[Fic] Moment of Yew (pt. 2) - for yue_ix
Title: Moment of the Yew
Author: Anonymous
Recipient: yue_ix
Pairing(s): Arthur/Gwen/Merlin/Morgana (vaguely shippy), Hunith, Will, Gaius, various
Warnings: Some violence, some disturbing imagery
Spoilers: Season 1 only
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 26,000
Summary: Merlin's birthday is tomorrow, and so is the midwinter feast. But it will take more than a new cloak to get him through the longest night of the year, when the cracks in the world briefly widen and all manner of things slip through.
Author's Note:See part 1.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction - none of this ever happened. No copyright infringement is intended. No profit is made from this work. Please observe your local laws with regards to the age-limit and content of this work.
Part One
Gwen darted through the half-lit passages, knocking on each door she came across.
"Merlin? Merlin!"
But there was no reply.
Moonlight peeked in through windows here and there, but it left a hard darkness between. She kept the fingers of one hand lightly brushing the wall as she moved; with the other hand she held up her skirt to keep from tripping. Whenever she reached a fork she agonized for a moment, then stepped decisively one way or the other.
She would return. When she hit a dead end, she would turn around and come back. Except she never did find an end. The hallways just kept going, sometimes familiar, sometimes not, curving in on one another until she wondered if she were running in circles. Fear clenched her heart at the thought, for Merlin and for herself.
Where could he be?
She took to opening the unlocked doors and peering inside, just to make sure.
"Hello?" she called into each, her voice wobbling. "Is anyone there?"
She came across a door on her left that was unlocked but stuck. Bracing her shoulder against it, she pushed until she spilled through it bodily, stumbling over objects half in shadow. "Merlin?" Something was moving in the corner. She hoped it was either Merlin or one of the half-feral cats that wandered the lower halls. Not... those other things. Things she'd seen only in glimpses from the corners of her eyes as she ran.
"Merlin?" She moved deeper into the room, hands shaking. He could be hurt or scared. She mustn't let fear-
"Not in here, deary," said a cheerful voice, creaky as old bones.
The door slammed shut.
Gwen whirled, heart in her throat. The only light came from beneath the door and from a sliver of moon through the window. Gwen turned until the window was at her back, the voice in front of her. Slowly, carefully, she reached up and pulled out a hairpin, letting her curls tumble free. Clutching the pin in her fist like a weapon, she took a deep breath. "Who are you?"
"No one of any importance, luv," said the voice again, open and kind. Across the room, a trestle moved, but Gwen couldn't see anyone pushing it. The voice was coming from that direction, though.
"That's something we have in common, isn't it, sweets? Not important, left in storage until we rot or get chopped up for firewood, whichever comes first."
"You," Gwen gasped, staring at the trestle again. It had moved into the moonlight, and now she could see a face etched into the wood of one side, like a pattern of tree rings but with depth, leaning out of the wood. A long face, wrinkled, with a long beard that trailed back into the wood.
The face was moving, smiling at her.
Gwen sat down, breathing hard. This was - she'd never seen magic like this. She'd never heard of magic like this. Not even in the darker corners of the lower town, where the King's reach was not so long as he thought. Talking trestles in his storage room? No. She shook her head, trying to clear the sight, but it refused to go.
"That's better," said the trestle, every wrinkle shifting as it spoke. "Your loyalty is very becoming, you know. But the likes of you and I, we really can't get involved in these things. Sit and wait, that's what I say."
Gwen swallowed the lump in her throat. "Do you know where Merlin is?"
"Skinny boy, big ears, runs like a three-day-old colt? Went by at a canter some time ago."
Gwen surged to her feet, wobbly but determined. "Which way?"
"Now, now, dearie. Didn't I just say you can't get involved? Why, however can you help that boy? You'll just get yourself hurt and slow him down." It's face changed, became softer. "No one comes in here, or at least no one who can avoid it. We'll keep you safe."
Behind the trestle, several pots with cracked basins and broken handles nodded, and a broom with almost no straw creaked agreement. Gwen stared at them, thinking the forgotten. Her father would not have permitted this, this waste. When things wore out, they must be refashioned into new things, usable things. It was the way of life. Her palms itched, fingers eager to set to work.
But Merlin.
"I can't," she whispered, hand tightening on the hairpin. "I can't leave him."
"But what can you do?" asked an iron kettle, voice deep and hollow. "Are you a third son who sits by the fire all day and looks like an idiot?"
"Seventh daughter of a seventh daughter?" suggested a coil of fraying rope.
"Do you turn into a crow at night and fly to the moon? Know the secret for unraveling riddles? Live under the hill with the Elders one night a year and dance until dawn, your feet bare on the silver grass?" a sagging spinning wheel sang, rolling its wheel.
"Are you secretly a princess?" the trestle asked carefully, eyeing her as if it thought that might be a possibility. Its long legs scuffed against the stone floor.
"No," she said. "I'm the daughter of Thomas the blacksmith and Gwynhyfar the midwife, both gone. And I haven't got any secrets at all."
All noise stopped. The wheel shuddered, the broom stood stiff, and the trestle, after a long moment, hobbled forward to peer up at her. "An orphan and an honest woman?" it asked quietly. "Show me your hands, daughter of a blacksmith and a midwife."
Gwen held them out, palms up, pin still clutched in the fingers of the right. The trestle peered closely for a long moment, then it settled back and sighed, its long face troubled. "She speaks the truth."
A sigh rippled around the room, a sound Gwen didn't understand. She looked down at her hands, trying to see past the calluses and the grime under her nails that she hadn't had time to clean after working at the forge this afternoon. They were hands - serviceable, nothing else. She wiggled her thumbs, watching the joints bend and the skin wrinkle.
"I don't understand." She looked up at the trestle. "What's so special about them?"
"Take that pin," the trestle told her, its face deep with sorrow and hope at once, "and run your hands along it while thinking of a sword."
Gwen squinted at the hairpin, then at the trestle, but the thought of Merlin spurred her on. He was out there somewhere, running. A sword would be very useful right now.
The pin was old, one her father had made for her when she was ten, a year before she went into Lady Morgana's service. She ran her fingers along it and thought, my father also made swords. Some of the best swords in all of Albion. Closing her eyes, she imagined the one she gave to Merlin to save Arthur's life. It had disappeared after that, but Merlin had come back with payment for it, somehow. Gwen had told her father the prince bought it, and he had smiled with pride. But still, she missed that sword.
In her hands the hairpin vibrated, growing warm. She resisted the urge to open her eyes, instead focusing on the grip shaped like this, the hilt this long, with a crosspiece here, the blade balanced just so...
For a moment the heat in her hands was unbearable, like she'd grasped a piece of still-glowing iron. She gave a cry, but the moment she opened her eyes the heat was gone. There lay her hands, unblemished, beneath the winking blade of a sword that might have been twin to the one her father made last spring.
"How?" she asked, looking up.
The trestle turned away, but one of the pots spoke up, lisping between the cracks in its lid. "A midwife's hands for birth and death and beginnings, a blacksmith's for changes. Blood and fire on you."
"Blood and fire," the others murmured, agreeing.
"You're on the other side now," the trestle told her, face still turned away, "in our world. But you bring with you what you are. Everything is more truthful here. Lies will not avail you. But belief and what you hold dear - those may save you.
"Go," it whispered, voice cracked. "Your friend went to the right, but he will find himself outside the castle soon enough. Then he'll need you. Go to the left and take the first stairs up, then follow the passage to its end."
"Thank you." Gwen laid her hand gently on its back. "Would you like me to-"
"No," it said, laughing harshly. "I don't want to spend another ten years holding up heavy feast tables. This is my reward."
"No." Gwen shook her head. That wasn't right. It should-
"Close your eyes," she told it, and then she did the same. Thinking of how Morgana would love a beautiful end table with dark, ornate wood, simple but elegant. How she would love to set a vase of flowers on top, their light color setting off the wood just right. Thinking of four curved legs and a flat, smooth top.
When she opened her eyes, a face was peering up at her out of that flat top, but it was a different face. Neither old nor young but something infinitely in between.
"When you change things," the no-longer-trestle whispered, "you must take responsibility for it."
"When someone helps you," Gwen countered, "don't you owe them help in return?"
The now-a-table smiled, but it was a sharper expression, less kind without the welcoming wrinkles from before. "Sometimes a thanks is enough."
"Thank you," Gwen said, like an apology. She should have asked.
But, "And to you," it whispered, face gentling again. "Goodspeed, Lady Guinevere."
She gave it a strange look, but then the kettle cried, "What about me?" And the spinning wheel sang, "No, me, me!" Gwen saw them start to move and realized her freedom might be short-lived indeed if she didn't escape quickly.
"I'll be back!" she cried, ducking to the door and yanking on the handle. It was the kind of promise you threw out without considering, but the moment the words hung in the air, she knew she'd be held to them. "I will!"
The door sprang open and she leaped into the hall, blindingly bright after the darkness of the storeroom. She stood a moment, poised with indecision, and then turned resolutely left, as the trestle had told her.
In the wake of her passage, one shadow separated from the rest and followed.
