Chapter Text
I.
The seasons were turning now—the frost had melted and was giving way to a glittery dew. Merlin had always liked springtime best—before the weather got too hot, and before the hard work (the harvest in Ealdor, and the visitors and tournaments in Camelot) started.
With training just finished, Arthur had sent Merlin ahead to prepare his chambers before he came up to work on the detailed law-arbitration that he generally hated. He always said he couldn’t think surrounded by mess, so Merlin was going around picking up the scattered laundry.
You know, Merlin had considered saying, as the knights walked out of earshot and Arthur waited for him to clean up the training yard and drag each burlap dummy back to the shed, this would be much quicker with magic.
But then he hadn’t.
It had been nearly a month since he’d struck that deal with Arthur. Nearly a month since the horrible week lurching back to Camelot—poisoned, and dying, and banished. Nearly a month since he’d last used any magic at all, because Arthur
(is a good man, and a good king)
hadn’t yet given him permission to.
Merlin had often considered that he could very well use his magic when he wanted, and hide it. After all—he’d been doing that very thing for years before now. If Arthur suspected that Merlin was using magic without his permission, would he even know what to look for?
But the point of this wasn’t to win against Arthur, he reminded himself, even though these weeks without magic had been frustrating and he was getting impatient. The point of this was to bring him around gently. And it had been a blessedly quiet month, so fine—there had been no need of Merlin’s magic. Merlin trusted that Arthur would see when the time was right.
I know him. I know him.
Arthur’s laundry was in the basket. Merlin placed it at the end of the bed, and then went to Arthur’s desk to arrange the parchments and maps in a way that Arthur would find accessible—he got frustrated if he had to spend any amount of time searching for something he needed.
The window by Arthur’s desk was open—bright and warm.
I think you should move your desk, Merlin had often teased Arthur when he’d caught him avoiding work just to look dreamy-eyed out the window, but Merlin understood.
The spring air was sweet, cleaning out the stale of lingering winter, and Merlin took a moment to breathe in how green and lush the King’s Woods were, how the city looked—smoke coming up from chimneys, alive in a way that Merlin had never seen before coming here. Some of the greenery around the castle was still unkept, and there were flowers growing. Merlin smiled.
“Sneaking a break in, Merlin?”
Merlin looked around. He hadn’t heard anyone come in.
Gwen was there, smirking at him. She was wearing a deep blue gown, and a warmth that always seemed to waft off her like perfume.
“Just enjoying the sun,” Merlin said, and then closed the window. The training yard became slightly warbled in the glass. Gwen joined him, looking out.
“What are you looking at?”
“The flowers,” Merlin said. “It’ll be Beltane in a couple of weeks—I was thinking I should collect some for the windows.”
“Mm,” Gwen said. “Plenty to choose from this year.”
“Yeah. Think it’s sort of silly I should do it, though. In Ealdor at least, it was always the eldest resident. My mother used to do it in our house.”
“And my father in ours,” Gwen said. “But I don’t think it’s quite fair to make Gaius put flowers in every window in this castle.”
Merlin laughed. Gaius did always do it, just for their chambers (Gaius, privately, observed all the little superstitions that Beltane brought with it).
“I suppose the next best person would be the steward?” Merlin said.
“I don’t think he’ll be convinced.”
“Probably not.”
Gwen giggled. Merlin smiled. It was nice to make Gwen laugh.
They settled. Merlin leaned back against Arthur’s desk, which he was not supposed to do—it was an expensive piece of furniture, specially commissioned when Arthur began seeing to matters of state—but Gwen just gave him a knowing smirk.
“Things are different now, aren’t they?” Gwen said after a moment.
Merlin moved his gaze from the window to her, a little wary. He hadn’t had the chance to talk to Gwen since he returned to Camelot—about any of this. Between recovering from his wounds, then resuming his schedule, and Gwen’s duties as Queen, they hadn’t found themselves alone until now. But Gwen was Arthur’s wife—surely she must have known what was going on? Arthur didn’t keep secrets from Gwen, and Merlin suspected that if he’d asked Arthur to, Arthur would’ve been more likely to maintain his banishment.
“...Are they?” Merlin said, cautiously.
