and scattered with fragments of the little, ill-fated boat.
Slowly, slowly, the water stilled around them until it seemed like nothing more than badly warped glass. Beyond it, strange, dark shapes ripped in the lake’s depths. Arthur tilted his head back. From here, it looked almost like the column of air held up the sky. Like the sky was the lid of a deep, deep well.
At length, Merlin stood. Gwaine’s shoulder was wrapped in bandages torn from the hem of his cloak. Arthur shivered. The dye made it look like he had bled through the dressings already.
Merlin looked up, and found Arthur watching.
“Mordred, could you—?”
“Yes, of course.”
Mordred took Merlin’s place by Gwaine’s head and began his vigil. Merlin stretched, spoke quickly to Leon, and then came over to where Arthur sat. He joined him, though he sat further than he normally would.
“He’s sleeping,” he said quietly. “I told Leon to get some rest too. He bruised his ribs when he fell— just bruised, though, I think, nothing’s broken. With luck, we can start for Camelot tomorrow.”
“How?” Arthur asked. “In case you hadn’t noticed, Merlin, we’re at the bottom of a lake.”
Merlin sighed. His hands were clean, but his clothes were stained beyond repair.
“We were going north, right? It’s only early winter. For a few hours around tomorrow, we’ll be able to see the sun. We can use that to orient ourselves, and cross the lake on foot. I’d say we could use the stars at night, but it would be hard to see. And Gwaine and Leon need their rest.”
“But the water—”
“I’ll move it with us. It will be slow going, but it should work.”
His clean hands were shaking. Arthur ached suddenly to still them.
“Merlin, that’ll take days.”
“I know,” said Merlin. “Trust me, I know.”
“Trust you,” Arthur scoffed.
He meant it to be a joke, but Merlin only bowed his head. Guilt pressed at Arthur’s lungs. Does it hurt? he wanted to ask. Is it heavy?
“Do you still have those cuffs?” Merlin asked.
“Yes,” said Arthur, a little blankly. “I do. But Merlin, I won’t—”
“No, I know. We need to get out.”
It was dark, outside their little circle. Fish flashed silver in the depths of the lake, but all around them was a soft, sickly green abyss. It was eerily silent. He couldn’t even hear the waves, this far down.
“How did you learn magic?” Arthur asked. “In Camelot? Or was it Will who taught you?”
Merlin stiffened.
“I won’t give anyone up,” he said shortly. “I know I betrayed you, Arthur, but I didn’t send you to your death. I’m— I am not a good man, but I am better than that.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” said Arthur quickly. “I only meant— Merlin, I don’t know what sort of man you are now.”
“You’ve said.”
Arthur winced. He had said. He had said many, many things.
“But,” Arthur continued doggedly, “I’d like to learn.”
Merlin looked up at him. “Really?”
“Really.”
Merlin stared out into the darkening water. Intently, like there was something lurking in that dull-edged blackness. Then Merlin blinked, and his eyes focused on the clearing once more. It was another moment before he spoke.
“It wasn’t Will who taught me,” he said quietly. “No one taught me, and Will wasn’t a sorcerer.”
“But he— oh. That was you.”
“That was me.”
“He was… very young.”
“He was.”
“I’m sorry. He seemed like a good friend.”
Merlin rubbed his face. It wasn’t only his hands that were shaking, Arthur realized, but his shoulders, too, his chest, his whole thin frame.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
Merlin laughed. It made Arthur jump.
“I’m alright,” he said. “You just— you never get used to it, do you? Killing?”
“I— no. No, you don’t.”
Merlin pressed his fists to his eyes. His breath trembled on the way out.
“It was beautiful. Gods, Arthur, it was ancient. It had seen the mountains when they were twice the size they are now. It had seen giants. And I killed it. I killed it.” His hand brushed the cold expanse of scales. “The last of its kind.”
Above them, the small medallion of sky was streaked a bloody red.
For you, Arthur, only for you.
“Thank you,” said Arthur. It was clumsy and abrupt, but Merlin looked so surprised by it that Arthur ploughed ahead. “Thank you for saving us. It can’t have been pleasant.”