***
Like a whisper Morgana moved through the darkness, her pale dress shushing round her with every step. Arthur tried to slow her by tugging her arm, but it was as futile as everything with Morgana. Her eyes lit on some invisible distance, unseeing, and his only choice was to follow and hope she didn't get them both killed.
It didn't help his temper that they were currently about a foot high, unless the halls of Camelot had grown dramatically in the past few minutes. Not that he put that beyond the realm of possibility. Damn sorcery. At least he was still taller than Morgana.
Light came from up ahead, golden light, and Arthur hoped they had finally found other people. Of course, as soon as they turned the corner they stumbled into the midst of nine candle-like creatures as tall as they were, flames spouting from their heads, brass arms stuck out in a menacing way.
Arthur shoved Morgana behind him and whipped out his eating dagger. That was it! He was going armed everywhere in the castle from now on - feasts, the privy, bed. Merlin would just have to deal with the state of the sheets.
"Arthur," Morgana said calmly, laying her hand on his shoulder. At least it wasn't his sword arm. He didn't trust her to have anything like common sense in this mood.
"Arthur."
He was used to ignoring her. No, dammit. He was used to pretending to ignore her.
"What, Morgana," he ground out. Not a question.
"They're not going to hurt us. Just look at them."
"I am." Three on the right, four on the left, another two coming straight at them. They had no clear faces, and their decorative handles had come free, waving like arms. There wasn't much of a gap in the closing circle, but their best chance for an escape was on the right, back down into the dark. The flagstones under his feet were more uneven than he remembered Camelot's being. Larger, too. They'd have to be careful not to fall in the dark.
How fast could those things run?
"See, they've stopped." Morgana smiled distantly, as if she were already thinking of something else.
He glared - at her, at them. "Because I have a knife," he explained, as if to a child or a simpleton. Or Merlin.
"Because they were never attacking to begin with," Morgana countered. Whatever. She could believe whatever she wanted; Arthur wasn't lowering his guard.
Then Morgana stepped out and curtsied to the things. She never did that! Visiting lords got a nod. Knights triumphing in tourney received the honor of kissing her hand while she looked on, bemused. Arthur himself got glares and a pokey finger in the chest. And now some magic-conjured nightmare received a half-curtsey? He'd better check her for fever once they got out of here.
"My lords." Morgana's voice rang like a bell. "I beg pardon for my companion. He did not recognize you."
A sputter like dampening flames, then a voice, sibilant and hissing. "Lady Morgana, no pardon is needed. We are ever your kindred." They shifted, peglegs clicking nervously. "We have never seen you on this side. Tonight is not a good time for beasts or man to be here."
"But I am a woman," Morgana said lightly, and the creatures hissed and sputtered. Arthur tightened his grip on the knife, but apparently that sound was approval or laughter, because the creature closest to them bowed, splashing hot wax on the floor at Morgana's feet.
"My lady, we have but a short time. What need brings you here?"
Morgana didn't hesitate. "A young woman and man who disappeared."
"Emrys." The creatures nodded, passing the name like a whisper back and forth among them. "Emrys, Emrys was here."
"Who is Emrys?" Arthur snapped. He mistrusted this cryptic talk and the way the creatures treated Morgana. They didn't know her at all.
"Emrysssss," the leader whispered, turning towards him, and Arthur saw with shock that it had something like eyes, sightless and pale in its melting visage. He swallowed hard. Without a mouth, the creature laughed. "Emrys is one whom you seek. The other, the girl, we have not seen."
Emrys. Merlin? Not possible. Merlin wasn't the sort of person to have two names. Carrying one was a full-time job for him. But still, it wouldn't do to ignore a trail.
Morgana stood taller. "Where is he now?"
"Far ahead," the front creature said sadly. "Are you certain you would not go back? We could help you. Would help you. Return."
Morgana shook her head. "We cannot go without them."
The creatures seemed to sigh all together, flames fluttering. "Very well. We will take you as far as the Hall, but we cannot enter. The rushes will not permit it."
Morgana nodded again, as regally as if she stood in the Throne Room. "We thank you."
Which was how Arthur found himself walking shoulder to shoulder with Morgana, warily flanked by nine clicking, skittering monsters who he now saw resembled nothing so much as creatures from a child's story, ordinary candles that normally remained lit until the last bell every evening and went unnoticed most of the time. Hard not to notice them now, walking and talking and magical.
"I hope you know what you're doing," he hissed to Morgana.
She smiled back at him, eyes still not quite focusing. "Oh, I do. Trust me."
Well. That was the question, wasn't it?
***
Shivering and stumbling through the dark, the glowing ball of his magic refusing to come, Merlin breathed through his mouth in sharp pants that sucked cold into his lungs. The world spun around him, half-familiar but pulled inside-out, the way dreams sometimes seemed more real than waking hours.
No, not dreams. One dream. The one that had returned over and over again for as long as he could remember: of a world turned backwards, where solid objects came to life and humans remained motionless like wooden dolls, their eyes glassy like the chambermaid he'd passed three halls ago. When he was small the dream had set him to shivering fear and delighted laughter by turns, waking up to cry out names he hadn't known back then but that now tasted familiar on his tongue.
But nothing had ever chased him in his dream. Darn that "magical variance" and "projector's uncertainty" and all the other stupid theories Gaius had taught him. There was a mop biting at his heels, and the nipping pain didn't feel like theory.
"I'm sorry!" Merlin yelped to his pursuers, but they didn't listen. He wasn't sure they had ears anyway. The apology was mostly reflex.
He half hoped that Gaius's protective charm would pop out from under his neckerchief and do something, since it was designed to help, but no. He had to make do with his own two feet and a few well-placed kicks. He didn't even regret sending that mop flying down the stairs. It was a terrible one anyway, stringy and old.
Escaping through the servant's door that was miraculously still there, he dodged the snapping mouth of a stone reptile that seemed mostly teeth and bad temper. Why would someone carve these things into their castle's walls? Kings were all mad. What if they came alive and started chasing people? People like Merlin?
He ran through the thickly falling snow and ducked the dive of a stone cherub, its round, infant face pulled into a grimace. What did I ever do to you? Merlin wondered. He had always like inanimate objects, liked the way they responded to his magic, the way they didn't make his life more complicated or lay down rules that were hard to understand and follow. Boots and brooms and good, sturdy buckets made better conversation partners than many humans. At least they listened.
Merlin was beginning to wonder if he should have listened in return.
Snowflakes nipped at his bare skin, but he was less worried about those than about the barking he could hear in the distance. The dog statues from the North Gardens. Of course. He knew he should have taken the one he experimented on back, instead of hiding it in Arthur's kennel.
Halfway across the courtyard at a dead run, his toe caught on a flagstone. He pinwheeled with his arms a moment, going down on one knee with a crack that sent pain shooting up his leg. "Ow, ow, fuck," he hissed, tears springing to the corner of his eyes, quickly blinked away. He scrambled back upright and limped forward across the courtyard, searching desperately with his eyes for some corner to hide in. Behind him, several boots clumped heavily down the steps, tongues flapping as they shouted his name.
Now he really wished he'd done a better job of polishing them yesterday, not least because Arthur would be furious when he couldn't find any pair but the ones on his feet right now. No hunting boots, no tourney boots, nothing but the foppish, half-useless things he wore to feasts. His feet would freeze.
Rather like Merlin would be doing now if it weren't for the cloak folding him in. Limping and pulling the thick layers tighter around his body, he stumbled through the portcullis and across the unguarded bridge.
Into the maze.
***
Light felt the same as darkness to Morgana, her eyes focused on something far beyond the flickering candle flames that encircled them. Dimly she noticed Arthur marching sullenly at her side now, no longer touching her even by accident. A preview of things to come, part of her thought sadly, once he stops blinding himself.
The rest of her ignored sentiment and focused like an spearhead on the goal. Every measured step was an act of defiance. Your future is wrong. If she could recall enough details, if she could place every step just so and say every word right, she could save them all. She had the mad thought for a moment that she could save the entire world if she merely had enough control, but then it receded in favor of more immediate concerns. Arthur. Gwen. Merlin. She must not be distracted.
The candles led them to a side door - as high as the city walls, from down here - which was blessedly open. She had no idea how they could have moved it in their shortened state. Still, she mistrusted good fortune and settled more deeply into her memories, seeing the Feast Hall beyond through her mind instead of her eyes.
There were tables: great, high things with shifting, restless trestles beneath. Benches sagged with the weight of unmoving human bodies, massive in their bulk, human and wooden legs thick as tree trunks where they pressed to the ground. The floor was strewn with quivering rushes, sharp and vicious, and things fell from the tables unexpectedly at times. They would have to stay close to the wall.
That had its own dangers, though, leaving them exposed to the good or ill will of anything inside. She could remember ordering hundreds of items into the Hall over the course of the last three days. Now any one of them might bear a grudge and take it out on them as they tried to pass.
A not-memory flooded her again, of Arthur bleeding, his eyes slipping shut. She jerked herself more upright, firmer. She would not permit that.
"We must leave you here," the candles sizzled, already a handspan shorter than when they'd begun the short journey. Morgana could see the trails of hot wax leading back down the hallway through which they came, and she felt a pang of pity and remorse.
"I am sorry for shortening your lives," she said sincerely.
