Easy
Chapter 16: Easy
"Elladora? Elladora where are you? Percival, have you seen her? What do you mean who? I mean have you seen Elladora?" Arthur blew a huff of annoyed air, when it became apparent that neither Leon or Percival had seen where their clairvoyant sorceress had wandered off to.
Just as he was about to send them out to look for her, he heard the bushes next to him shake slightly, and then saw Elladora come ducking out of it, bending to avoid the tree branches that would surely tug at her hair. He strode forward, hardly believing the cavalier attitude she was parading around with.
"Where have you been? And for heaven's sake, where is your wrap?" He tapped his foot, knowing how ridiculous he looked in his ruined sleep suit and robes but decidedly thinking he had bigger things to worry about. Elladora did him the favor of not biting his head off this time and answered him directly.
"I thought I saw something." She said simply, grimacing at the feel of the wet shift sticking against her calves, the hems growing crusty with the dirt from her foray into the forest. "The wrap got lost." Arthur fought very hard not to yell, shrugging out of his robes, and tossing it to her, balled up.
"Put it on. I refuse to be seen gallivanting around with a half dressed woman in the dead of night." Merlin held the wadded up cloth, contemplating refusing it just for the sake of being difficult, but then accepted the damp garment, putting his arms through the sleeves and falling in step with the King as he walked back towards the front of the Terry Tavern.
"I forgot about this place. I haven't been here many times my self, but I've sent everyone from George to Gaius to get Gwaine's inebriated behind back to the Knight's barracks. I do vaguely remember Madalen, but I've interacted mostly with the younger sister. Lianora, I think her name was. They used to have a tavern about an hours ride outside of Camelot, but then moved here 2 years ago, after Madalen's husband died in an accident."
Merlin listened silently, feeling guilty for acting as if he alone in the world was the one with problem. Every person had their own battles to fight and to not acknowledge that was a gross oversight on his part. He was so concerned with Arthur, Morgana and the return of Magic, that he forgot why he was doing it in the first place. To make Camelot safe for everyone, so that those who practiced magic didn't have to resort to criminal acts to make their way in life. He pulled the lapels of the robe tighter around his chest, the heavy feeling refusing to lift.
The front door to the tavern creaked open and Percival came out, face haggard.
"How is she?" Merlin asked, ignoring Arthur's mouth twitch disapprovingly, since he'd beaten him to the questioning. Percival, to his credit, took it in stride, and answered succinctly.
"Asleep for now. Gaius gave her a sleeping draught, but its Madalen's children I'm worried about. They went to sleep tonight with their mother alive and tomorrow they will wake as orphans."
"But they'll have the sister." Arthur clapped a hand on Percival's shoulder as they walked past. "Percival, stay here and guard the door. If whatever killed Madalen is still out there, I don't want it coming back to finish the family off. And if you do see it, don't attack until you know how to kill it." The tall Knight nodded and stood at attention as Merlin and Arthur walked back towards the castle, a fact that Merlin didn't notice until they stood at the base of the castle steps, he was that deep in thought.
When he reached his chambers, pushing the doors open to find that three out of the four were asleep. As expected, Godric had stayed stubbornly awake, succeeding where the others had failed. Merlin allowed himself a grim smile. He should have known, Godric would never let this go so easily. Sitting down at the edge of the bed, the two smaller ones having been pushed together in his absence to create a bigger one, he ruffled Salazar blonde hair and locked eyes with Godric. Sleep pulled at him too, but his curiosity was the stronger of the two urges.
"It's late Godric. Go to sleep."
"You can't be serious! We have a right to know too! It's not fair." Merlin gave him a droll look, as he ducked behind the accordion fold screen to slip out of his shift and don a new one. He was in no mood to do any magicking.
"Life is seldom is 'fair' Godric, but you are right. You do have a right to know what happened tonight, but right now, I'm simply too tired to tell you and then the rest again tomorrow. So we will wait for morning and then we shall discuss what to do with what has transpired tonight."
"But what happened tonight?" Godric protested his lack of knowledge, lowering his voice only at the sudden tossing of Salazar, who was nestling his head in the older boy's lap.
"Tomorrow, Godric." Merlin climbed into bed, sinking against the pillows and letting sleep carry him off into oblivion. Godric grumbled to himself, seeing the mistress falling asleep. He settled down to go to sleep himself, and then realized he was being compressed down into the bed by the young blonde. He shoved him off unceremoniously.
"Get off me you great git."
. . . . . . . .
That night, Merlin dreamed restlessly of his encounter with the dark Sorceress that Morgana had become. He'd come out to face her, seeing the suspicion on her face clear, but not marred by fear.
"You reek of magic woman. I demand you tell me at once who you are." For once, Merlin gave thanks for his new appearance. He could attack without restraint.
"I don’t think I have an obligation to do any such thing."