“You’re welcome,” Merlin said cautiously.
His eyes really were very gold. Arthur’s thoughts were slipping by too quickly for him to follow. He reached desperately for something, anything, any fractured knowledge of magic— what it was, what it did, how it worked. He found nothing. Nothing worth holding, anyway.
“If no one taught you,” he started. Stopped. Merlin shifted uneasily. “Merlin, if no one taught you, then how do you know?”
Merlin turned his face away.
“I was born with it.”
He said it like it was a confession, an admission of guilt. It was, Arthur realized. It was a confession, because magic was a crime.
“But you don’t practice it,” he said. His words were tripping over each other in their haste. “You don’t practice it, you just— you just exist, so— how many others?”
“What?”
“How many others were born with it?”
“I don’t know. Maybe to practice magic you have to have something there already. Some sort of… seed. Or a stain that spreads.”
“But the laws—”
“Arthur,” said Merlin wearily, “I know. I’m sorry. But I had to be in Camelot, alright?”
They had thought themselves so clever, so grown-up, but they were children when they met. Merlin had been a child.
“No,” said Arthur. “No, it isn’t alright. You could have died. You— why would you stay?”
Merlin closed his eyes. The lake bed seemed a little colder. A little darker, without the gold.
“Do you believe in destiny?” Merlin asked.
“I don’t know. Do you?”
Merlin hummed. “I always believe in you.”
He opened his eyes. His gaze seemed— brighter, yes, like the gold had been polished by his eyelids, but clouded, too. Distant.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Arthur snapped, because he never knew how to speak in fear.
“There’s a prophecy,” Merlin said, waving his hand dismissively. “You’ll be a great king and unite all of Albion, and I’ll, you know, be there.”
“You’ll be there,” Arthur repeated.
“If you want me to be.”
“It’s a prophecy, Merlin. You’ll be there whether I want it or not. Wait, so that— that’s why you stayed, all this time? Out of duty?”
“No,” said Merlin, suddenly, earnestly serious. “No, Arthur— look, the prophecy exists because you are my destiny, alright? Because I chose to tie myself to you. Not the other way around.”
Arthur didn’t recognize him, this golden-eyed man who spoke so steadily of fate. He turned towards him, sitting cross-legged on the serpent’s broad body.
“How long have you known this?”
“Since I came to Camelot. Before, then, probably, even if I didn’t have the words for it.” He hesitated. “I recognized you, you know. That first time I saw you.”
“You didn’t know who I was.”
“No,” Merlin agreed, “but I knew you.”
“And you’ve been working towards that prophecy all this time?”
“I guess,” said Merlin. “Mostly I was just, you know—”
“There?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I’m glad you were.”
“Me too,” said Merlin. He smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes. It barely even reached his mouth. “I was happy. I’d have stayed there until the day I died.”
Arthur’s throat was tight.
“You can still come back,” he said. “I won’t say anything. I won’t—”
I won’t have you killed.
But that wasn’t enough, was it? It wasn’t enough to say he would never send Merlin to the pyre or the gallows or the executioner’s block, because he still had that right. He still had that power, and it sat like a razor against Merlin’s pale throat. And no matter how much Arthur promised never to exercise that tyrant’s right, that king’s power, it would always sound conditional. Always sound like he was granting Merlin some boon, performing some great act of mercy, by allowing him to live.
Merlin turned, staring intently at the water.
“What lake is this?” he asked.
“What?”
“The lake,” Merlin repeated, a little more urgently. “What’s its name?”
“I don’t know,” said Arthur. “Why?”
Merlin stood, looking frantically about him.
“There’s— I don’t know. I think there was a lake— no, there will be a lake, and you— you— oh.”
He staggered, and crumpled, and fell to the ground. He hid his face in his hands.
“Merlin?”
Arthur knelt beside him.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded. “What is it? Are you hurt?”
Merlin shook his head. Arthur’s hands twitched over his arms, his knees, before settling on the back of his neck. He barely seemed to be breathing.
“Look at me,” Arthur said. Ordered. “Merlin, look at me.”