They laughed with their melting mouths. "Better to live a few hours in flame than a lifetime without warmth, my Lady," said the shortest. It reached out with its brass arm, touching the back of her hand. "Go in peace with our brethren, if you can."
Oh, she wished it. "Goodbye."
***
The rushlight in Gwen's hand murmured on and on, a constant stream of nonsensical commentary on the nature of water and fire and air, its childhood by the river, the smooth fins of fish and the rough scrape of cut stone. She had found it abandoned on a staircase, dropped and doused, and had lit it again with a blink of her eyes and the memory of her father's forge burning in her mind.
That she could do this - it made her belly tremble with fear. What else could she do? What might she do by accident, not realizing she was calling on a power that was never hers before?
To distract herself she listened to the rush with half an ear and kept one eye on the tapestries in these upper hallways. The figures in them were now moving as if in a mummer's play, acting out scenes of Camelot's ancient history. The figures stayed in the cloth - mostly. The one or two who reached for her were easy enough to dodge or threaten with her sword.
Merlin. Focus on Merlin. Had he come this way? She couldn't tell.
She had tried using the windows early on, but one bit of glass and the next showed completely different scenes, fragments like a parti-colored mirror, dizzying to look at. In one she'd caught a brief glimpse of Prince Arthur and Morgana battling something, blood streaming from a long cut on Arthur's face, but the moment her fingers touched the pane the scene changed, became the laughing face of a boy with a fuzzy brown cap and fey features.
She had stopped looking after that. Listening to her own footfalls was far more productive, their rhythm soothing. Step-shuffle, step-shuffle, step-
Those were not her footsteps. She stopped, but the shuffling continued. Gwen held her breath, clutching the rushlight so hard it squeaked. Fear tingled along her arms and legs, leaving her knees weak, her breath coming in short pants. There was nowhere to hide in this passage except behind the third tapestry on the left, and she didn't want to go near that one. The woman in it had been drowning since before Gwen was born, her hair a tangle of fading green, her eyes bright with misery and malice. Gwen had always been terrified of that one.
The shuffling came closer, so Gwen turned to meet it, watching the dark place where the passage bent sharply around a tower that wasn't there in her world. Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle. She only realized she was holding her breath when her chest began to ache. In a burst the air flew out of her mouth, loud in the near-silence.
The shuffling paused. Sweat prickled Gwen's palms, and then a voice called, "Hello? Is someone there?"
Familiarity blossomed in her belly, relief and startlement in equal measure. "Hunith?"
Merlin's mother peeked around the corner, a pale rushlight in her left hand, a full bowl in her right. "Guinevere? Oh, good. I was looking for you."
"Me?" Surely she meant Merlin?
Hunith came forward, shadows leaping through the hall as the flame wavered in her hand. Pale liquid sloshed gently at the edges of the bowl. Looking up, she seemed to pierce Gwen with her eyes. "You're looking for my son."
"I am," Gwen admitted, "but I fear I can't find him."
Hunith's face lit with satisfaction. "That, I can help you with. Here, take this." She waited for Gwen to slide her sword through her apron ties as though they were a belt like the men wore, and then Hunith held out the bowl, easing it into Gwen's grasp. It smelled like goat's milk gone slightly sour, and there was something floating on top.
"It's a needle," Hunith said before she could ask. "Threaded with a hair from Merlin's head that I managed to yank today. He made quite a fuss over it."
Gwen didn't want to laugh, but she didn't have a free hand to cover her mouth, either. She ended up snorting in a terribly rude way, imagining Merlin whingeing as he held his head and asked why his mother had to go and pluck out a hair from his head, probably without warning. Oh, Merlin. Her chest warmed.
The needle turned gently, spin, spin, settle, pointing out the nearest window.
"It's a bit of a lodestone," Hunith explained. "A Merlin-tracking one. I had a feeling we'd need it."
Gwen eased her way over to the window, trying not to spill. This time when she looked out, the scenes were all the same, an image of the courtyard. Three brooms and a misshapen bucket were swish-hobbling towards the gate, chasing after a shadow with too many elbows and knees.
"He's gone into the Lower Town, but the shape of it doesn't look right." Gwen said.
"The shape of the town?"
"Yes." She studied it a moment, trying to tease out the difference. "Things are misplaced. It looks more like - it looks like a labyrinth made out of houses."
Hunith sighed. "Then you'd best hurry."
Gwen spun round, almost upending the milk. "Aren't you coming?"
Hunith shook her head. "Someone must hold the door open if you're to return at all. It's too heavy for Gaius alone."
Magic, Gwen thought, and was disturbed by her own lack of surprise. After all, one didn't leave out salt to keep the mice away. But one also didn't openly admit to having power that could get one killed. She tried not to see Hunith differently - Gaius too. Tried to think of the bowl in her hands as belonging to a different class of magic, the kind performed by every farrier in the land, every tanner, every fishwife. The tiny rituals that hid under the cloak of superstition, protected by custom. If the King wanted to execute everyone who left a bowl of milk out on the stoop, he'd be slaughtering half the town. Even Uther had never gone so far.
Hunith was in a different class, though, and her risk was so much greater.
"We'll be fast," Gwen promised her. They had to be.
"Just return before dawn, and remember how Aly the Miller's daughter crossed the sea in seven steps. I know your father told you that one." Hunith reached out to squeeze her shoulder once, and then leaned in to brush a kiss across her temple. "Luck, little Gwen. Your mother would be proud."
Gwen's eyes stung as Hunith turned and disappeared back around the corner, but she blinked the tears fiercely away. Time enough for that after she brought Merlin home.
***
Merlin's new cloak snapped out behind him as he walked, the sound of it all but swallowed up in the moaning wind, the sharp mutter of swirling snow. His feet ached and his ears were cold and the iron clasp burned against his chest like a brand. He had no idea where he was going or why, but his feet continued to move automatically. Ice crunched loudly under his boots.
At first the lower town seemed to be laid out haphazardly. The houses were unfamiliar and gray, their windows lacking the light and warmth they should have held at midwinter. Sometimes he would notice a detail here or there that would look familiar, but inevitably as he drew closer and the angle changed he would see through the illusion.
There were self-moving objects out and about, but unlike the ones at the castle none seemed to be in a foul mood. A cart trundled by under its own power. Merlin stood aside to let it pass, blinking as the straw in the back waved at him, sending bits of snow flying. Further on, signs for unfamiliar shops called out to him, but none of the buildings themselves looked inviting. This was not his Camelot.
He caught sight of a sleek gray tomcat making its way down an alley towards him, all saunter and nosetwitch and paws placed like a dancer. He stopped to smile - this was someone he recognized, finally, the cat who slept in the forge two or three times a week. It spared him only the briefest of glances before loping down the street, and his smile faded as it seemed about to turn the corner.
Then it looked back at him, eyes flashing bright in the darkness, and Merlin froze mid-step.
After a moment, he took a deep breath and put his foot down, then the next, and then he was walking slowly towards the cat, carefully maintaining eye contact but trying not to look menacing. When he was only a few steps away, it suddenly turned tail and ran down a side street. Merlin sighed in disappointment.
But again it stopped some distance away and looked back, and again Merlin walked carefully towards it.
It became a game after that, the cat running and waiting, Merlin walking carefully behind, snow falling thickly between them all the while. Sometimes Merlin looked back and saw that his footprints had all but disappeared, even only a few dozen steps back. Sometimes he also thought he saw a house or a wall move, but each time he told himself it was just the distracting motion of the wind and snow.
Finally, through the flurries he spotted a house that looked half-familiar. Surely, with those green shutters and the empty flower boxes at the corners, this had to be Milly the seamstress's home? He could get out of the snow and thank her for the cloak at the same time.
Ignoring the impatient cat but a few feet away from him, Merlin reached for the door handle.
There wasn't one, but the door swung open at his touch anyway, offering a deep, dark space that looked nothing like Milly's cheery, well-lit home. No voices from her three younger brothers, laughing at Merlin and pulling on his ears. No smell of stew simmering over the fire and indulgent smile from Milly's grandmother as she stirred. Only a kind of oily grayness, too dark to see through but too light to be natural night. Slowly it pulled him in.
Merlin struggled, leaning back and ordering his feet to flee, his magic to rise and free him. Nothing. His boots skidded through the snow as he was yanked forward, the left one catching on the doorframe and popping a buckle from the force. With a low whine he scrabbled at the outside walls, fingernails catching on the splinters. The gray was everywhere, like the smoke of a greasy fire, reaching out to grab him.
Bang! Something exploded in Merlin's face, fine powder dusting everywhere, getting in his eyes and nose and making them both water. But the grip of the house loosened somehow, allowing him to spring free.
Merlin stumbled back and ran like the Hunt itself was after him, slipping and scrambling until he breathed in great, helpless gasps and his legs wobbled and gave out, dropping him in the middle of an empty, snow-filled street.
Alone.
***
Arthur found himself distracted on all sides by the bizarre pageantry of the Hall: the brightly dancing candles that dripped wax the same way the tables dripped bits and leavings of food, all of it splatting in joyful abandon on the floor they were trying to walk across. A crumhorn and its companions melodically bugled hello at them with no sense of proper respect (reminding him of - well, no use thinking about that). But most disturbing of all was the forest of unmoving human legs, standing and sitting all over the room. He tried not to let his eyes wander higher to the hands like wax, the faces carved from stone. His father was somewhere in here.