Gwen leaned against the desk as well, shoulder-to-shoulder with him. Neither of them were supposed to be doing this. It was comforting—familiar.
“Arthur told me,” she said simply.
Merlin had expected as much. And what did she think of that?
Gwen’s face was inquisitive. “You’re allowed to use magic.”
“Only with his permission,” Merlin said, finishing the terms. It would be misleading to pretend that Arthur simply trusted him with it.
“For now,” Gwen said.
…Did she think he should be leashed indefinitely?
Outside, he watched a squire cross the training yard. He stepped too close to a squirrel, whose tail exploded in size as it scampered away.
Gwen, still looking at him, seemed surprised.
“Merlin—I don’t think it’s wrong of you to have magic,” she said.
The squirrel, now safe in the branches of a tree, deflated—became sleek and small again. Merlin searched Gwen’s face for sincerity, and found what he needed.
“You don’t?”
“No,” Gwen said. “Of course. I don’t think anything you do could be evil, Merlin.”
Should he have known that? Should he have trusted her better? Maybe, but he’d been living in secret—in fear—for so long. Merlin sighed.
“Thank you for saying that.”
A silence followed. Softer. Similar to the quiet they used to share in the laundry chambers, each of them washing and wringing out clothes for their respective masters, with only the trickling and sloshing of water to fill the air once they’d run out of words.
“Were you truthful with Arthur?” Gwen asked.
“About what?”
“I’d just understand if you felt you had to lie.”
Gwen shrugged. Merlin frowned at her.
“I haven’t lied to him since I told him about my magic,” he said. “Everything I’ve said about it is true.”
“So… it’s true that you were born with it?”
Merlin nodded. He wasn’t sure how to read her expression—concern? Maybe she was impressed?
“You’ve been playing a dangerous game for a long time,” she remarked.
“Since I was born,” Merlin said.
Gwen took that, nodding slowly.
“And you’ve been using it all this time?”
He wasn’t interested in being interrogated again, but Gwen didn’t seem to be passing judgement. This was only fair. She was his longest friend in Camelot, and he would do anything for her—the least he could do was this.
“When I need to,” Merlin said. It was pretty much restricted to needing to, these days.
And then, another moment. Merlin pinched his nails into the lip of the desk underneath him, a habit that Arthur would’ve hated if he cared enough about the furniture to notice.
“Well,” she said, “Arthur’s very lucky.”
Her words were like a gentle hand on his shoulder. Merlin was touched.
“...Yeah?”
“Yeah,” Gwen said. “To have someone like you looking out for him.”
“I have been,” Merlin said. His guards melted away. The room was soft, their voices too quiet to echo. Gwen gave him a fond look.
“I know.”
Why did Merlin feel fragile? He looked out the window, into the warmth of the sun, at the way the light dappled through the leaves of the spring-welcomed trees.
“I didn’t want to put myself on a leash for him,” Merlin admitted, because this was Gwen.
And he realized… he’d never actually confided in her like this. Gwen had done so to him, but Merlin so rarely confided in any of the people he considered his friends. When he did, they tended to die.
“It won’t be forever,” Gwen said. “Arthur said you would discuss it again. After some time.”
He was surprised Arthur had said that to Gwen, but reassured. Not that Merlin thought Arthur would go back on his word, but still. It was nice to know that Arthur took that seriously.
“He hasn’t even given me permission to do anything yet,” Merlin said.
“I’m sure he’s just getting used to it,” Gwen said. “The idea of it. You know how he is.”
Merlin laughed a little. It was nice to share that with Gwen, as people who both loved him.
“Yeah. I do.”
Gwen gave him that knowing smirk of hers, and put an arm around him. He leaned his head on her shoulder. Outside, the sun took on a pre-evening gold.
II.
Quiet, Merlin, Arthur thought, near desperately. Quiet, for god’s sake…
There was a heron near the edge of the river. Arthur was kneeling, some length down the riverbank, crossbow in hand. His aim was careful, precise, the tendons of his hands blurred in his vision underneath the heron’s grey breast. If he could just steady his aim before it took off to fish—
Merlin sneezed, and it may as well have been an explosion next to him. The heron startled and took flight, leaving Arthur kneeling at a riverbank aiming at nothing.