Merlin raised his head. His face was ashen, bloodless and terrible. His eyes were molten. They cast a pale, dusty yellow light across his cheekbones, his brow, the bridge of his nose.
“The Boar of Cornwall will be swift and he will trample the hills beneath his feet,” he whispered. His hands rose to cup Arthur’s face, nails digging into the skin. “His end will be cloaked in uncertainty. He will be celebrated by the voice of the people and his deeds will be food for poets.”
“Merlin,” Arthur choked out. “Merlin, stop.”
“Was I not a man who stood by Arthur?”
“You were,” Arthur said desperately. “You are.”
The water was moving again, shuddering like some great thing lay imminent in its darkness, and Arthur knew he should be afraid. He knew he should reach for his sword, the cold iron cuffs, put some distance, at least, between himself and this thing with the burning eyes— but it was Merlin. It was Merlin.
He was shivering. Arthur took off his cloak and wrapped it around him.
“You’re alright,” he whispered. “You’re here, you’re alright. Whatever you see isn’t— it isn’t real, it can’t hurt you. I’m here. I’m here.”
With a low, ragged whine, Merlin sagged forward into Arthur’s chest. Arthur held him. Held him. Held him.
“What’s going on?” Mordred asked.
Merlin tensed. He swayed to his feet and stood over Arthur. His eyes were unlit again, but still a brilliant gold. His mouth was a hard, thin line, the kind carved into the faces of only the oldest and weariest of soldiers.
“Mordred,” he rasped.
Mordred stepped forward as if to steady him, and Merlin jerked back. Mordred’s hands fell to his sides.
“Are you alright?” he asked hesitantly.
Merlin’s eyes went— tender, Arthur thought. Frightened, and sad, and tender. He touched Mordred’s cheek as a father might.
“I’m fine,” he said softly. “Why don’t you go get some rest, hm?”
Something in Mordred’s expression flickered, but he nodded. He seemed about to speak, then thought better of it. He reached up, and pulled Merlin into his arms.
Merlin froze. Slowly, carefully, he hugged Mordred back.
“Get some rest,” he said again when they parted. “I hope you— I hope you sleep well, Mordred.”
Arthur and Merlin watched as Mordred crossed the clearing and curled up with his back to them.
“Here.”
Merlin was holding out the cloak.
“Keep it,” said Arthur. “You look cold. Merlin…”
“Arthur.”
“What happened? Did you see something in the water?”
Merlin pulled the cloak tight about himself. His expression was shuttered.
“I can’t tell you that,” he said flatly.
“Don’t you think you’ve kept enough secrets?”
It was a low blow. Mean. Merlin barely seemed to hear it. He stumbled back to the serpent’s coiled body and sank down. He would not meet Arthur’s eyes.
“This one isn’t mine to tell or to keep.” He sounded dazed, like someone had struck him on the head. “It isn’t even mine to know.”
Arthur woke in darkness. It was so complete, so absolute, that it was as though the moon and stars were not just covered, but gone. Like they had never existed.
He remembered being a child, and begging for a candle to be left burning in his room at night. He remembered the shadows on his nurse’s face as she bent to blow it out, how they seemed to swarm towards her mouth like scuttling, many-legged things.
You are a man, his father had told him once. You do not fear the dark. You do not indulge the animal its fear.
But there had never been a darkness like this in Camelot. Even in the depths of winter, when the clouds snagged on the turrets and the sun barely seemed to rise above the hills before it was sinking again, it had never been this dark.
Arthur sat up. He was unmoored. He could not see the ground or the sky or the glassy walls of the lake. He reached behind him, and found the cold, chainmail skin of the dead creature.
From somewhere to his left, warm honey, poured a low and mournful voice:
Dinogad’s smock, speckled, speckled,
I made from the skins of martens.
Whistle, whistle, whistling.
For all his scolding, Arthur knew Merlin was a good servant. An exceptional servant. He was clever and discreet, quick to notice when anything was amiss, and quicker still to fix it. He gave good counsel, knew how to mend clothes so the stitches disappeared into the fabric, and followed Arthur into all manner of danger.
And he was honest. When it mattered, when it counted, he was honest. Unflinchingly loyal.
