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He didn’t notice her the first time she saw him. Of course, humans rarely did. They were too busy crying over the fleshy remains left behind by the souls she collected.
He didn’t notice her, too busy grieving over the loss of his dearest friend. It wasn’t until she told him later that he knew she had come personally for the Once and Future King. She’d been fascinated by the living boy, though. He was human, mortal as any, and yet his soul was still in its early days. She sensed it would not be collected for many, many lifetimes yet. ‘Emrys,’ she thought. She watched with curiosity for a while longer. Then she turned and carried the shining, golden soul away.
“Who are you?” he demanded. Merlin eyed the strange woman suspiciously, angling himself so that he stood between her and the bed. Upon the bed rested a great queen who had been ailing for some time. Morrighan had responded to the soul’s call.
“I have many names, Emrys,” she purred in a voice like velvet and sharpened steel. “Macha, Warrior, Great Queen, Goddess of Fate, Queen of Phantoms, Lady Death. You may call me Morrighan.” Her raven-black eyes glittered with humor, as of letting him in on some secret.
“What are you doing here?” But he knew. Gwen had been severely ill for days. She was not so young anymore, and was unlikely to make a full recovery, if she recovered at all. Still, hope held back resignation and Merlin would not believe that Death had come for Gwen until she was truly gone. Morrighan was also the goddess of magic and prophecy, was she not? Perhaps she had come for him.
“It is time, Emrys. You know this. Queen Gwenevere is not long for this world. I am here to guide her soul to the next.”
“No.” He shook his head, swallowing around the lump in his throat. “No, you can’t. She’s… she’s the last one. Albion will crumble without her. Everyone else is already dead. All the original knights, all the kings and queens who united. You can’t take Gwen, too.” Hot tears blurred his vision, and he blinked them back angrily.
“Nothing lasts forever, Emrys, not even things that were destined to be. You fulfilled yours many years ago. You brought peace to all the peoples of Albion. It is the end of one era, and the beginning of the next, as such things always go.”
“You can’t take her,” he resisted. “I’ll heal her. I won’t let you take her.”
Morrighan moved closer, walking around him. “She is suffering, Emrys, and soon she will not have an earthly body. She will suffer even more if she is trapped here after that.”
And then, before Merlin could do anything, Lady Death set about her work, going through the ritual of calling forth the soul, and gathered it in her arms. She turned back and saw that again, Emrys’ face was contorted with grief. She hesitated. It was rare that she let mortals see her, rarer still to speak with them. But it was entirely unheard of for her to offer comfort to the living.
Never the less, she reached out and put her free hand on Merlin’s shoulder. “I am sorry, Emrys, truly. Your Queen will find happiness in the next world. Perhaps she will even find her lost King.”
He scowled the next time Morrigan showed up. “Do you appear for all deaths or do you enjoy taking those I love best away from me?”
“Watch your tone, human.” Her voice was less like velvet, this time, and more like the clash of a thousand swords in battle. “I am the Great Queen. My presence is an honor. Besides, it is not by my design that you gravitate toward those with greatness in them.”
She said no more as she gathered the soul of the young girl with big dreams who had caused so much trouble. Merlin had loved her from the moment he met her, but had known just as long that he would watch her die. Even if he weren’t ageless and undying, she was far too revolutionary to have anything but a noble, tragic, short life.
Merlin didn’t understand why she was here. By all accounts, the man she now set her sights on had been a good man, but an ordinary one. His unjust conviction and inhumane execution were the only things that set him apart from anyone else in the city. And yet, there was Morrighan, leading the gentle soul away.
Months later, after the rebellion, Merlin wondered whether Morrighan deemed him worthy not for who he was in life, but for what his death had brought about.
Ravens cawed and circled the valley that was soaked with blood and littered with discarded weapons. Soldiers either trudged back to their camps or waited in the mud for Morrighan and her black birds to reach them.
Merlin watched, knowing that what he saw and heard was for him alone to witness. The goddess’s voice rang out, filling the air with a song that sent chills down his spine. It was a song of triumph, of valor, and sacrifice. Her ferocious joy was an insulting contrast to the exhaustion and grief felt by both armies.
When Morrighan wandered close enough to hear him, Merlin asked her why she sang.
“They died with courage and honor. Their lives were sacrificed to defend the people they love and the countries they were loyal to. Everyone comes to me eventually, but these men gave purpose to their deaths.”
Storms raged- wind felling trees, rain flooding rivers, and lightning sparking fires. The devastation was widespread and all-consuming. No one, peasant or king, man or woman, soldier or sorcerer, was spared the earth’s vengeance.