He sighed, exasperated, and lowered his crossbow. He looked at Merlin, who shrugged apologetically, except that Arthur knew he wasn’t, actually, apologetic.
Slowly, Arthur stood. He wasn’t as agile in the knees as he used to be. His thirtieth birthday had been yesterday, and he was feeling every one of those thirty years.
“Brilliant, Merlin,” he said. “I would’ve had that.”
“I didn’t mean to!” Merlin said.
Arthur was already removing the bolt from his crossbow. He shoved both it and the bow at Merlin, who fumbled with the quiver at his hip, dropping several bolts into the water. Arthur rolled his eyes and trudged back to their horses, parting young bulrushes in his wake. Merlin—with a haphazard fist of quarrels—scrambled after him.
“I can’t control when I sneeze, you know,” Merlin said. “There’s no use sulking about it.”
“I’m not sulking,” Arthur scoffed.
“Seems like it to me.”
“Maybe, Merlin, I just enjoy a little peace and quiet. In fact, maybe we need the peace and quiet if we want to go back to Camelot with any game at all, have you thought of that?”
His horse was nosing at the ground, looking for grass. She snuffled as Arthur patted her neck and got into the saddle.
It would just be embarrassing to go back to Camelot with nothing at all. Especially after being gone for several days just to hunt—and taking time out of council meetings and training, as well as all the arrangements he’d made with Guinevere before he went.
Most importantly, he made sure that absolutely no celebration would be held for his birthday. He was finished with that. He would turn thirty quietly, away from his knights and his queen, alone in the woods (well, alone with Merlin). All he wanted was one damn kill so he could pretend it was worth it.
“Aren’t we heading back to Camelot tomorrow?” Merlin said, finally sorting himself out and climbing up onto his own horse. Arthur rolled his eyes again at the doubt he heard in Merlin’s voice. “And dusk will be soon.”
Arthur nudged his horse to trot.
“Right, so let’s be quiet until then so I have a chance, alright?”
Merlin snickered, presumably at Arthur’s irritation. And as irritated as Arthur was, he had to admit, that was somehow sort of nice. Things had been tense between them for a while, after that bright, raw discussion between them on Merlin’s bed—not battle-tension, but tension like eggshells, neither of them ever quite sure how firm they could be before cracking whatever was between them now. This time alone in the woods (alone with Merlin) had been good for them. It felt almost normal. Almost as though Merlin had never told him he had magic, had never run off and been tortured and nearly died on Arthur’s foolish watch. Maybe one day, if he was lucky, he could pretend it had never happened at all.
“It’s not like you’re not going to be able to eat fresh meat—even if you don’t get anything, Beltane is coming soon.”
“Yes, and it would seem you’re already drunk.”
Merlin laughed at that, and Arthur smirked.
“All I did was sneeze, my lord.”
“You fell into a stream earlier.”
Merlin sputtered. “Right, well—that’s because you had me carrying enough bags to supply an army!”
“I think it’s because you’re clumsy, Merlin.”
“I’d like to see you try to carry that much!”
“I would, but I wouldn’t want to embarrass you.”
Merlin scoffed.
“You know,” he said, and they were riding now—aside a shallow, wooded hill that cupped the swelling stream in a net of clovers, “one time Gaius caught me using magic to do all my chores at once. This was years ago—I was reading in the bedroom, and he walked in, and I had a pair of your boots being polished, and your sword being sharpened, and a broom sweeping the floor…”
Arthur didn’t know why Merlin was saying this. He thought perhaps Merlin was testing the strength of the eggshells. He hadn’t mentioned magic hardly at all in the last month, since that conversation on his bed.
“Right,” Arthur said, unsure what to say. Admittedly, that seemed like a pretty harmless use of magic, but Merlin was still talking about breaking the law, years ago, under Arthur’s nose. He supposed he should get used to hearing about that, and forgiving him for it.
“Right,” Merlin said. “So I’m saying, if I had permission to use magic to carry all your things so it wasn’t all on me, then I’d fall less. And you’d actually kill something.”
He was joking, and Arthur was glad for that—glad that Merlin gave him the opportunity to enjoy that proposal for the absurdity of it. He took that in, and then actually found himself laughing. Merlin was shameless.