Except he couldn't believe that. This place could not be real, he decided. Morgana walked as if in a smug daze, sidestepping messes and easily dodging the more enthusiastic greetings offered to them. Her eyes shone bright and empty, leaving him to shiver in their wake. Surely if this were real, Morgana would needle him, goad him into saving Merlin and her handmaiden. Instead, she seemed not to care whether he walked by her side or abandoned her entirely. Wrong, so completely wrong he couldn't even put words to it.
So he was distracted, then, when the first ominous rustle began. Distracted still when the sound changed to steady muttering, and only the sudden, sharp clack of split hooves on stone brought him up.
And up. And up.
Even from across the room, the boar subtlety was no longer simply large, tall as a man's heart with tusks perfectly placed to gore the unprotected belly of hunter or horse. Now the beast stood five times Arthur's height, and the hooves themselves threatened to crush them with a single step. On its cooked back rode a wooden knight with a helmet for a face, a lance three times Arthur's current height gripped in his fist. The back right haunch of the beast stood empty like a gaping wound, the bone click-clicking over itself as it moved, and that gave the boar its only obvious weakness, the slightest of limps.
All over the room creatures out of dream or nightmare shuffled, voices dying down as they eased towards safety.
"Morgana," Arthur whispered, and "Morgana!" when she remained oblivious.
"Hm? Arthur?" she wondered aloud, as if surfacing from a deep sleep.
"Run," Arthur told her quietly, trying not to alert the beast. It turned its head and snuffled anyway, tiny, near-sighted eyes fresh as its baked skin was not. The cook must have saved them to put back in after roasting. Arthur felt sick.
Morgana smiled at him, her lips thin and precise. "No, we should wait for-"
The knight heard her. His faceless, wooden head swiveled round, tracking her voice. A moment later his hand moved, and then the boar was turning, snorting, melted fat dribbling obscenely down its sharp tusks.
Arthur had a sudden image of himself as a hunting courser, how he might dodge and snap at its heels if he had four legs to run faster than his own weak two. He thought this as he reached out and caught Morgana's cold hand in his, turned them both with a painful slowness, as if they were moving through treacle, and pulled.
"Arth-"
"Run." This time his voice brooked no arguments. Lifting her skirt in her other hand, her eyes finally shocked almost present, she complied.
They took off, leaping over piles of skittering rushes that also tried to dodge the oncoming boar, though haphazardly and with less success. He could hear the crackling of the unlucky behind him as they were crushed under the sharp hooves. Weaving between trestle and human legs alike, he tried to create a barrier of solid objects behind them, but the boar crashed through several of these and dodged around the rest. Arthur wondered briefly if anything that happened in this world affected the real Camelot. He hoped not.
The beast was coming faster now, and they were not nearly close enough to the stocking entrance, where a narrow set of stairs lead straight up to the courtyard. The stairs themselves might prove a challenge for its hooves, but before reaching it they would have to cross an open space where the musicians had played before taking their break. Arthur's instincts rebelled at the lack of cover, but they had little choice.
Behind them, gouts of steaming breath sent sharp rushes flying every which way. One sailed past their heads, scoring Arthur on the cheek and leaving a slice that bled freely. He bit his lip to hold the curses in. Better to save his breath for running.
"Arthur!" Morgana gasped, so he tugged her harder. Shut up, he meant. She seemed to grasp the point.
The thing was breathing down their necks now, slavering, its wicked tusks and the knight's sharp lance almost upon them. With desperate strength Arthur grabbed Morgana under the arms and all but threw her to the left, behind a pile of happily lounging dogs. Sorry, he thought at them; the small bitch on the left was the runt he'd let sleep in his bed when she was small. But she wasn't Morgana, so he didn't hesitate to use the poor hound as cover.
Then he dodged to the right, rolled over his shoulder, and came up with a rush in his hands, sharp, hollow, and quivering like a wild bird.
Bellowing, he charged the boar's side, trying to distract it from Morgana. He breached its defenses for a jab or two at first while it was still startled, but then the knight turned his pale, wooden face towards him and lifted his lance.
After that Arthur was the one on the defensive, giving ground as the boar charged in fits and spurts, now to his left, now his right, steered by the knight's knees. The boar slashed its way through his defenses, breaking his first rush and forcing him to grab another. In retaliation, he threw the second one into its drying, meaty flank, where it stuck deep like a shuddering arrow but seemed not to slow the creature at all.
Bugger.
He tried to wedge the next rush under the knight's leg to flip him off, even though he was three times Arthur's size and heavy wood to boot. The rush splintered like a cheap lance, useless. The knight's own lance cut a retaliatory swath right where Arthur's head would have been had he not danced back out of range. It was thicker than Arthur's arm and made of heavy wood, and he felt the breeze of its passing like a warning.
So distracted was he by the lance that he didn't even see the great head of the beast whip around until its stinking breath was already washing over him. Flinging up his right arm to protect his face, he felt the sharp tusk catch and gouge deep.
"Arthur!"
He dropped to the ground like a hamstrung horse, left hand clamping over the wound to slow the bleeding. Even as he rolled clumsily out of the way, he knew nothing he could do from a distance would stop this thing.
Grimacing, he checked that his eating dagger was still in his belt and assessed the rough flagstones between him and his enemy. Satisfied, he charged.
It was mad, but then, he was half convinced this wasn't even real, that even if the creature stepped on him and snapped him in half like so much dry kindling, he would only wake in his bed with a pounding headache and the sun too bright outside, Merlin puttering about and whistling off-key while he laid out Arthur's clothes. In that moment the image overwhelmed the pain in his arm, the taste of blood still trickling down his face, the slip of his useless boots against the stone underfoot.
He reached the beast's side before it or the knight could react. Keeping his eyes focused and clear, he gathered all his strength.
And leaped.
***
Merlin sat panting on the ground, snow dampening his trousers as he tried desperately to catch his breath and slow his frantic heartbeat. Only once his vision cleared a bit did he notice the leather cord hanging empty around his neck. Gaius's herb pouch, gone. He stopped and looked around, not sure where he'd lost it but knowing he wouldn't find it again.
The cat was also nowhere to be seen. Merlin swallowed a surge of regret.
Climbing creakily to his feet, he failed once more to conjure a light, and so had only sickle moon and the strange, unmoving stars above to guide his way. And he didn't trust those.
He feared the crowding houses now, wanted to set fire to them, burn them back and make a path. But what was the use when he had no clear idea where he was going? All he had were his legs, which began stumbling forward again as if they didn't know how to stop.
He had never felt so lost before. Not even on his way to Camelot for the first time, quiet nights by a campfire, listening to the nocturnal animals and the wind in the trees. That had been a real wind, now hard, now soft, with no possibility of voices tangled in it. Now he listened, breath heaving, for even a hint of someone calling after him.
Nothing, not even the talking signs from before. He was truly alone, in the dark, in a strange land.
That thought squeezed his chest and forced a sour lump into his throat. He brushed he heel of his hand across the corner of each eyelid, wiping away any moisture there. They were stinging in the wind, that was all. The cloak around him no longer felt warm, harsh gusts rifling through it the way a thief might rummage through his pockets.
His pockets? Oh, pockets.
He stuffed his cold hands down inside, a brief warm respite, and fingered the little things still jumbled there. Bits of string. A goose feather, worse for the wear. The yew cones. A candle stub from Arthur's room.
Pulling out the nearly flattened stub, he cradled it in both hands like a supplicant, hard tallow and crisp, blackened wick. It was beautiful.
His feet stopped of their own volition. The wind kept howling, but he hardly noticed it tugging at him. All his attention was on the candle, the wick, the thought of warmth and light and home. When he stayed out late back in Ealdor, his mother used to leave a candle burning on the table by the window, it's yellow light liming the shutters bright enough to show him the way back. He wondered if she had one burning in Gaius's window now.
Taking a deep breath, he murmured a desperate word once, twice, three times. His eyes were screwed shut, everything focused on that one point. The world seemed to pause and hold its breath, even the wind dying down briefly in anticipation.
Nothing. He said the words again, more frantic, and then again. Still nothing. His magic was like a flame that had gone out. He could feel where it had been, but already it was more a memory than any lingering quiver of power. His fingers shook, bare and chill without his mother's bedraggled gloves to protect them. First he'd tumbled into this place alone, and now even his magic, his lifelong companion, had abandoned him.
Angrily, he stuffed the candlestub back in his pocket, only just refraining from throwing it because his mother wouldn't approve of the waste.
Feet heavier, knees wobbling, Merlin stumbled deeper into the labyrinth, not even looking up to notice how it closed in silently behind him, how it deftly turned him no matter which way he tried to go. It didn't matter that the East Gate loomed ahead, open and unguarded for the first time since he'd walked through it last spring. His feet scuffed the ice-covered earth as he trudged through, slower now, less caring if something caught up to him. At least then he wouldn't be alone.
As soon as he passed, the great wooden gates creaked on their hinges and slammed shut with a sound like a thunderclap.