Merlin looked for Morrighan, but if she came, he didn’t see her among the chaos.
Even once the skies calmed, death breathed down their necks. Crops and cattle were in short supply, which meant famine and starvation. Wells and rivers ran thick with debris, spreading disease. Reconstruction was hazardous, adding a handful of names to the list of casualties.
Merlin wondered where the Queen of the Phantoms was now, but his attention was quickly drawn back to the patient he was treating. There were too many mortal lives he was trying to save; he didn’t have time to spare a thought for a goddess.
Centuries passed, and Merlin began to predict when he would see Lady Death. He watched for patterns in history and felt a small satisfaction every time he guessed correctly. It became a game he played with himself. It was easier to think of her visits as a gamble won than as the heralding of a great life lost.
The Plague swept through Europe like nothing Merlin had ever seen. His healing talents as a sorcerer and a physician were no match for the sheer number of people who were afflicted. Fear spread from person to person, as contagious and fatal as the disease. People turned on one another, friendships and family ties forgotten in the face of desperation. Everyone fought for survival, and everyone lost something or someone.
Even the Queen of Phantoms was looking worse for wear. Years of working overtime had left her drawn and pale. She never sang, and never smiled. Her ravens were subdued as they circled her. Merlin marveled at the sight. Divinity was not prone to showing the effects of time.
“Morrighan,” he greeted with a nod. She studied him. Emrys was grim, but not grieving. She nodded with satisfaction. He watched quietly as she went about her work. When she turned to go, he reached out to the young woman who she had come for.
Not the body.
The soul.
He silently said his good-byes and walked away. His eyes were still dry.
Morrighan smiled. Emrys had finally accepted the lessons she’d been trying to teach him.
“Emrys,” she greeted. “It’s good to see you again.”
“And you, Great Queen. It has been a while. Was no one deemed worthy of your presence these last twelve decades?” His tone was slightly teasing.
“Oh, many were deemed worthy. But most were far from Albion, and I know how closely you are tied to the land.”
“Most?” Emrys tilted his head to study her.
“You missed me passing through the southern lands a few decades ago, and a village to the east a few years before that.” Her lips twitched, betraying a smirk she had tried to hide. Morrighan knew of the game he played, trying to predict her comings and goings. It would irritate him that he had missed her.
As expected, a frown creased between his brows, but he quickly recovered. “No matter, you and I are here now. And you are here for a purpose; I’ll not delay you further.”
Emrys watched as she collected the soul and went on her way, then turned and went back to wherever he went when she was not around.
When the Pope called for men to take up arms and march to reclaim the Holy Land, Merlin scoffed. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe the area to be significant; he just didn’t believe that land, especially holy land, could belong to humans. Even more ludicrous was the idea that slaughtering the Muslims and Jews who also thought the land holy was the same as the land belonging to Christians.
Never the less, he knew Morrighan would be there, collecting the souls of fallen soldiers and singing her battle songs of glorious death. That they believed in another god was no matter. These men would fall fighting for faith, and the Warrior exalted such sacrifices.
Merlin briefly considered going. Whether it would be to lend his aid or to catch sight of the goddess, he didn’t know. In the end, though, Albion was his holy land.
The ground shook with the force of the bombs and the air rattled with the bratatat of gunfire. Acrid smoke seeped into everything that was not already saturated with cold mud. Merlin’s feet were numb in his patched-up boots and his hands stung from barbed-wire scratches and cigarette ashes. He was lucky, though. He’d heard about the mustard gas that would make you burn from the inside out.
Humans had invented so many ways to kill each other.
He wasn’t surprised to see Morrighan walking through the trenches or across no-man’s land. But for the first time in centuries, her presence infuriated him. These boys and men may have died in battle, but her songs of glory had no place here. There was no honor in this war, no glory in this unending, senseless suffering.
It felt like the blink of an eye between one Great War and the next. The memory of the trenches was still fresh in the minds of the people when another call to arms came.
Merlin was reluctant to get involved again, but when the enemy bombed his homeland, when sirens and people screamed in the ruins of cities and the land he loved cried out in pain, he gathered his things and marched in defense of Albion.
(He wondered where Arthur was. Surely this was Albion’s darkest hour. Surely they were in need of the Once and Future King. But he did not return.)
Germany was both exactly what he expected and nothing like he could have ever imagined.