“Right,” he said. “Or, you could finally figure out how to do something that every other servant before you has managed without it.”
“All due respect sire, you haven’t had any other servant while you’ve been King.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with anything.”
Merlin scoffed. “Right, well, you can hardly see anything beyond your own nose.”
“Oi,” Arthur said, “careful, or I may actually make you work on Beltane.”
It was an empty threat. Merlin was already supposed to serve Arthur during the Beltane celebrations, but in reality, he usually snuck off rose-cheeked around halfway through the night. Arthur had learned not to expect service from Merlin when the bonfires started.
Merlin rolled his eyes. He opened his mouth to respond—with something stupid, doubtless—but he was interrupted by a shrill, bone-chilling sound.
Arthur pulled back the reins on his horse, and stopped.
“Did you hear that? What was that?”
“...a bird?” Merlin said.
Arthur didn’t think so. He’d heard all the bird calls in these woods, and none of them sounded like that.
“It sounded like screaming.”
It happened again, loud and visceral.
“No, you’re right,” Merlin said. “That’s a woman screaming.”
Arthur was already riding up the hill toward the sound, Merlin close behind him without having to discuss it. The screaming had sounded ragged and wrecked to Arthur’s ear, so they didn’t have much time. There were no clashing swords, so possibly it wasn’t an armed attack. Arthur found the hilt of his sword, both reins in one hand, and didn’t let his guard down. They sped through the trees, up and up, until they emerged at the top of the ridge. He pulled to a stop.
Below was a village, small, and a procession crossing the field. It looked like an old-style witch burning. The woman was still screaming.
There had been a time when witch-burnings had been common in Camelot, but Arthur didn’t like them. They were often frenzied and disorganized, with no room for a fair trial, an easy way to murder a strange but harmless neighbour. His father had failed to see it, in his time, but Arthur did. He knew this wasn’t right.
He exchanged a look with Merlin. He supposed Merlin probably felt strongly about this as well, but found he didn’t want to think about that. Arthur dismounted, slinging the reins over a branch before moving down the hill, toward the village. He sensed more than saw Merlin following behind him.
“Arthur,” Merlin said.
“What?” Arthur said, still moving, trying to be fast enough to stop it.
“Permission to use magic if this comes to a fight?”
Arthur did stop, then. He hadn’t expected Merlin to just ask, and he looked at him, a hard, evaluating look. Here? he thought. Was Merlin mad?
But no, he realized, looking at his face. What Merlin was, was determined. Determined to stop this. This is personal for you, Arthur thought. And he could respect that.
“Granted,” he said, through gritted teeth. “Sparingly.”
He expected there to be some sort of acknowledgment at that—he felt like the wind should pick up, or the valley should grow darker. But there was no sound, none except the village below. Even the woman’s cries had faded. Merlin didn’t smile, as Arthur half-expected him to. He just nodded, small.
“Understood.”
And Arthur nodded back.
III.
A frail, elderly woman was bound to a wooden stake while a crowd of villagers watched. Arthur came down the hill, pushed past them until he was between them and the stake, and faced them, his hand on his sword, Merlin at his shoulder.
A man—the village leader—came to the front of the crowd.
“Stand aside,” the man said.
Arthur felt Merlin bristle behind him, and willed him calm.
“Has she had a fair trial?” he asked.
“Who are you to stand in the way of justice?”
“I am Arthur Pendragon, King of Camelot,” he said, drawing himself up. “And if she’s had no trial, I order you to let this woman go.”
The man scowled.
“Your father would have shown her no mercy.”
Now Arthur bristled. The man was right, of course, his father would have never done this—but he had shown mercy to a proven sorcerer already. He hadn’t decided if that was weakness or wisdom, but he’d made his choice on the matter.
“Cut her down.”
The man scoffed, shook his head, and grabbed a torch from one of his neighbours. Arthur felt Merlin tense. He knew he wanted to intervene. And he could now, with magic—Arthur had said he could.
Arthur unsheathed his sword and pointed it at the man, before Merlin had the chance to act.
“I won’t ask again.”
Gasps, from the villagers. The man stiffened. Finally, after a moment, he stepped back, and nodded to someone else, who stepped up to cut the woman down. Arthur lowered his sword.