A spear on his shoulder, a club in his hand,
He would call to the nimble hounds,
“Giff, Gaff, catch, catch, fetch, fetch!”
He always forgot to take the candle away at night.
Arthur followed the curve of the serpent’s body until his hand met Merlin’s leg. The singing stopped. Two faint golden circles blinked into being.
“Arthur?” Merlin’s slim hand found the edge of Arthur’s jaw. “Did I wake you?”
“No,” said Arthur. “I just woke up. What were you singing?”
“I don’t know. Something my mother used to sing.”
Arthur shuffled closer until he sat with his shoulder against Merlin’s knee.
“Wish it wasn’t so dark,” he mumbled.
“It won’t be for long.”
Merlin’s hand passed slowly through Arthur’s hair. The dark sifted down around them. Arthur sank into the soft, muted infinity of a half-sleep.
“‘M glad you’re here,” Merlin breathed. “Kept seeing things, in the dark.”
Arthur raised his head.
“Bad things?”
“Good things, really. When they were mine. When I was theirs.” He laughed. “They’re just nothing, now.”
Arthur didn’t know how to reconcile the Merlin that still existed in his head, big-eared and clumsy and glib, with the one who sat beside him, who saw not-things in the dark with his golden eyes and spoke in so hollow a voice.
Maybe no one did. Maybe no one should.
Merlin was humming. It was a different song. Sadder. Above them, the circle of sky slowly drained of all colour. It wasn’t light, exactly— but it wasn’t dark. The night was bleeding out.
“You didn’t say anything,” Arthur said at length.
“Hm?”
“To do this. To bring us here, to save us. I thought at first I’d just missed it, but I’ve been turning it over and over in my mind, and you didn’t say anything. There wasn’t a— a spell, or an enchantment or whatnot.”
Merlin sniffed. It was a neat, pointed little sniff, the kind Merlin made when he knew he was being clever. He’d picked it up from Gaius.
“But I thought sorcerers needed spells,” Arthur pressed. “To— to channel the magic. Otherwise it would just be exploding all over the place.”
“Exploding all over the place?”
Arthur flicked his knee. “You know what I mean.”
“Yeah,” Merlin smiled, “I do. But for most people, magic is like— like a well. You need a pump or a pulley to bring it to you, and a pail to carry it, and then, I don’t know, a basin or a kettle or a jug or something to use it.”
“Alright,” said Arthur slowly. “And that’s what spells are? Pulleys and pails and basins?”
“Yeah.”
“But it’s different for you?”
“It is,” said Merlin. He sighed. “For me they’re— a dam, I suppose. Or a rudder.”
They watched together as dawn flooded their penny’s worth of sky. It was a soft, greyish kind of dawn, but clear. Cloudless, at last, for all the good it did them down here.
A fish flashed close to the edge of air, then darted quickly away. The water billowed gently, implacably. Arthur had seen Merlin reach into it yesterday, but looking at it now, it seemed as though nothing could break its surface. Like it was only miles and miles of ice, and it was only an illusion that it seemed to move at all.
“You’re… you aren’t just some sorcerer, are you?” Arthur whispered. He could see Merlin now. Shadow-eyed and drawn. He could see how his expression pinched when Arthur spoke. “You’re powerful. Really powerful. You could hold the whole world in your hands.”
Merlin glanced down at him.
“So could you.”
There was that thing in his chest again. The one that had first taken root the day his father sat him on his knee as he heard his people’s grievances, and grown, and grown, and grown. Bloomed when his father fell sick. Born fruit the day he died, the day Arthur took the crown. It was grief, maybe, that tangle of thorns. If one could grieve for things to come, or things that never would.
Yes, it was grief. As much as he loved his people, as proud as he was to serve them and belong to them, it was grief.
“And instead you have— what, my laundry? My bathwater, my armour, my meals?”
Merlin turned Arthur’s face to his. To the sun, though they wouldn’t see it for hours yet. The first, immaculate refractions of light gilded his features. There was a callous on the pad of his thumb, a little notch of roughness catching on Arthur’s cheek. His eyes were so very gold.
“I will hold anything you tell me to,” said the god at the bottom of the lake.