When his squad found the camp, he thought for sure he was hallucinating. Madness had finally caught up with him. The magic of the earth was twisted with so much pain and corruption that surely what he saw was his mind cracking under the strain. Surely such horrors could not truly exist.
Except that they did.
Merlin felt sick. Some of his comrades gagged. One made the sign of the cross, and another muttered a prayer under his breath.
Skeletons who had flesh and life but lacked body and spirit turned toward the soldiers to watch them. The camp was clearly abandoned. The Germans- Nazis- had evacuated and left the weakest and the wounded behind to be found by the Allied army. Merlin didn’t want to know what happened to the stronger ones.
When he entered a building that looked like a storeroom, Merlin was shocked to see Morrighan there. He had been sure this accursed place had long ago destroyed any soul, whether culprit or victim, that crossed through the gates. He didn’t think there was anything left for the goddess to collect. But that wasn’t what shocked him.
Morrighan was crying.
She sat on the floor cradling a feeble-looking soul- a child’s probably- its silver glow dimmed like tarnished nickel. Tears ran down the goddess’ cheeks and her breath came in ragged gasps.
Merlin had never seen her show the slightest unhappiness at the sight of death. And yet here she was.
“So much pain,” she whispered. “These poor people… their pain… pointless suffering…”
He could do nothing except offer the comfort of his presence. So he sat down, wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and let her tears soak through his military-issued coat.
The affairs of mortals went unnoticed by Emrys for a few decades after that. He was heartsick and horrified and so, so weary. He wanted nothing more than to retreat into solitude. The cities were suffocating and the suburbs were too observant. The moors, thankfully, provided some relief.
When the wind howled through the hills, and the stars shone brightly in the dark sky, Merlin could pretend that hardly any time had passed. That he could get on a horse and after few days’ journey, be in Camelot. Those were the nights Merlin felt the most at home.
Those were the nights Merlin missed Arthur the most.
Merlin stood still, heedless of winter’s bite. Fog crawled low across the grass where there once was water, but the sky was clear enough for the moon to illuminate the crumbling stone tower, the last remnant of an era long forgotten by all but him.
Age seemed to settle into his bones, weigh on his soul. Perhaps he would brew an aging potion again. It grew tiresome, sometimes, appearing so young when he felt so old.
An owl called through the dark, and Merlin considered calling back, greeting the noble bird. A raven’s caw beat him to it.
A raven? At this time of night?
The presence of the raven was explained when it flew down in front of him, shifting into a more human form as she landed.
“Well met, Emrys,” Morrighan greeted with a soft smile. Merlin stared at her. The Great Queen was many things, but soft was not one of them.
“Well met, old friend.” Merlin cast a glance around, searching for the poor soul she had come to collect, but they were alone on this dark plane. Merlin didn’t know whether it was relief or fear that weakened his knees. “Have you finally come for me? Have my endless days reached their end at long last?”
Morrighan shook her head. “It is not business that brings me here tonight. I come to bare witness for my sister Arianrhod.”
Merlin gave the goddess a strange look. “You came to stare at the moon?”
The softness vanished. “Reincarnation,” she snapped. “It is rare enough, a soul I have collected to be returned, to merit a witness.”
“Reincarnation? Morrighan, what is going on? Who’s being brought back?”
“Peace, Emrys. Your long wait has ended; it is time for the Once and Future King to fulfill his destiny.”
Merlin’s voice was low, rumbling with warning like an oncoming storm. “Do not play games with me, Morrighan. Speak plainly. What is happening?”
The goddess bristled, but before she could respond, she was interrupted by the sound of feathered wings. The Owl joined the Raven.
“See for yourself, Ancient One,” Arianrhod said in lieu of greeting. She was as bright as her sister was dark, as pale and silvery as the moon and star she was associated with. “It is time for you to reclaim your king.”
The pale goddess stepped aside to show that she had not come alone. There, approaching through the fog was a young man. Armor gleamed in the moonlight, turning the golden king silver. Merlin forgot how to breathe.
Arthur.
“Go to him, Emrys,” Arianrhod said. “He will need your guidance.”
“Thank you,” Merlin whispered, not taking his eyes off of Arthur. The words were inadequate, but they were all he could manage at the moment. He started walking forward.
“Merlin,” Morrighan cautioned, “Take care. Your wait has come to an end, but so have your years. Make sure you are ready when I see you again.”
“Thank you, Morrighan. Be well until then.”
“And you, my friend. Now go.”
Merlin forgot about the goddesses then. The only thing that mattered was Arthur.
Arthur was back.
Arthur.