Part Three
Author: Anonymous
Recipient: yue_ix
Pairing(s): Arthur/Gwen/Merlin/Morgana (vaguely shippy), Hunith, Will, Gaius, various
Warnings: Some violence, some disturbing imagery
Spoilers: Season 1 only
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 26,000
Summary: Merlin's birthday is tomorrow, and so is the midwinter feast. But it will take more than a new cloak to get him through the longest night of the year, when the cracks in the world briefly widen and all manner of things slip through.
Author's Note:See part 1.
Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction - none of this ever happened. No copyright infringement is intended. No profit is made from this work. Please observe your local laws with regards to the age-limit and content of this work.
Part One
Gwen darted through the half-lit passages, knocking on each door she came across.
"Merlin? Merlin!"
But there was no reply.
Moonlight peeked in through windows here and there, but it left a hard darkness between. She kept the fingers of one hand lightly brushing the wall as she moved; with the other hand she held up her skirt to keep from tripping. Whenever she reached a fork she agonized for a moment, then stepped decisively one way or the other.
She would return. When she hit a dead end, she would turn around and come back. Except she never did find an end. The hallways just kept going, sometimes familiar, sometimes not, curving in on one another until she wondered if she were running in circles. Fear clenched her heart at the thought, for Merlin and for herself.
Where could he be?
She took to opening the unlocked doors and peering inside, just to make sure.
"Hello?" she called into each, her voice wobbling. "Is anyone there?"
She came across a door on her left that was unlocked but stuck. Bracing her shoulder against it, she pushed until she spilled through it bodily, stumbling over objects half in shadow. "Merlin?" Something was moving in the corner. She hoped it was either Merlin or one of the half-feral cats that wandered the lower halls. Not... those other things. Things she'd seen only in glimpses from the corners of her eyes as she ran.
"Merlin?" She moved deeper into the room, hands shaking. He could be hurt or scared. She mustn't let fear-
"Not in here, deary," said a cheerful voice, creaky as old bones.
The door slammed shut.
Gwen whirled, heart in her throat. The only light came from beneath the door and from a sliver of moon through the window. Gwen turned until the window was at her back, the voice in front of her. Slowly, carefully, she reached up and pulled out a hairpin, letting her curls tumble free. Clutching the pin in her fist like a weapon, she took a deep breath. "Who are you?"
"No one of any importance, luv," said the voice again, open and kind. Across the room, a trestle moved, but Gwen couldn't see anyone pushing it. The voice was coming from that direction, though.
"That's something we have in common, isn't it, sweets? Not important, left in storage until we rot or get chopped up for firewood, whichever comes first."
"You," Gwen gasped, staring at the trestle again. It had moved into the moonlight, and now she could see a face etched into the wood of one side, like a pattern of tree rings but with depth, leaning out of the wood. A long face, wrinkled, with a long beard that trailed back into the wood.
The face was moving, smiling at her.
Gwen sat down, breathing hard. This was - she'd never seen magic like this. She'd never heard of magic like this. Not even in the darker corners of the lower town, where the King's reach was not so long as he thought. Talking trestles in his storage room? No. She shook her head, trying to clear the sight, but it refused to go.
"That's better," said the trestle, every wrinkle shifting as it spoke. "Your loyalty is very becoming, you know. But the likes of you and I, we really can't get involved in these things. Sit and wait, that's what I say."
Gwen swallowed the lump in her throat. "Do you know where Merlin is?"
"Skinny boy, big ears, runs like a three-day-old colt? Went by at a canter some time ago."
Gwen surged to her feet, wobbly but determined. "Which way?"
"Now, now, dearie. Didn't I just say you can't get involved? Why, however can you help that boy? You'll just get yourself hurt and slow him down." It's face changed, became softer. "No one comes in here, or at least no one who can avoid it. We'll keep you safe."
Behind the trestle, several pots with cracked basins and broken handles nodded, and a broom with almost no straw creaked agreement. Gwen stared at them, thinking the forgotten. Her father would not have permitted this, this waste. When things wore out, they must be refashioned into new things, usable things. It was the way of life. Her palms itched, fingers eager to set to work.
But Merlin.
"I can't," she whispered, hand tightening on the hairpin. "I can't leave him."
"But what can you do?" asked an iron kettle, voice deep and hollow. "Are you a third son who sits by the fire all day and looks like an idiot?"
"Seventh daughter of a seventh daughter?" suggested a coil of fraying rope.
"Do you turn into a crow at night and fly to the moon? Know the secret for unraveling riddles? Live under the hill with the Elders one night a year and dance until dawn, your feet bare on the silver grass?" a sagging spinning wheel sang, rolling its wheel.
"Are you secretly a princess?" the trestle asked carefully, eyeing her as if it thought that might be a possibility. Its long legs scuffed against the stone floor.
"No," she said. "I'm the daughter of Thomas the blacksmith and Gwynhyfar the midwife, both gone. And I haven't got any secrets at all."
All noise stopped. The wheel shuddered, the broom stood stiff, and the trestle, after a long moment, hobbled forward to peer up at her. "An orphan and an honest woman?" it asked quietly. "Show me your hands, daughter of a blacksmith and a midwife."
Gwen held them out, palms up, pin still clutched in the fingers of the right. The trestle peered closely for a long moment, then it settled back and sighed, its long face troubled. "She speaks the truth."
A sigh rippled around the room, a sound Gwen didn't understand. She looked down at her hands, trying to see past the calluses and the grime under her nails that she hadn't had time to clean after working at the forge this afternoon. They were hands - serviceable, nothing else. She wiggled her thumbs, watching the joints bend and the skin wrinkle.
"I don't understand." She looked up at the trestle. "What's so special about them?"
"Take that pin," the trestle told her, its face deep with sorrow and hope at once, "and run your hands along it while thinking of a sword."
Gwen squinted at the hairpin, then at the trestle, but the thought of Merlin spurred her on. He was out there somewhere, running. A sword would be very useful right now.
The pin was old, one her father had made for her when she was ten, a year before she went into Lady Morgana's service. She ran her fingers along it and thought, my father also made swords. Some of the best swords in all of Albion. Closing her eyes, she imagined the one she gave to Merlin to save Arthur's life. It had disappeared after that, but Merlin had come back with payment for it, somehow. Gwen had told her father the prince bought it, and he had smiled with pride. But still, she missed that sword.
In her hands the hairpin vibrated, growing warm. She resisted the urge to open her eyes, instead focusing on the grip shaped like this, the hilt this long, with a crosspiece here, the blade balanced just so...
For a moment the heat in her hands was unbearable, like she'd grasped a piece of still-glowing iron. She gave a cry, but the moment she opened her eyes the heat was gone. There lay her hands, unblemished, beneath the winking blade of a sword that might have been twin to the one her father made last spring.
"How?" she asked, looking up.
The trestle turned away, but one of the pots spoke up, lisping between the cracks in its lid. "A midwife's hands for birth and death and beginnings, a blacksmith's for changes. Blood and fire on you."
"Blood and fire," the others murmured, agreeing.
"You're on the other side now," the trestle told her, face still turned away, "in our world. But you bring with you what you are. Everything is more truthful here. Lies will not avail you. But belief and what you hold dear - those may save you.
"Go," it whispered, voice cracked. "Your friend went to the right, but he will find himself outside the castle soon enough. Then he'll need you. Go to the left and take the first stairs up, then follow the passage to its end."
"Thank you." Gwen laid her hand gently on its back. "Would you like me to-"
"No," it said, laughing harshly. "I don't want to spend another ten years holding up heavy feast tables. This is my reward."
"No." Gwen shook her head. That wasn't right. It should-
"Close your eyes," she told it, and then she did the same. Thinking of how Morgana would love a beautiful end table with dark, ornate wood, simple but elegant. How she would love to set a vase of flowers on top, their light color setting off the wood just right. Thinking of four curved legs and a flat, smooth top.
When she opened her eyes, a face was peering up at her out of that flat top, but it was a different face. Neither old nor young but something infinitely in between.
"When you change things," the no-longer-trestle whispered, "you must take responsibility for it."
"When someone helps you," Gwen countered, "don't you owe them help in return?"
The now-a-table smiled, but it was a sharper expression, less kind without the welcoming wrinkles from before. "Sometimes a thanks is enough."
"Thank you," Gwen said, like an apology. She should have asked.
But, "And to you," it whispered, face gentling again. "Goodspeed, Lady Guinevere."
She gave it a strange look, but then the kettle cried, "What about me?" And the spinning wheel sang, "No, me, me!" Gwen saw them start to move and realized her freedom might be short-lived indeed if she didn't escape quickly.
"I'll be back!" she cried, ducking to the door and yanking on the handle. It was the kind of promise you threw out without considering, but the moment the words hung in the air, she knew she'd be held to them. "I will!"
The door sprang open and she leaped into the hall, blindingly bright after the darkness of the storeroom. She stood a moment, poised with indecision, and then turned resolutely left, as the trestle had told her.
In the wake of her passage, one shadow separated from the rest and followed.
