Non-challenge - Loyalty (5/7)

[shanaqui]

Title: Loyalty
Chapter: 5/7
Characters/Pairing: Will, Bran, Barney, Simon, Jane, John, OC
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Summary: Six must be gathered again, to face an old threat wearing a new face.
All chapters: one, two, three, four, five, six, seven.


Will didn't think the sword had left Bran's hand since John had handed it over to him. He didn't seem to know what to do with it -- and how could he have known? -- and yet there was an ease in the way he held it, as if the sword itself remembered how to be wielded. When Bran tried to swing with it, there were echoes of a skill he couldn't have known.

"Pity there isn't time for lessons with that thing," he said, teasingly, still watching.

Bran plopped down beside him after a moment longer, carefully sheathing the sword and holding it in his lap. His fingers traced the patterns on the sheath. "I feel as if I could fight with this," he said, slowly. "But half of me feels ridiculous about it."

Will laughed. "I'm not surprised. If you were in your father's time, you'd have been taught to wield a sword as soon as you were strong enough to hold it up, but as it is..."

"As it is, I'm pretty useless." Bran started to laugh; his face was alight, noble and beautiful and unearthly. Will wondered how anybody could miss who and what he was. "Unless you need someone hitting over the head with it."

"I think you'll be alright."

Bran smirked just a little, but he was quickly overcome again by the gravity of the situation. His fingers never stopped their restless tracing of the designs on the sheath. "Was this really my father's sword?"

Will reached out to touch it, too, fingers finding a particular design: a circle, quartered by a cross. Bran's fingers brushed his as he reached to trace the symbol for himself. "Yes," Will said, after a moment. "Excalibur. Caledfwlch, in Welsh. There are two main stories about the origins of this sword. I... Barney probably knows more about the legends than I do, you know."

Bran rolled his eyes. "I'm not asking Barney, though. I'm asking you."

"So you are," Will said, and smiled a little.

"Go on," Bran said, softly. "I'm listening."

"Alright, but... I'm not saying any of this is true, or accurate. Maybe they're all just stories," Will said, warningly. Bran rolled his eyes as if to say yes, I know. "Arthur's father was a king. Uther Pendragon. Uther loved a woman called Igraine, and Merlin said that he would help Uther win Igraine, in exchange for their first born son. And that was Arthur. He went to a different family to be fostered, but when he was just coming of age, Uther died, and there was no king. That was when the sword in the stone appeared. The words might have been written on the stone, or perhaps Merlin was there and he said them... but it said that the man who could draw the sword would be the king."

"And my father drew the sword from the stone? This sword?" Bran asked. His golden eyes were on Will's face, as if he was hanging onto his every word.

Will nodded. "Yes, Arthur drew the sword from the stone. There are stories about it being an accident... but however it happened, it happened, and your father became king. In the other story, though, he gets Caledfwlch from the Lady of the Lake."

"The Lady? Your Lady?"

He looked almost startled at that thought. "Maybe. I don't really know... Anyway, Merlin took him to the lake and he was given the sword, but with the condition that one day, he would have to give it back. There's a story that says when he lay dying after a great battle, he ordered one of his knights to take the sword back to the lake and throw it in. When the knight finally did so, as he threw it a hand rose from the water and caught it."

"That didn't happen, though. I mean, Arthur didn't die."

Will looked at the sword in Bran's lap again and laughed. "The sword certainly doesn't look as if it's been at the bottom of a lake, either. But perhaps Arthur did give it back to the Lady, and perhaps the Lady gave it into Guinevere's charge, knowing that you might have need of it and that you gave Eirias to your father... and perhaps the mortal half of Arthur did die. That's the lot of all mortals, you know."

"Truth in old stories again, then," Bran said, thoughtfully.

"There's another story that might be true..." Will bit his lip. "Arthur was supposed to have another sword, too, a twin to Caledfwlch. It was called Calent. Mordred stole it -- in fact, it was the sword Mordred killed Arthur with, in some of the stories."

"But Arthur isn't dead. Well, not properly, anyway."

"Perhaps that's another warning, then."

Bran tugged up a tuft of grass, looking at it with an expression of disgust that Will suspected had nothing to do with the tuft of grass itself. "So what does it mean? That we should be afraid of Calent?"

Will shook his head. "It means that Mordred may kill you, I think. It's a warning that there's no guarantee you'll come safe through this."

"I never thought there was."

"There's something comforting, though, too..." Will touched the sword again as he spoke. "The scabbard was said to have magical properties -- to be a protection to the one who wore it. The fact that Barney's vision led him to it might mean that's true."

"But, look -- surely all these stories can't come from Gwion? Or even from the Light... It just... it doesn't make sense."