The village leader scowled deeper, and spat at Arthur’s feet, before turning away. Arthur almost wanted to arrest him for that disrespect, but the woman looked weak, and he wasn’t willing to waste the time. Perhaps he should send some knights to investigate the concerning practices around here, and leave it at that.
The villager who’d cut her down grabbed her elbow and shoved her off the staked platform. She fell with a cry in the grass at Arthur’s feet.
Sharp whispers burned through the dispersing crowd of onlookers. He sheathed his sword, and once they were gone, he knelt down to help the woman up, only to find she was already unconscious.
“Merlin. Help me bring her somewhere safe.”
Together, they did.
IV.
Permission to use magic if this comes to a fight? Merlin heard himself say.
He thought about that moment for the rest of the afternoon, well into the evening, as the sun set and everything went dim. He thought about it as he tended to the woman—weaker than they’d hoped—his head buzzing all the while.
Magic, he thought, as he lay her out, and tracked the weak rate of her heart and shallow rhythm of her breath.
Magic, he thought, back in the woods now, Arthur sitting on a log in the periphery. He could hear him striking the flints, mostly unsuccessful.
Arthur had almost let him use magic.
And here it finally was, so close. Proof that Arthur hadn’t simply forgotten. Proof that somewhere in these long, warming days, he’d been thinking about it.
Merlin carefully put a blanket over the woman. He relived the slope under his feet, the thinning woods passing in a blur.
Her forehead was hot when he touched it, burning. He reached into his medicine bag for a cloth, and some water, to try and bring down her fever.
Granted, Arthur had said. Just like that.
It had been so fast. A moment fleeting. Like hundreds of idle imaginings suddenly polished into a coherent image. Things were turning, like the seasons. He was sure of it.
“How is she?” Arthur asked, disturbing the quiet.
Merlin sobered, guilty at being self-absorbed when the woman was in such a bad way. There would be other times to think about this. He forced himself to turn his full attention to their rescue.
“Getting weaker,” Merlin said. “I’ll do what I can.”
She was badly bruised, and too thin. Starved, Merlin thought, and beaten. And she was elderly, likely frail from the start, her fingers bone-thin, her hair wispy-grey. Merlin’s recommendation as far as physicianship went was that they should have gotten there before the villagers had beaten her. That, he realized late, would have been the screaming they heard.
Arthur got the fire to catch, and in the burst of sudden light, they finally saw each other clearly, shared two tight-jawed frowns. Arthur sighed like it personally grieved him that she’d been hurt. He was a good man, Merlin thought. A good king. Then Arthur looked away, feeding something into the fire.
There would be no quips between them tonight, now.
“If that’d gone worse in the village—” Arthur said, “you would’ve used your magic?”
Merlin paused, his hand stilling around the open waterskin. He almost hadn’t heard Arthur, his voice was so low; perhaps he was worried they’d be overheard.
They were talking about this now?
There was a beat of quiet, and then Merlin resumed his work, dampening the cloth with cool water.
“Probably. Yes.” You gave me permission, after all.
“To do what?”
“I… don’t know.”
“Fight the villagers? Destroy the pyre?”
Merlin shrugged.
“Defend her, perhaps.”
“...Right.”
But it hadn’t happened, and Merlin was glad it hadn’t. Using magic like that would have been complicated. He pictured the pyre going up, if Arthur hadn’t been so fast to draw his sword, and a mob of sickles. He imagined closing his mind over the fire until it smouldered, and the rippling gasps that might have resulted.
“Are you disappointed it didn’t go worse?” Arthur said, before Merlin could imagine what might have happened next.
“No,” Merlin said. “Of course not.”
He glanced over, and found Arthur studying him, skeptical until he seemed to determine Merlin was telling the truth, and he leaned forward, elbows on his knees.
“Can I ask you something—” Arthur said, “was this personal to you?”
Merlin frowned at him. Personal? He didn’t know this woman, or any of those people…
But then—oh—he understood.
Small villages, Arthur must have meant. Small villages with farmers wary of magic; stakes and pyres, and the idea of dying a pariah. He shook his head and arranged the cloth on the woman’s feverish brow.