***
Like a whisper Morgana moved through the darkness, her pale dress shushing round her with every step. Arthur tried to slow her by tugging her arm, but it was as futile as everything with Morgana. Her eyes lit on some invisible distance, unseeing, and his only choice was to follow and hope she didn't get them both killed.
It didn't help his temper that they were currently about a foot high, unless the halls of Camelot had grown dramatically in the past few minutes. Not that he put that beyond the realm of possibility. Damn sorcery. At least he was still taller than Morgana.
Light came from up ahead, golden light, and Arthur hoped they had finally found other people. Of course, as soon as they turned the corner they stumbled into the midst of nine candle-like creatures as tall as they were, flames spouting from their heads, brass arms stuck out in a menacing way.
Arthur shoved Morgana behind him and whipped out his eating dagger. That was it! He was going armed everywhere in the castle from now on - feasts, the privy, bed. Merlin would just have to deal with the state of the sheets.
"Arthur," Morgana said calmly, laying her hand on his shoulder. At least it wasn't his sword arm. He didn't trust her to have anything like common sense in this mood.
"Arthur."
He was used to ignoring her. No, dammit. He was used to pretending to ignore her.
"What, Morgana," he ground out. Not a question.
"They're not going to hurt us. Just look at them."
"I am." Three on the right, four on the left, another two coming straight at them. They had no clear faces, and their decorative handles had come free, waving like arms. There wasn't much of a gap in the closing circle, but their best chance for an escape was on the right, back down into the dark. The flagstones under his feet were more uneven than he remembered Camelot's being. Larger, too. They'd have to be careful not to fall in the dark.
How fast could those things run?
"See, they've stopped." Morgana smiled distantly, as if she were already thinking of something else.
He glared - at her, at them. "Because I have a knife," he explained, as if to a child or a simpleton. Or Merlin.
"Because they were never attacking to begin with," Morgana countered. Whatever. She could believe whatever she wanted; Arthur wasn't lowering his guard.
Then Morgana stepped out and curtsied to the things. She never did that! Visiting lords got a nod. Knights triumphing in tourney received the honor of kissing her hand while she looked on, bemused. Arthur himself got glares and a pokey finger in the chest. And now some magic-conjured nightmare received a half-curtsey? He'd better check her for fever once they got out of here.
"My lords." Morgana's voice rang like a bell. "I beg pardon for my companion. He did not recognize you."
A sputter like dampening flames, then a voice, sibilant and hissing. "Lady Morgana, no pardon is needed. We are ever your kindred." They shifted, peglegs clicking nervously. "We have never seen you on this side. Tonight is not a good time for beasts or man to be here."
"But I am a woman," Morgana said lightly, and the creatures hissed and sputtered. Arthur tightened his grip on the knife, but apparently that sound was approval or laughter, because the creature closest to them bowed, splashing hot wax on the floor at Morgana's feet.
"My lady, we have but a short time. What need brings you here?"
Morgana didn't hesitate. "A young woman and man who disappeared."
"Emrys." The creatures nodded, passing the name like a whisper back and forth among them. "Emrys, Emrys was here."
"Who is Emrys?" Arthur snapped. He mistrusted this cryptic talk and the way the creatures treated Morgana. They didn't know her at all.
"Emrysssss," the leader whispered, turning towards him, and Arthur saw with shock that it had something like eyes, sightless and pale in its melting visage. He swallowed hard. Without a mouth, the creature laughed. "Emrys is one whom you seek. The other, the girl, we have not seen."
Emrys. Merlin? Not possible. Merlin wasn't the sort of person to have two names. Carrying one was a full-time job for him. But still, it wouldn't do to ignore a trail.
Morgana stood taller. "Where is he now?"
"Far ahead," the front creature said sadly. "Are you certain you would not go back? We could help you. Would help you. Return."
Morgana shook her head. "We cannot go without them."
The creatures seemed to sigh all together, flames fluttering. "Very well. We will take you as far as the Hall, but we cannot enter. The rushes will not permit it."
Morgana nodded again, as regally as if she stood in the Throne Room. "We thank you."
Which was how Arthur found himself walking shoulder to shoulder with Morgana, warily flanked by nine clicking, skittering monsters who he now saw resembled nothing so much as creatures from a child's story, ordinary candles that normally remained lit until the last bell every evening and went unnoticed most of the time. Hard not to notice them now, walking and talking and magical.
"I hope you know what you're doing," he hissed to Morgana.
She smiled back at him, eyes still not quite focusing. "Oh, I do. Trust me."
Well. That was the question, wasn't it?
***
Shivering and stumbling through the dark, the glowing ball of his magic refusing to come, Merlin breathed through his mouth in sharp pants that sucked cold into his lungs. The world spun around him, half-familiar but pulled inside-out, the way dreams sometimes seemed more real than waking hours.
No, not dreams. One dream. The one that had returned over and over again for as long as he could remember: of a world turned backwards, where solid objects came to life and humans remained motionless like wooden dolls, their eyes glassy like the chambermaid he'd passed three halls ago. When he was small the dream had set him to shivering fear and delighted laughter by turns, waking up to cry out names he hadn't known back then but that now tasted familiar on his tongue.
But nothing had ever chased him in his dream. Darn that "magical variance" and "projector's uncertainty" and all the other stupid theories Gaius had taught him. There was a mop biting at his heels, and the nipping pain didn't feel like theory.
"I'm sorry!" Merlin yelped to his pursuers, but they didn't listen. He wasn't sure they had ears anyway. The apology was mostly reflex.
He half hoped that Gaius's protective charm would pop out from under his neckerchief and do something, since it was designed to help, but no. He had to make do with his own two feet and a few well-placed kicks. He didn't even regret sending that mop flying down the stairs. It was a terrible one anyway, stringy and old.
Escaping through the servant's door that was miraculously still there, he dodged the snapping mouth of a stone reptile that seemed mostly teeth and bad temper. Why would someone carve these things into their castle's walls? Kings were all mad. What if they came alive and started chasing people? People like Merlin?
He ran through the thickly falling snow and ducked the dive of a stone cherub, its round, infant face pulled into a grimace. What did I ever do to you? Merlin wondered. He had always like inanimate objects, liked the way they responded to his magic, the way they didn't make his life more complicated or lay down rules that were hard to understand and follow. Boots and brooms and good, sturdy buckets made better conversation partners than many humans. At least they listened.
Merlin was beginning to wonder if he should have listened in return.
Snowflakes nipped at his bare skin, but he was less worried about those than about the barking he could hear in the distance. The dog statues from the North Gardens. Of course. He knew he should have taken the one he experimented on back, instead of hiding it in Arthur's kennel.
Halfway across the courtyard at a dead run, his toe caught on a flagstone. He pinwheeled with his arms a moment, going down on one knee with a crack that sent pain shooting up his leg. "Ow, ow, fuck," he hissed, tears springing to the corner of his eyes, quickly blinked away. He scrambled back upright and limped forward across the courtyard, searching desperately with his eyes for some corner to hide in. Behind him, several boots clumped heavily down the steps, tongues flapping as they shouted his name.
Now he really wished he'd done a better job of polishing them yesterday, not least because Arthur would be furious when he couldn't find any pair but the ones on his feet right now. No hunting boots, no tourney boots, nothing but the foppish, half-useless things he wore to feasts. His feet would freeze.
Rather like Merlin would be doing now if it weren't for the cloak folding him in. Limping and pulling the thick layers tighter around his body, he stumbled through the portcullis and across the unguarded bridge.
Into the maze.
***
Light felt the same as darkness to Morgana, her eyes focused on something far beyond the flickering candle flames that encircled them. Dimly she noticed Arthur marching sullenly at her side now, no longer touching her even by accident. A preview of things to come, part of her thought sadly, once he stops blinding himself.
The rest of her ignored sentiment and focused like an spearhead on the goal. Every measured step was an act of defiance. Your future is wrong. If she could recall enough details, if she could place every step just so and say every word right, she could save them all. She had the mad thought for a moment that she could save the entire world if she merely had enough control, but then it receded in favor of more immediate concerns. Arthur. Gwen. Merlin. She must not be distracted.
The candles led them to a side door - as high as the city walls, from down here - which was blessedly open. She had no idea how they could have moved it in their shortened state. Still, she mistrusted good fortune and settled more deeply into her memories, seeing the Feast Hall beyond through her mind instead of her eyes.
There were tables: great, high things with shifting, restless trestles beneath. Benches sagged with the weight of unmoving human bodies, massive in their bulk, human and wooden legs thick as tree trunks where they pressed to the ground. The floor was strewn with quivering rushes, sharp and vicious, and things fell from the tables unexpectedly at times. They would have to stay close to the wall.
That had its own dangers, though, leaving them exposed to the good or ill will of anything inside. She could remember ordering hundreds of items into the Hall over the course of the last three days. Now any one of them might bear a grudge and take it out on them as they tried to pass.
A not-memory flooded her again, of Arthur bleeding, his eyes slipping shut. She jerked herself more upright, firmer. She would not permit that.
"We must leave you here," the candles sizzled, already a handspan shorter than when they'd begun the short journey. Morgana could see the trails of hot wax leading back down the hallway through which they came, and she felt a pang of pity and remorse.
"I am sorry for shortening your lives," she said sincerely.
