Chapter Text
When Arthur turns twelve, his father sends him on a tour of the kingdom. Arthur has been training to be a knight since he can remember, and it isn’t Arthur’s first time learning to sleep under the stars. Arthur is used to hardship; to the hard unyielding give of the forest floors, from the biting cold of winter gales to the searing heat of sun-dried earth. But once Arthur is twelve, he is officially old enough to be judged a man on his own merit, and the King deems the time ripe for his young son to learn of the more insidious shadows that darken the kingdom:
Sorcery.
Arthur, accompanied with a few of his father’s most trusted knights, makes his long, winding way through the kingdom, stopping every few days or so to dine and rest at the kingdom’s foremost settlements and keeps. It’s a two-way exchange. When he visits, Arthur goes bearing a short hand-written missive from the king, an encouraging word or two for the guardsmen manning the walls, a firm smile and a quick handshake and a few, quick-witted words of counsel. It is a large burden for a mere youth of twelve summers to shoulder- perhaps. But Arthur bears it well. He has trained for it his entire life, after all.
In return, they invite Arthur to watch the sorcerers burn.
They seem to await him in every village. They are old, bitter, haggard. As they stand lashed to the pyre, they spit curses upon their captors, things that Arthur is loath to even repeat, and there is a crazed, maddened glint in their eyes. They are everything his father had told him they were and more. And Arthur thinks: his father was right. Why shouldn’t he be, when he has never led him astray?
And then Arthur meets the boy.
-
The boy, they say, was found gathering berries using magic out in the forest. He’s a small, pitiful thing, with skin as pale as parchment and wrists so thin Arthur could break them with a finger. He’s young, perhaps even a few years younger than the young prince himself. His clothes are grubby and torn, and there are a few thick patches where someone has darned them through with a soft, loving touch. But who would darn the clothes of a sorcerer?
Arthur could almost believe that he is harmless.
But there’s unfettered rage in his eyes, and his wrists, which are wrapped by cold cast-iron cuffs that are said to keep magic at bay, are chafed raw from his struggles. He snaps and bites and twists, and Sir Ector cries out from where the boy has slammed his bare foot down on the knight’s steel-toed boot. He reminds Arthur of a wild animal. Cornered, hurt, snapping out at everything in reach.
The anger in his eyes are uncomfortably familiar. Arthur knows they are the same, cut out of the same cloth- this young boy, and the many, many sorcerers Arthur has seen burn, spitting and cursing with madness in their eyes. But the thought makes something suspiciously like bile stir deep in Arthur’s throat.
The boy turns a little, facing away from them all, and his shirt shifts enough to lay bare one thin, stark collarbone. So weak. So fragile.
Later, they make camp in the forest as the sun sets. A knight- doubtless one who had drawn the short stick; because no-one wishes to be on sorcerer duty, young or no- approaches the boy with a bowl of watery, cold broth. Calculated, Arthur knows, just enough to keep him alive until they arrive at the next village. Alive, but too weak to fight back.
A soft clatter. Arthur watches as the boy twists in his bond, defiance writ clear across his face. The bowl rolls away from him on the rough forest ground, the floor dark where the broth has seeped into the dirt. The knight huffs, exasperated, and laughs.
“Your loss, boy,” Arthur makes out. Arthur might have done the same had he been taken captive, he knows. It’s a matter of dignity, of honor; that he refuses to be kept trapped and fed, like some common animal. But sorcerers are supposed only to care for their own wellbeing. Should the boy not have taken whatever he could have gotten, so he could bide his time and get away when the time was ripe?
He must have convinced himself it was poisoned, Arthur tells himself, as he shifts in his bedroll. But sleep evades him for a long while that night.
-
The sorcerer boy is to travel with them for three days, because that is how long it will take until they arrive at the next village. The next village is a large one, Arthur has heard tell; doubtless they have stakes and oil left to spare.
Most villages in Camelot do. It is the king’s will.
Sir Caradoc, one of the more experienced knights, is in charge of organizing their formation. He takes care to keep the sorcerer and the prince as far away as possible- ‘sorcery works in insidious ways, sire’- but at some times, the road grows narrow, and there isn’t much choice but for the two to ride (and walk, respectively) close together.
The boy trudges along with is head held high, shuttered blue eyes still stubborn despite it all. His steps falter, sometimes, and the knights take great pleasure in yanking on the rope that binds him as they might a stray dog, but still the boy does not cry.
He intrigues Arthur.
Arthur lasts nearly a half-day before he folds.
“Where do you come from?” he asks, careful to keep his voice condescending, aloof, disinterested. It would not do for the crown prince of Camelot to be found willingly inquiring about a sorcerer. The terrain has grown rough, and most of the knights in the retinue have gone ahead to chart out the area. The answering look he gets is through narrowed eyes, dark lashes casting sooty shadows upon the boy’s high cheekbones.
When the answer comes, it takes Arthur by surprise.
“And why,” the boy says, voice surprisingly soft. “Should I tell you?”
Arthur pauses, aghast. He has never had to explain himself in such a manner before. Because I am to be the crowned prince. Because I command you to. But the boy’s eyes are those of a man heading to the noose; the eyes of one with nothing left to lose. Arthur has the feeling that his answers may not go down quite so well with the boy.
“I am simply curious as to where such young sorcerers as you spring from,” he drawls, choosing to mask his words with a thick layer of blustering. The boy slants him another look, considering. He shrugs.
“Sorcerers do have mothers too, you know.”
Arthur blinks. Logically, he knows that sorcerers start out as human beings, too; they do not spring from the ground, nor do they drop from the sky. But the image of a woman, somewhere, who will grieve the taking of her sorcerer-son-
Would she be a witch, too? Chanting spells over a darkened cauldron, weaving webs of sorcery and malice? Or would she be just another woman, hands hardened from work, heart hardened from worry, dark-skinned and gaunt with an apron on her lap?