“Well, we never would’ve had witch-burnings in Ealdor,” Merlin said. “Weren’t those kinds of people.”
Arthur seemed to take that in carefully, nodding once he came to whatever conclusion he had.
“That must have been a comfort,” he said, uncertain, “to your mother.”
Merlin shrugged, and it came out of him before he could decide whether or not it was really wise to answer the topic—
“Someone always could’ve given me up for money.”
Arthur furrowed his brow. “Really?”
“Or cast us out,” Merlin said. “I dunno. Maybe nothing would have happened.” But his mother had not been comforted, with a boy like him. Growing up there had been rumours of strange folks hunting the woods for vagrants and bounty, and dangerous caravans that passed up north. Witchfinders. Slavers. People with gold, who would pay you to sell out your neighbours. And he’d regretted that he couldn’t have been an easier son, a less dangerous one. Regretted that he had a pacing creature inside him that sometimes got loose before he could catch it.
Arthur didn’t seem to know what to say.
“...I see,” he said. “I’m sorry.”
Merlin hadn’t been looking for pity or condolences, and was honestly sort of surprised when Arthur offered them. It was what it was, and Arthur’s eyes—troubled and sad like that—didn’t change anything.
“...Thank you,” he said, and then looked away, but Arthur was still watching him. He could feel it.
“Has it been difficult?” Arthur said, after a moment. “Not using magic?”
“I’m… used to it,” Merlin said. “Not doing it, not talking about it.”
“Mm.”
“And it’s been a quiet month.”
Arthur scoffed.
“Yes,” he muttered. “Thank god for that. Truly.”
On that they could agree. Merlin didn’t think he would’ve been able to bear it if anything else had happened so soon after getting home from the hell of Morgana’s cellar. Still, he saw her face in darker dreams—her staled beauty hanging over him, wafting pain like Gwen’s perfume.
In the settling night, a distant owl trilled. Merlin sighed, then wondered if he should turn the question back on Arthur. He wanted to. Had wanted to for weeks…
Well, since Arthur had started it.
“Has it been difficult for you,” Merlin said, “knowing I have it?”
Arthur shifted uncomfortably.
“No,” he said, but Merlin knew him too well.
Liar. But, yeah alright, how had he really thought that was going to go? He felt the conversation die there. Maybe that was fine, he knew how to be in silence with Arthur, and this silence wasn’t nearly as bad as it could be. As bad as they both knew it could be.
Merlin took the opportunity to check on the woman, who seemed even paler now.
“I don’t think she’ll make it through the night,” he said, and poured more cold water into the cloth, but the fever was thick.
Arthur exhaled in a long huff.
“I wanted to save her,” he said.
“I know,” Merlin said. “I’m sorry.”
He watched Arthur take that with no lack of weight, jaw at work. He readjusted his seat on the log, absently twisting at his ring, looking at the unconscious woman. As Arthur had grown into his kingship, he’d developed a specific expression for hard decisions—lips slightly flattened into a half-frown, eyes set on some middle distance. Merlin recognized it now.
Finally, Arthur said in a low voice,
“And… and what if you—”
The woman shuddered under Merlin’s hands, and Arthur’s voice choked off, like he’d been caught in the act of a crime. But Merlin heard the end of the sentence, even if Arthur hadn’t said it: what if you used magic?
“She’s coming to,” Merlin said. Arthur nodded, and came around the fire to kneel beside Merlin, just as the woman opened her eyes.
Merlin expected a daze—confusion—but her gaze was surprisingly lucid for someone with a fever so high. Her eyes, set deep in her face, swept slowly over Merlin, and then settled on Arthur. She seemed to recognize them, and relaxed. Lines smoothed out across her gaunt face.
“It’s you…” she rasped, at Arthur. “You’re the man who saved me. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Arthur said, “You’re safe now. I’ll do all I can to ensure that.”
Perhaps even use magic, Merlin thought.
“No,” the woman said. “My time has come, sire, but I am not afraid of the other world.”
She sure was calm; Merlin couldn’t help but think that Arthur was more concerned about her than she was.
The woman looked around, orienting herself, and her deep eyes found Merlin. He froze, struck with the certainty that she’d heard them speaking, or if she hadn’t, that she knew about his magic some other way. Perhaps she could feel it, even as it slept within him.