They laughed with their melting mouths. "Better to live a few hours in flame than a lifetime without warmth, my Lady," said the shortest. It reached out with its brass arm, touching the back of her hand. "Go in peace with our brethren, if you can."
Oh, she wished it. "Goodbye."
***
The rushlight in Gwen's hand murmured on and on, a constant stream of nonsensical commentary on the nature of water and fire and air, its childhood by the river, the smooth fins of fish and the rough scrape of cut stone. She had found it abandoned on a staircase, dropped and doused, and had lit it again with a blink of her eyes and the memory of her father's forge burning in her mind.
That she could do this - it made her belly tremble with fear. What else could she do? What might she do by accident, not realizing she was calling on a power that was never hers before?
To distract herself she listened to the rush with half an ear and kept one eye on the tapestries in these upper hallways. The figures in them were now moving as if in a mummer's play, acting out scenes of Camelot's ancient history. The figures stayed in the cloth - mostly. The one or two who reached for her were easy enough to dodge or threaten with her sword.
Merlin. Focus on Merlin. Had he come this way? She couldn't tell.
She had tried using the windows early on, but one bit of glass and the next showed completely different scenes, fragments like a parti-colored mirror, dizzying to look at. In one she'd caught a brief glimpse of Prince Arthur and Morgana battling something, blood streaming from a long cut on Arthur's face, but the moment her fingers touched the pane the scene changed, became the laughing face of a boy with a fuzzy brown cap and fey features.
She had stopped looking after that. Listening to her own footfalls was far more productive, their rhythm soothing. Step-shuffle, step-shuffle, step-
Those were not her footsteps. She stopped, but the shuffling continued. Gwen held her breath, clutching the rushlight so hard it squeaked. Fear tingled along her arms and legs, leaving her knees weak, her breath coming in short pants. There was nowhere to hide in this passage except behind the third tapestry on the left, and she didn't want to go near that one. The woman in it had been drowning since before Gwen was born, her hair a tangle of fading green, her eyes bright with misery and malice. Gwen had always been terrified of that one.
The shuffling came closer, so Gwen turned to meet it, watching the dark place where the passage bent sharply around a tower that wasn't there in her world. Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle. She only realized she was holding her breath when her chest began to ache. In a burst the air flew out of her mouth, loud in the near-silence.
The shuffling paused. Sweat prickled Gwen's palms, and then a voice called, "Hello? Is someone there?"
Familiarity blossomed in her belly, relief and startlement in equal measure. "Hunith?"
Merlin's mother peeked around the corner, a pale rushlight in her left hand, a full bowl in her right. "Guinevere? Oh, good. I was looking for you."
"Me?" Surely she meant Merlin?
Hunith came forward, shadows leaping through the hall as the flame wavered in her hand. Pale liquid sloshed gently at the edges of the bowl. Looking up, she seemed to pierce Gwen with her eyes. "You're looking for my son."
"I am," Gwen admitted, "but I fear I can't find him."
Hunith's face lit with satisfaction. "That, I can help you with. Here, take this." She waited for Gwen to slide her sword through her apron ties as though they were a belt like the men wore, and then Hunith held out the bowl, easing it into Gwen's grasp. It smelled like goat's milk gone slightly sour, and there was something floating on top.
"It's a needle," Hunith said before she could ask. "Threaded with a hair from Merlin's head that I managed to yank today. He made quite a fuss over it."
Gwen didn't want to laugh, but she didn't have a free hand to cover her mouth, either. She ended up snorting in a terribly rude way, imagining Merlin whingeing as he held his head and asked why his mother had to go and pluck out a hair from his head, probably without warning. Oh, Merlin. Her chest warmed.
The needle turned gently, spin, spin, settle, pointing out the nearest window.
"It's a bit of a lodestone," Hunith explained. "A Merlin-tracking one. I had a feeling we'd need it."
Gwen eased her way over to the window, trying not to spill. This time when she looked out, the scenes were all the same, an image of the courtyard. Three brooms and a misshapen bucket were swish-hobbling towards the gate, chasing after a shadow with too many elbows and knees.
"He's gone into the Lower Town, but the shape of it doesn't look right." Gwen said.
"The shape of the town?"
"Yes." She studied it a moment, trying to tease out the difference. "Things are misplaced. It looks more like - it looks like a labyrinth made out of houses."
Hunith sighed. "Then you'd best hurry."
Gwen spun round, almost upending the milk. "Aren't you coming?"
Hunith shook her head. "Someone must hold the door open if you're to return at all. It's too heavy for Gaius alone."
Magic, Gwen thought, and was disturbed by her own lack of surprise. After all, one didn't leave out salt to keep the mice away. But one also didn't openly admit to having power that could get one killed. She tried not to see Hunith differently - Gaius too. Tried to think of the bowl in her hands as belonging to a different class of magic, the kind performed by every farrier in the land, every tanner, every fishwife. The tiny rituals that hid under the cloak of superstition, protected by custom. If the King wanted to execute everyone who left a bowl of milk out on the stoop, he'd be slaughtering half the town. Even Uther had never gone so far.
Hunith was in a different class, though, and her risk was so much greater.
"We'll be fast," Gwen promised her. They had to be.
"Just return before dawn, and remember how Aly the Miller's daughter crossed the sea in seven steps. I know your father told you that one." Hunith reached out to squeeze her shoulder once, and then leaned in to brush a kiss across her temple. "Luck, little Gwen. Your mother would be proud."
Gwen's eyes stung as Hunith turned and disappeared back around the corner, but she blinked the tears fiercely away. Time enough for that after she brought Merlin home.
***
Merlin's new cloak snapped out behind him as he walked, the sound of it all but swallowed up in the moaning wind, the sharp mutter of swirling snow. His feet ached and his ears were cold and the iron clasp burned against his chest like a brand. He had no idea where he was going or why, but his feet continued to move automatically. Ice crunched loudly under his boots.
At first the lower town seemed to be laid out haphazardly. The houses were unfamiliar and gray, their windows lacking the light and warmth they should have held at midwinter. Sometimes he would notice a detail here or there that would look familiar, but inevitably as he drew closer and the angle changed he would see through the illusion.
There were self-moving objects out and about, but unlike the ones at the castle none seemed to be in a foul mood. A cart trundled by under its own power. Merlin stood aside to let it pass, blinking as the straw in the back waved at him, sending bits of snow flying. Further on, signs for unfamiliar shops called out to him, but none of the buildings themselves looked inviting. This was not his Camelot.
He caught sight of a sleek gray tomcat making its way down an alley towards him, all saunter and nosetwitch and paws placed like a dancer. He stopped to smile - this was someone he recognized, finally, the cat who slept in the forge two or three times a week. It spared him only the briefest of glances before loping down the street, and his smile faded as it seemed about to turn the corner.
Then it looked back at him, eyes flashing bright in the darkness, and Merlin froze mid-step.
After a moment, he took a deep breath and put his foot down, then the next, and then he was walking slowly towards the cat, carefully maintaining eye contact but trying not to look menacing. When he was only a few steps away, it suddenly turned tail and ran down a side street. Merlin sighed in disappointment.
But again it stopped some distance away and looked back, and again Merlin walked carefully towards it.
It became a game after that, the cat running and waiting, Merlin walking carefully behind, snow falling thickly between them all the while. Sometimes Merlin looked back and saw that his footprints had all but disappeared, even only a few dozen steps back. Sometimes he also thought he saw a house or a wall move, but each time he told himself it was just the distracting motion of the wind and snow.
Finally, through the flurries he spotted a house that looked half-familiar. Surely, with those green shutters and the empty flower boxes at the corners, this had to be Milly the seamstress's home? He could get out of the snow and thank her for the cloak at the same time.
Ignoring the impatient cat but a few feet away from him, Merlin reached for the door handle.
There wasn't one, but the door swung open at his touch anyway, offering a deep, dark space that looked nothing like Milly's cheery, well-lit home. No voices from her three younger brothers, laughing at Merlin and pulling on his ears. No smell of stew simmering over the fire and indulgent smile from Milly's grandmother as she stirred. Only a kind of oily grayness, too dark to see through but too light to be natural night. Slowly it pulled him in.
Merlin struggled, leaning back and ordering his feet to flee, his magic to rise and free him. Nothing. His boots skidded through the snow as he was yanked forward, the left one catching on the doorframe and popping a buckle from the force. With a low whine he scrabbled at the outside walls, fingernails catching on the splinters. The gray was everywhere, like the smoke of a greasy fire, reaching out to grab him.
Bang! Something exploded in Merlin's face, fine powder dusting everywhere, getting in his eyes and nose and making them both water. But the grip of the house loosened somehow, allowing him to spring free.
Merlin stumbled back and ran like the Hunt itself was after him, slipping and scrambling until he breathed in great, helpless gasps and his legs wobbled and gave out, dropping him in the middle of an empty, snow-filled street.
Alone.
***
Arthur found himself distracted on all sides by the bizarre pageantry of the Hall: the brightly dancing candles that dripped wax the same way the tables dripped bits and leavings of food, all of it splatting in joyful abandon on the floor they were trying to walk across. A crumhorn and its companions melodically bugled hello at them with no sense of proper respect (reminding him of - well, no use thinking about that). But most disturbing of all was the forest of unmoving human legs, standing and sitting all over the room. He tried not to let his eyes wander higher to the hands like wax, the faces carved from stone. His father was somewhere in here.