"And yet, you know my name. Proper etiquette dictates that we both be in possession of that knowledge, don't you agree?" The woods swirled black and midnight blue in his periphery, it was disorienting and yet, it seemed to almost merge with Morgana's apparition. He fought to remain in control.
"Since you seem so determined for a name, I'll give it to you. I'm sure you've heard of it by now. Emrys."
The words that Morgana said next were garbled and her apparition turned a violent silver, turning into a streak of smoke and screeching through the air at him. He woke up sweating profusely, his gaze landing foremost on the window next to the bed, a dubious fog enveloping his view of the sky and it was then that he knew.
Something was wrong with the protection wards.
. . . . . . . .
"Wait, are you telling me, that you're just going to trust her word. The word of a," Elyan lowered his voice, to avoid being heard by the Knights outside Great Hall. Arthur and the Knights had all gathered, stood around a table set up at the dais at the far end of the room. "Sorceress? How are to know that she speaks the truth?"
Arthur braced his palms on the table, thinking hard. He glanced up, seeing the faces of the 5 men he'd called in for the briefing. Leon, Lancelot, Gwaine, Percival, Elyan and Gaius.
"Look, like it or not, we've got a murder on our hands. Even if she wasn't killed by some creature, though that's what Elladora insists is the cause, it still means that someone clubbed her over the head. We have enough on our plates with Morgana and when she's going to strike next and we don’t need to have to worry about our people killing each other off for petty reasons. So," Arthur pointed down at the scale model of Camelot that he'd had a carpenter build for him, tapping the roof of the Terry Tavern with his index finger. "I need to find out why Madalen died, I don’t care if it was magic or some moron with a grudge."
"Poor Lianora," Gwaine said, rubbing his temples, still trying to function despite the raging headache that was waging war in his skull. He made a mental note to drink responsibly next time, and then promptly discarded it.
"I just saw Madalen last night. She just about boxed Della's ears in yesterday for knocking over a barrel of the good ale." He shook the thought away. "Alright. So we have a murderer to find, but how do you want to go about this. A bunch of Knights knocking on people's doors isn't going to do much. They're going to seal their mouths shut."
At that moment the doors to the Great Hall opened and in strode Elladora and Queen Gwenivere. Elladora had donned a gown of deep frozen blue, like the sea, thrown on haphazardly, the collar and shoulders not settled properly. She paid no mind to Gwenivere fussing over her clothes, trying to fix them.
Arthur moved to the front of the dais, peeved to see Elladora elbowing her way into the main room. He sighed, resting his left elbow in his right hand, rubbing his left hand over his eyes. He opened his palm, gesturing towards the sorceress.
"Elladora. Just once, could you try not to barge in to where you don't belong?" She waved her hand dismissively as she approached, one hand on her hip.
"Yes, yes. I'll try to be less of a bane of your existence later. Right now I have something I want you to see." Gwaine and Lancelot exchanged wary glances. Past experiences had taught them that this woman meant them no harm, in fact, she had proven to be allied with them, but her knowledge of skills beyond their comprehension made them hesitant to put blind faith in her.
"Sire, if I may?" Gaius stepped forward, hands in each opposite sleeve. "It might be wise to see what the – er, Mistress has to show you."
Arthur mulled it over for all of a minute, then threw his hands up in defeat.
"Alright, alright, alright. We'll go. Then will you leave us alone?" Merlin rolled his eyes. That was another thing he was going to have to teach Arthur. It was the one trait he had unfortunately inherited from Uther. Once he had a specific idea in his head, it took a situation of cataclysmic proportions to prove to him otherwise. Well, Merlin thought grimly as the men filed off the dais and followed him out down the castle steps, if it's a disaster he wants, Morgana surely isn't going to disappoint us.
Arthur, the Knights and Gwenievere all followed Merlin out to the outer barrier of the Kingdom. Arthur fell into step beside him, the distrust evident in his manner but clearly he was attempting to keep it under lock and key.
"So, what are you doing with the children today?" Merlin knelt to avoid a low hanging branch, maybe on purpose pulling it back so that it would smack an unsuspecting King in the face.
"I dropped them off to Lianora this morning. They understand more than anyone else what that family is going through." After that, the King was silent the rest of the way, nearly bumping into Merlin's back when he stopped upon finding what he had come out to look for.
"Oof!" Arthur may have narrowly avoided colliding with Merlin but that meant that his entire company, including the Queen ended up barrelling into each other, sending them down into an ungainly heap of limbs.
When they managed to extricate themselves, they found Elladora transfixed, staring at the wall in front of them. It was a section of one of the more debilitated parts of the wall that surrounded Camelot. It crumbled in pieces from the top, bits of debris falling every so often, making it so that they would have to continually hop to steer clear of it.