Her hand trembled, and she reached for something in the rags of her robe. A weapon? Merlin tensed, but it was only a small bundle of cloth. She looked back at Arthur, and left Merlin feeling uneasy.
“Please, accept this,” she said, to Arthur. “I know you will keep it safe, good king. You have been kind to me. Compassionate.”
Arthur didn’t look particularly pleased to be receiving anything—gifts or praise—from a dying woman, but it would have been rude to refuse. Merlin wondered, not for the first time, who had taught Arthur about attending the bedsides of the dying, if there was an etiquette for it.
Arthur took the bundle, then hesitated before unwrapping a small, ornate horn of bone with metal detailing. The air seemed to ripple; Merlin was almost certain it was magic.
“Thank you,” Arthur said, gently. “It’s beautiful.”
The woman’s chest hitched. Her voice wheezed and caught twice before she managed her next sentence—
“It has the power to summon the spirits of the dead,” she said. Her lips trembled, like there was more, but her body was failing her. Her eyes were losing their lucidity. Arthur looked from the horn in his hands to the woman, alarmed.
Why would she give the King of Camelot an object of magic? Was she desperate—simply a dying woman with no one else to trust with its safekeeping? Or was this some trick? Merlin tried to meet her eyes, but she wasn’t seeing anymore, and fainted.
He reached for her neck, and found her pulse rapidly slowing, before it stopped. A chill settled over him, as it always did when he felt someone die, intimately, under his hands, like this. He held on a moment longer, but it was no use.
“She’s gone,” he said.
Arthur’s expression fell, and creased.
“Damn,” he muttered.
He wrapped the horn back up, and put it aside, but it radiated in Merlin’s mind with magic that felt like heat, felt like the woman’s fever. It prickled through him as the woman’s face went completely slack. It was strange that she looked younger, in death.
If the horn really did summon spirits of the dead, Merlin thought they needed to be wary. He didn’t have much experience with spirits, except for the Druid ghost boy, and that hadn’t gone over easily.
Arthur sighed, and stood up.
“Alright,” he said. “Alright—see to her body.”
Merlin nodded absently, and looked back at the woman, lying in the dirt beside a campfire that wasn’t hers. He placed her hands on her chest as best he could, straightened out her dress, and then closed her eyes before he pulled up the blanket, to cover her face.
It occurred to him that they didn’t even know her name, which was sad. If he ever had the misfortune to die in the company of strangers, away from home, he would want more for himself than to be buried in a shallow grave by someone he didn’t know. It wasn’t as if he’d never pictured the scenario.
Maybe Arthur was right—maybe it was a little personal.
“Arthur?” he said, as Arthur tossed something into the fire. It crackled when it caught.
“Yes?”
“Could I be allowed to use magic,” Merlin said, “to bury her?”
Arthur heard him, and there was a long silence—Arthur’s expression cut with early-evening shadows and firelight, oscillating between tension and ease. It was only the second time he’d even asked permission.
Merlin didn’t take his eyes off him, as responses flickered across his face.
Finally, Arthur nodded.
“Yes,” he said, “fine.”
Merlin exhaled, and inclined his head. Perhaps some past him would have been disappointed by this version of things. So many times he’d imagined doing magic for Arthur, saving his life, cutting down enemy knights or bandits or sorcerers who wanted him dead. But this was none of that. This was to bury a stranger, an old woman neither of them knew.
And somehow, he felt relieved. Relieved he and this strange old woman were allowed this, relieved that this dignity was how Arthur got to see his magic, this time.
“Thank you,” he said.
Arthur said nothing, and looked into the fire.
V.
The next morning was chilly and faint-blue. Spring shoots were coming up through dead leaves, and Merlin was breaking camp as Arthur sat aside, by what had previously been their firepit, turning the horn over in his hands.
“You know,” Merlin said, grunting as he finished tying up his own rolled bedroll, “this would go much faster if I actually had some help.”
Merlin didn’t really care about having help—their camp wasn’t much to begin with—but he was inviting him to argue, which usually seemed to cheer him up.
Arthur only rolled his eyes at him, and didn’t respond.