Except he couldn't believe that. This place could not be real, he decided. Morgana walked as if in a smug daze, sidestepping messes and easily dodging the more enthusiastic greetings offered to them. Her eyes shone bright and empty, leaving him to shiver in their wake. Surely if this were real, Morgana would needle him, goad him into saving Merlin and her handmaiden. Instead, she seemed not to care whether he walked by her side or abandoned her entirely. Wrong, so completely wrong he couldn't even put words to it.
So he was distracted, then, when the first ominous rustle began. Distracted still when the sound changed to steady muttering, and only the sudden, sharp clack of split hooves on stone brought him up.
And up. And up.
Even from across the room, the boar subtlety was no longer simply large, tall as a man's heart with tusks perfectly placed to gore the unprotected belly of hunter or horse. Now the beast stood five times Arthur's height, and the hooves themselves threatened to crush them with a single step. On its cooked back rode a wooden knight with a helmet for a face, a lance three times Arthur's current height gripped in his fist. The back right haunch of the beast stood empty like a gaping wound, the bone click-clicking over itself as it moved, and that gave the boar its only obvious weakness, the slightest of limps.
All over the room creatures out of dream or nightmare shuffled, voices dying down as they eased towards safety.
"Morgana," Arthur whispered, and "Morgana!" when she remained oblivious.
"Hm? Arthur?" she wondered aloud, as if surfacing from a deep sleep.
"Run," Arthur told her quietly, trying not to alert the beast. It turned its head and snuffled anyway, tiny, near-sighted eyes fresh as its baked skin was not. The cook must have saved them to put back in after roasting. Arthur felt sick.
Morgana smiled at him, her lips thin and precise. "No, we should wait for-"
The knight heard her. His faceless, wooden head swiveled round, tracking her voice. A moment later his hand moved, and then the boar was turning, snorting, melted fat dribbling obscenely down its sharp tusks.
Arthur had a sudden image of himself as a hunting courser, how he might dodge and snap at its heels if he had four legs to run faster than his own weak two. He thought this as he reached out and caught Morgana's cold hand in his, turned them both with a painful slowness, as if they were moving through treacle, and pulled.
"Arth-"
"Run." This time his voice brooked no arguments. Lifting her skirt in her other hand, her eyes finally shocked almost present, she complied.
They took off, leaping over piles of skittering rushes that also tried to dodge the oncoming boar, though haphazardly and with less success. He could hear the crackling of the unlucky behind him as they were crushed under the sharp hooves. Weaving between trestle and human legs alike, he tried to create a barrier of solid objects behind them, but the boar crashed through several of these and dodged around the rest. Arthur wondered briefly if anything that happened in this world affected the real Camelot. He hoped not.
The beast was coming faster now, and they were not nearly close enough to the stocking entrance, where a narrow set of stairs lead straight up to the courtyard. The stairs themselves might prove a challenge for its hooves, but before reaching it they would have to cross an open space where the musicians had played before taking their break. Arthur's instincts rebelled at the lack of cover, but they had little choice.
Behind them, gouts of steaming breath sent sharp rushes flying every which way. One sailed past their heads, scoring Arthur on the cheek and leaving a slice that bled freely. He bit his lip to hold the curses in. Better to save his breath for running.
"Arthur!" Morgana gasped, so he tugged her harder. Shut up, he meant. She seemed to grasp the point.
The thing was breathing down their necks now, slavering, its wicked tusks and the knight's sharp lance almost upon them. With desperate strength Arthur grabbed Morgana under the arms and all but threw her to the left, behind a pile of happily lounging dogs. Sorry, he thought at them; the small bitch on the left was the runt he'd let sleep in his bed when she was small. But she wasn't Morgana, so he didn't hesitate to use the poor hound as cover.
Then he dodged to the right, rolled over his shoulder, and came up with a rush in his hands, sharp, hollow, and quivering like a wild bird.
Bellowing, he charged the boar's side, trying to distract it from Morgana. He breached its defenses for a jab or two at first while it was still startled, but then the knight turned his pale, wooden face towards him and lifted his lance.
After that Arthur was the one on the defensive, giving ground as the boar charged in fits and spurts, now to his left, now his right, steered by the knight's knees. The boar slashed its way through his defenses, breaking his first rush and forcing him to grab another. In retaliation, he threw the second one into its drying, meaty flank, where it stuck deep like a shuddering arrow but seemed not to slow the creature at all.
Bugger.
He tried to wedge the next rush under the knight's leg to flip him off, even though he was three times Arthur's size and heavy wood to boot. The rush splintered like a cheap lance, useless. The knight's own lance cut a retaliatory swath right where Arthur's head would have been had he not danced back out of range. It was thicker than Arthur's arm and made of heavy wood, and he felt the breeze of its passing like a warning.
So distracted was he by the lance that he didn't even see the great head of the beast whip around until its stinking breath was already washing over him. Flinging up his right arm to protect his face, he felt the sharp tusk catch and gouge deep.
"Arthur!"
He dropped to the ground like a hamstrung horse, left hand clamping over the wound to slow the bleeding. Even as he rolled clumsily out of the way, he knew nothing he could do from a distance would stop this thing.
Grimacing, he checked that his eating dagger was still in his belt and assessed the rough flagstones between him and his enemy. Satisfied, he charged.
It was mad, but then, he was half convinced this wasn't even real, that even if the creature stepped on him and snapped him in half like so much dry kindling, he would only wake in his bed with a pounding headache and the sun too bright outside, Merlin puttering about and whistling off-key while he laid out Arthur's clothes. In that moment the image overwhelmed the pain in his arm, the taste of blood still trickling down his face, the slip of his useless boots against the stone underfoot.
He reached the beast's side before it or the knight could react. Keeping his eyes focused and clear, he gathered all his strength.
And leaped.
***
Merlin sat panting on the ground, snow dampening his trousers as he tried desperately to catch his breath and slow his frantic heartbeat. Only once his vision cleared a bit did he notice the leather cord hanging empty around his neck. Gaius's herb pouch, gone. He stopped and looked around, not sure where he'd lost it but knowing he wouldn't find it again.
The cat was also nowhere to be seen. Merlin swallowed a surge of regret.
Climbing creakily to his feet, he failed once more to conjure a light, and so had only sickle moon and the strange, unmoving stars above to guide his way. And he didn't trust those.
He feared the crowding houses now, wanted to set fire to them, burn them back and make a path. But what was the use when he had no clear idea where he was going? All he had were his legs, which began stumbling forward again as if they didn't know how to stop.
He had never felt so lost before. Not even on his way to Camelot for the first time, quiet nights by a campfire, listening to the nocturnal animals and the wind in the trees. That had been a real wind, now hard, now soft, with no possibility of voices tangled in it. Now he listened, breath heaving, for even a hint of someone calling after him.
Nothing, not even the talking signs from before. He was truly alone, in the dark, in a strange land.
That thought squeezed his chest and forced a sour lump into his throat. He brushed he heel of his hand across the corner of each eyelid, wiping away any moisture there. They were stinging in the wind, that was all. The cloak around him no longer felt warm, harsh gusts rifling through it the way a thief might rummage through his pockets.
His pockets? Oh, pockets.
He stuffed his cold hands down inside, a brief warm respite, and fingered the little things still jumbled there. Bits of string. A goose feather, worse for the wear. The yew cones. A candle stub from Arthur's room.
Pulling out the nearly flattened stub, he cradled it in both hands like a supplicant, hard tallow and crisp, blackened wick. It was beautiful.
His feet stopped of their own volition. The wind kept howling, but he hardly noticed it tugging at him. All his attention was on the candle, the wick, the thought of warmth and light and home. When he stayed out late back in Ealdor, his mother used to leave a candle burning on the table by the window, it's yellow light liming the shutters bright enough to show him the way back. He wondered if she had one burning in Gaius's window now.
Taking a deep breath, he murmured a desperate word once, twice, three times. His eyes were screwed shut, everything focused on that one point. The world seemed to pause and hold its breath, even the wind dying down briefly in anticipation.
Nothing. He said the words again, more frantic, and then again. Still nothing. His magic was like a flame that had gone out. He could feel where it had been, but already it was more a memory than any lingering quiver of power. His fingers shook, bare and chill without his mother's bedraggled gloves to protect them. First he'd tumbled into this place alone, and now even his magic, his lifelong companion, had abandoned him.
Angrily, he stuffed the candlestub back in his pocket, only just refraining from throwing it because his mother wouldn't approve of the waste.
Feet heavier, knees wobbling, Merlin stumbled deeper into the labyrinth, not even looking up to notice how it closed in silently behind him, how it deftly turned him no matter which way he tried to go. It didn't matter that the East Gate loomed ahead, open and unguarded for the first time since he'd walked through it last spring. His feet scuffed the ice-covered earth as he trudged through, slower now, less caring if something caught up to him. At least then he wouldn't be alone.
As soon as he passed, the great wooden gates creaked on their hinges and slammed shut with a sound like a thunderclap.
Part Three