"There have been many mortal men who served the Light... many, many mortal men. Men like yourself, and Arthur, and Gwion and Gwyddno, and the Drews... There have been such men in every age, and men who served never knowing the greater cause..." Bran looked up quickly and caught the look on Will's face; a look that was distant and lonely, that made Bran slip his hand into Will's just to say you're not alone: I'm here. He looked like Stonehenge, Bran thought: strange and ancient and remote. He found there was a lump in his throat just looking at him like that. And then Will squeezed his hand and laughed and the world slipped back into place again. "Speaking of the Drews, I'm surprised none of them have come to see the sword."

Bran shrugged, and it was his turn to withdraw, pulling his hand from Will's and standing up. "Jane's more interested in spending time with that man she met, Barney's already seen the sword in his vision, and Simon... I had a fight with Simon."

"A fight?"

"Split his lip," Bran admitted, a little sheepishly. And then, more seriously: "I think the Dark is working at me, making me... I shouldn't have hit Simon, I knew it even when I did. They want me to drive everyone away..."

"You'll have to do better than this to get rid of me," Will said, grinning a little. Then he sobered up again, standing up, and once again the world seemed skewed because Will was no longer a boy but now fully an Old One, with experience and knowledge seventeen years of life couldn't hold. He took Bran's hands. "I'll always be at your side, no matter what the Dark influences you to do."

"My dewin," Bran said, teasing a little. "The Merlin to my Arthur."

Will didn't smile. "Yes," he said, and made it a solemn promise, his eyes fixed on Bran's. "You have my fealty."

"Will -- "

"Well, well, well," another voice said. Both of them suddenly pulled apart, and Bran's hand moved almost by instinct to the hilt of his sword. Will stepped a little in front of Bran, as if to protect him.

"Mordred," he said, coldly.

"Will," Bran said, in his ear, and suddenly he was gripping his upper arm tightly. "Will, that's Michael. The one Jane was hanging around with."

He felt Will stiffen and draw himself up in anger. "You have taken one of the Six?"

"I have," Mordred said, and there was a note of gloating in his voice. He smirked at Will. "Not so well protected by your old charms and tricks now, are you? Perhaps it's because you're not the dewin your master was..."

"It's because magic has no place in this world," Will said, and if Bran hadn't seen the stiffness of his back and the way his fists clenched at his sides, he would have thought he was perfectly calm. "Not anymore. Not my magic, and certainly not yours. If it did, you wouldn't have had to spend so long getting Jane accustomed to you enough to trick her. You could have just plucked her up the moment you thought of it."

Mordred's expression didn't change. "Yes, well, about that. I'm sorry to interrupt your touching little scene, but I have one of your friends," his eyes slipped past Will and rested on Bran, "brother. You'd be advised to come and get her before harm comes to her. She's such a pretty little thing. It'd be a shame if I had to kill her."

"Don't you dare touch her!"

"We'll be there," Will said, more calmly. He grabbed Bran as he made to move past him. "Bran, leave it. That's not the real Mordred, it's just... it's a sending. Cutting it would do as much good as cutting empty air."

"It might make me feel better," Bran muttered, but he stopped and settled for glaring at Mordred.

"I'll see you soon, little brother," the sending said, amused again. And then it vanished.

"How come he can do that?" Bran demanded, immediately. Will sighed deeply, slowly sitting down.

"Arthur had some command over the powers of the world. Mordred is his son, and moreover the son of a witch, and so he has powers... It's another of the things you would have been taught to control if you had been brought up in your father's care instead of being brought to this time. You could still match Mordred, if you were taught to use them, if we had time..."

"We don't have time. That bastard has Jane!"

"I know," Will said, gently. "We have a little time, though. We have to wait for the others."

---

"Jane?" Barney knocked on the door and then stuck his head through into her room. "Jane, you lazy thing, you should be up by now..." And then he almost swallowed his words, because there was no one in the bed, and no one in the room at all. She'd left the room neat enough -- there was her nightie on the pillow, and she'd drawn the curtains, but her outdoor shoes were gone.

"Has she gone out again?" Simon asked, coming to stand at his side. "I guess she's above hanging round with her brothers these days."

Barney didn't say anything. He felt as if his chest had constricted, a vague and formless fear nagging at him, strong enough to make his heart thud like a frantic drum beat in his chest.

There was no bowl, no water, no oil, but Barney tried to see anyway, straining his eyes, trying to see beyond the world as he'd seen beyond the oil. Past the patterns of rose-print curtains, past the curls of colour on the carpet, past the dancing gleams of light, past the shadows on the floor...

He couldn't see, but he felt: Jane was frightened. No -- she should have been frightened, but she wasn't. It was all dampened, tamped down, though it threatened to well up inside her and choke her. He knew that someone was holding her hand, speaking to her in a tone that might have been soothing, but the words made the terror inside her swirl, sickening and dizzy. Or perhaps it was the other way round: the words were soothing, but the voice frightened her. He skimmed over a mind that made him recoil at the darkness it contained, which thrust his questing mind away as soon as it noticed him.