"What are you looking at?" Gwaine hopped up next to Elladora, rubbing his foot from where a stray piece of stone had struck it. He shook the hair out of his face and Merlin swallowed, momentarily distracted by his closeness. Then he closed his eyes and remembered why it was he'd brought them out here in the first place despite every ounce of his common sense telling him not to.
"This," He pointed up slightly above his head. "Is what I came to show you." Six heads looked up in unison to see a symbol drawn on the decaying wall, a dull iron brown in color. It looked like a Y at first, but then with a the a semi circle cutting through the bottom half of the Y, the opening pointed down, told Lancelot all he needed to know. He'd come across enough of these in his travels, though he didn't know what they meant.
"It's a rune." He blinked, coming closer, and touching the wall beneath it. Merlin inclined his head.
"It is. It was drawn by Merlin." It was a gamble, revealing this, but it was essential to his plans that Arthur began to see Merlin for who he was beyond the role of servant. By Arthur's sharp intake of breath, Merlin considered it a success that he wasn't trying to destroy it yet.
"What – what is it?" He asked carefully, thumbing the collar of his chainmail, trying to pull it from his sweat sticky skin.
"It's an enchantment, your Highness. This is a rune meant for protection and prosperity. To ward off misfortune." Arthur cleared his throat, unsure of what to say. The design was crude, unpolished, and stunk of Merlin's handwriting. Elyan leaned closer to get a better look.
"What did he use to write it?" Merlin thought back to the day, a few weeks before the incident that had him thrown out of Camelot. He had spent all day flipping through a book of Norse magic that Gaius had filched from the treasury in the bowels of the castle. There had been a section on the old runes that doubled as spells, or "charms" as the book labeled them. Merlin had shown the book excitedly to Gaius only to be stopped at the peak of his excitement, when the wizened apothecary and physician informed him that that the only way to properly make use of them was to draw them with your own blood.
What had followed was a long and lengthy process of repeatedly cutting his finger when he was drawing the symbols all around the perimeter of the Kingdom.
"His blood." Merlin replied evenly, some part of him reveling in the way their mouths dropped open in shock and the way the Gwenivere stifled her own gasp.
"His blood?" She said, aghast. "But why? Why with his own blood?"
"Merlin would have told me," Lancelot said, tracing the outline of the rune. "I mean, he told me everything."
"This is his blood?" Gwaine was slack jawed, try as he might, he couldn't imagine scrawny little Merlin slicing his skin open to draw blood.
"He used blood, because it was the only thing that would make sure that the enchantment worked. There's eight more like this, all around the castle." Arthur shook his head, gobsmacked. He took in the symbol one last time and then turned to Elladora.
"Show me the others."
And so Merlin spent the afternoon showing Arthur, Gwenivere and the others his handiwork. His brain was in overdrive, attempting to reconcile the idea of showing them what he had done. It was the vain part of him that wanted some kind of acknowledgement for what he had done for them, while the more reasonable side of him scolded him for trying to gain recognition this way. But he soldiered on, he had a reason for doing this.
"So why are you showing us this?" Leon finally asked as they approached the eighth and last rune on the walls. This one was the worst off, the symbol all but erased, only a faint outline remaining. Merlin shoved his sleeve up and whipped a dagger off of Percival's belt, since he was standing closest to him.
"So I can show you this." He drew a shallow cut over his palm and ignoring the cries of Knights. "So I can show you how Merlin protected the castle, with Magic you all hate so much."
"What are you doing, you absurd woman?" Gwenivere made to grab his hand, to cover it with a handkerchief pulled from her bodice.
"What I came here to do, you dollop-head." Merlin mentally cursed when he saw the look of recognition on Arthur's face and quickly tacked on an ending for his sentence. "Merlin taught me that. Said nothing made you more likely to box his head in."
The King's mouth twitched involuntarily at the reminder of the phrase but quickly schooled it. It didn't escape Merlin's notice however, and he took some small satisfaction in the expression. He then turned to concentrate, using the index finger of his other to dip into his blood and smear it onto the symbol, creating it anew.
The character suddenly burst into flame, a fiery red that hissed and then melted into the stonework. Merlin wiped his bloody hand on his gown, and accepted the handerchief once again, to wrap carelessly around the cut.
They walked back into town, this symbol the closest to the front gates of the Kingdom. All of them processing the new side of Merlin that they had just been exposed to. No one knew how to reconcile the clumsy boy with the big ears, to a warlock that used his own blood to place enchantments on Camelot.
. . . . .
A hooded figure watched them leave, without so much as a glance behind them to the drying blood. She carved a sinister silhouette, this woman, as she crept up to the mark, pulling a long, pointed dagger as she went.
She swiped the dagger down, a quick motion that broke the perfect line, rendering the ward useless. Raising the blade up to her face, she ran a tongue appreciatively down the length of it, savoring the taste of the sorceress's blood on it, the crimson liquid staining her teeth a dark cranberry red.
Oh you make this too easy.