He’d been unwrapping and re-wrapping the cloth around that horn all morning, silent and brooding and unreceptive to anything Merlin tried to throw his way. Merlin wondered if it was the woman’s death from last night, or the fact that Merlin had used magic to make her grave. Perhaps it was how the villagers had acted towards him, or something else entirely.
Merlin got up with the bedroll and walked over to tie it to the pack on his horse.
“You’re troubled,” Merlin said, dropping the act of irreverence. He walked back over to start on Arthur’s bedroll.
Arthur frowned at him, like he’d just remembered Merlin was there, then exhaled—long and thin and tense. He didn’t try to deny it.
“What did she say about this?” he asked, holding up the horn. The cloth it had been wrapped in was draped over his lap.
“I heard her say it summons spirits.”
“Yes,” Arthur muttered, “that’s what I heard as well.”
Merlin shook out Arthur’s bedroll, twigs and pebbles scattering at his feet. He glanced over; Arthur was tracing the metal detailing with his thumb, rolling it around in his hand.
“You don’t believe her?” Merlin said.
“That would make it an object of magic,” Arthur said.
“It would.”
There was something new to speaking about magic without watching his tongue, worrying he’d say something stupid and have to stumble into a ridiculous lie; there was something thrilling about losing that fear of being discovered. Did Arthur feel it, too? Differently, maybe, but something had shifted. He knelt down with the bedroll to tie it.
“Have you ever heard of a horn like that?” Arthur said.
“No,” Merlin said, hands working deftly as he looked over at Arthur. “But it does seem magic.”
At that, Arthur held the horn more gingerly, and looked at Merlin, surprised.
“It does?” Arthur said. “How?”
Merlin finished tying up Arthur’s bedroll, and walked over to put it on the horse, shrugging. It wasn’t as if he actually knew anything beyond what the woman had said, and how the horn felt.
“It’s just a… feeling,” he said. But he’d learned to trust those.
Arthur took that, then scoffed.
“So you’re no expert.”
“No,” Merlin said. “Gaius knows more than I would, in matters of history.”
Something about that seemed to comfort Arthur, but he said nothing, apparently deciding to go back to brooding. Did it reassure him that Gaius might be able to help? Or did he like that Merlin couldn’t?
…Perhaps Merlin was overthinking it.
He finished with their saddlebags, then walked over to sit next to Arthur. He’d wrapped up the horn again. It was on the other side of him, shapeless and smaller than it had a right to be, crushing a sprig of green growth pushing up through the soil. Arthur sighed again.
Everything’s ready, Merlin was about to say, when Arthur finally spoke. His voice was changed—softer. Few people would have caught it.
“She actually was a witch, then,” Arthur said.
“...Yeah,” Merlin said, “it seems that way.”
“So the man from the village was right about her.” Arthur shook his head. “I didn’t know anything about that woman, and yet.”
Arthur gestured, and Merlin took that to mean, I intervened, I tried to save her.
“Because you’re a good man, Arthur,” Merlin said.
“She might have cursed that village.”
“Maybe,” Merlin said, “but you were also right—she deserved a fair trial.” One they didn’t give her.
Arthur looked at him, too sharply for Merlin’s comfort.
You would say that, wouldn’t you? he imagined Arthur reply. Merlin knew his moods. You would sympathise with the witch.
But he didn’t say that.
“Thank you, Merlin,” Arthur said, instead.
Merlin felt himself relax; he’d been bracing for another argument—the kind he didn’t want to invite. He took a deep breath—the morning chill was crisp and stinging in his chest. He crossed his arms to protect his fingers from going numb.
Arthur frowned at the wrapped horn, then finally handed it to Merlin to pack up.
As Merlin tucked the horn safely into Arthur’s bag, he couldn’t shake the feeling that Arthur didn’t really believe him about the woman, and her right to a trial. Merlin was a sorcerer now, in Arthur’s mind. And even if that didn’t make him malicious, it made him biased. He had to hope this wouldn’t be forever. Arthur would trust him again.
I know him. I know him.
He’d never imagined these conversations: the gradual shift in their well-known script, the way things were just off-balance of normal. Merlin had imagined some bright future where Arthur welcomed his magic with no conditions, but the truth was messier. Slower.
Merlin could be patient.