And he reached further, away from that mind, to something alien and strange, something that was too large for him to understand. Will, he realised, and knew only that Will was angry, and perhaps a little frightened.

"Barney?" Simon said, quietly. He put a hand on his shoulder, squeezing tightly, and Barney felt himself going back, sucked back into the normal world, and then he was breathing again without realising he hadn't been before, breathing in great gasps of air.

He turned to look at Simon, at his worried face. Simon had bitten his lip in worry, and the place where Bran had split it was gleaming with a hint of blood again. He knew Simon didn't quite believe, knew Simon had lost something he'd had once, but -- but he had to try. "Jane's in danger," he said, still breathless. "We need to get to Will and Bran. We need to find them now. The Dark has Jane."

Simon looked for a moment as if he were going to laugh in Barney's face. Desperately Barney willed him to believe. In his mind he told Simon about the long walk through the cave to find the grail, reminded him of the creatures that had attacked them, of the thing that had towered over Jane... He willed Simon to remember Merriman, to remember the way he had walked, the way he had talked, the humour and affection that had sometimes stolen over that fierce face. He longed for Simon to remember the end -- the pool of calm that surrounded the Lady, the noble face of King Arthur...

"Come on then," Simon said, without letting anything show. He shut Jane's door behind him with a little bang. "You need to get your shoes on before we go running anywhere."

"Simon -- "

"Go on, Barney," Simon said, impatiently, giving him a little push. "I'll tell Mother and Father where we're going. I'll say... I'll say we're going to see Bran. And that Jane's already gone. Grab my coat for me."

Barney grinned at him, but then the feeling of urgency took over again and he ran into their room, dragging his shoes on and knotting the laces hastily. He tried not to think about Jane's damped down terror: it made him feel sick to think of her so alone and scared and yet not being allowed to -- and in any case, he told himself firmly, they were going to rescue her. They just needed to get to Will and Bran.

---

"How are they even going to know they have to come?"

"They'll come."

Bran stood up. He was still holding the sword, his grip on it almost white-knuckled. "But how will they know they have to? Are you calling them? Or is it going to be one of those remarkable coincidences again? Jane's in danger, Will. This is important."

"I know that as well as you do," Will said, calmly. Then he snorted softly. "Probably better, actually. Don't worry. They're coming."

"How do you know that?"

"Because I can see them."

Bran could hear the almost smug smile in Will's voice, and muttered something none too flattering in return, turning to look down the hill. He could see Barney, and then Simon, and John Rowlands coming up last; Barney was running ahead, anxious excitement on his face. Bran turned to Will, frowning a little. "They know?"

"Barney must have seen something," Will said. He stood up, waving to the others, and shouting for them to hurry. Barney arrived only a moment later, pink and breathless.

"Your brother's got Jane," he said to Bran, and maybe there was a hint of accusation in his voice, but he knew as they all did that Bran couldn't help it.

"You were right, Barney," Will said, after a moment, as John and Simon joined them. "The person you saw Jane with -- Michael -- is Mordred. I don't know why I didn't realise... you wouldn't see something totally irrelevant, after all. I'm sorry. This is my fault. I let the Dark cloud my sight... in some ways, I've become too human, I suppose." He smiled, as he said the last, but Bran rolled his eyes.

"There's no need to lay blame on anyone. Let's just fix things."

"Take up your arms, then, my lord," Barney said. Bran looked up quickly, but there was no trace of irony or teasing in Barney's eyes. For a moment, nobody moved, and then John took the sword, still in its sheath and attached to its belt, and helped Bran put the belt on. Bran stood awkwardly, feeling strange at the weight of it around his waist. Eirias had never weighed so much -- but then, that sword had been meant by fate to be wielded by a boy, and so the world had worked with fate's design even if Gwyddno hadn't known who would take up the beauty he made.

"I feel ridiculous," he said, after a moment, because they were all looking at him, even staring -- apart from Simon, who stood with his hands in his pockets, looking at the ground.

Barney grinned at him, not quite overcome by the solemn moment. "You look magnificent, which has to count for something, right?"

"It's a pity the best he can do is look magnificent and wave it around menacingly," Will said, and he was grinning too.

Simon shifted awkwardly and cleared his throat. "Bran," he said, and then wished everyone hadn't turned to look at him. He took his hands out of his pockets and held one out to Bran. "I'm sorry about what happened. I... I've been a bit of an ass. I take it back, everything I said about... you know what I said. Call it even?"

Bran didn't hesitate, but took Simon's hand and shook it, holding on for a moment and looking into Simon's eyes. He didn't see any hesitance there, nor any disbelief, but a kind of determination more worthy of the Simon he remembered. He smiled at him. "Let's. I'm sorry about hitting you."

Barney made a face at both of them. "Will you come on already?"

"Yes," Will said, quietly. "It's time to go."