Those are dangerous thoughts. Arthur bites his lip. “And who may she be?”
The boy’s mouth snaps shut, and when he opens it again, his voice is hoarse. “And why should I tell you when you would simply take her to burn, as well?”
Arthur’s fists clench. “She will have a fair trial.”
“Which would end with her taken to the dungeons, a new pyre built, because she has hidden a sorcerer all her life.”
“So you admit to your crimes.”
The boy’s laugh is a bitter, choked thing. “I have nothing to lose.”
“You don’t understand.” Arthur’s nails dig painfully into his palm. “We have to save citizens from corruption. Even your-“ gods, the word hurts- “mother. It’s for her own good.”
“Corruption.” The boy’s words are a cruel, hollow thing. He turns to face Arthur, and Arthur finds himself unable to turn away from that deadened, blue-eyed gaze, made all the more vivid by the sooty, weary face that encircles it. “Do I look corrupted to you?”
Arthur does not voice his answer.
-
Arthur has rarely dreamt, in his sleep. He is much unlike the young lady Morgana, who sometimes wakes screaming from her dreams, nightly terrors haunting even her daylight hours.
Father is much pleased. It is the sign of a strong mind, he tells Arthur, with that firm grip on his shoulder that tells Arthur that he is pleased with his son and heir. You shall not be weakened by treacherous thoughts.
But that night, as Arthur lies in his bed-roll, he dreams.
He dreams of a faceless woman screaming on the pyre, hands flailing as she burns.
-
The next day, they run into a woman on the road. Arthur recognizes what has befallen her as soon as their company cross her path. The signs are there, if one is only willing to look.
Bloodied hands, probably from digging graves bare-handed for her loved ones. Dress torn and tattered, eyes hardened with grief, everything she owns in a small blanket-wrapped bundle resting atop her head.
Bandit attack. They are only too common these days.
Camelot’s knights may be ruthless in battle, but they are still knights at heart. They have not forgotten the knight’s code. And so they make camp in the middle of the road, provide the woman with fresh clothes and blankets, fill her water-skin and heap her with foodstuffs and their set of spare blankets.
Arthur, with a piece of parchment he borrows from one of the knights, writes her a letter of recommendation himself. If she makes it back to the main citadel, and seeks the castle’s steward, she will find herself with a lodging for the night, and perhaps a place to work in the castle’s kitchens or serving-halls.
The woman thanks them with tears streaming down her face. She kneels before Arthur, for all that she is old enough to have been his mother, and kisses his ring. It is with a strange sense of vindicated satisfaction that Arthur sneaks a look at the sorcerer-boy, now chained to a tree near the edge of the clearing where they are camped. Look; I am just, I am honorable. I am not the villain you make me out to be.
The look of pure bitterness on his face takes Arthur aback.
Arthur must not have been the only one to have noticed, because a nearby knight backhands the boy across his cheek, gauntleted hand leaving angry red marks upon the pale, dirtied skin.
“You could be more grateful, boy,” the knight hisses. “The convicted are rarely treated this well.”
“You would give a woman help,” the boy replies. His voice is quiet, but it cuts through the camp like a knife. “But not a child. What kind of knight does that make you?”
“Be silent, sorcerer!” the knight thunders, raising his hand yet again. Before Arthur knows it, he’s pushed his way through the thong, grabbing the much larger knight’s fist with his hand.
“Stay your fist,” he says. “We are knights, not bandits.”
The knight steps back, flabbergasted. “You would defend a known sorcerer?”
Arthur turns, shaking his head. “No. But we are knights.”
Protectors of the defenseless, champions of the innocent. The words leave a bitter aftertaste in his mouth. Arthur shakes his head, hoping to dislodge his doubts like fruit-flies in summer. “Knights,” he repeats.
He feels the boy’s eyes upon him like a palpable thing, the entire while.
-
The road is long, and with the length they have travelled, they are all parched. The sorcerer-boy looks weak on his feet, swaying a little from where he stands. No wonder; he has walked two days on foot now, with neither food nor water, what little respite he has riddled with ridicule and harsh words. Arthur does not blame his knights- to willingly soften one’s heart to a sorcerer is to court disaster- but he cannot deny that they have been exceedingly hard on him.
Arthur, almost on impulse, pushes his water-skin towards the boy. “Drink.”
“Poisoned?” the boy asks, still defiant despite it all. Arthur takes a pointed sip from the leather pouch before pushing it again towards the boy.
He takes it.
Something indescribable blooms in Arthur’s chest.
He’s finally come to his senses, Arthur tells himself. He’s biding his time, building his strength so he has the strength to fight back. He isn’t quite sure he stands convinced.
Later, Arthur hears some of the knights talking about ‘that demon-spawn’. It is quite eminent who they are talking about. Offspring of the demon is quite a common term, as far as talk about sorcerers go.
“Tried to bite my hand straight off,” a gruff voice exclaims. “All I did was give the sorcerer water, as I was commanded-“
“…have no idea why,” his companion replies. “Had better just leave him to die of thirst, is what I say……”
So the boy has taken Arthur’s water, and no-one else’s.
The tingling is back.
-
In the afternoon, they run into an injured bird.
It’s a pitiful thing, bones nearly sticking out from where its feathers are plastered to its back. Some sort of falcon, from what Arthur can make out. One wing sticks out at a strange angle, twisted beyond repair. It screes helplessly. Arthur winces. Cruelty towards animals has never sat very well with him, and from the look of it- it looks like a huntsman’s trap gone wrong.
It is frail, helpless, but still large enough to hinder their progress.
“Best end its life quickly, sire,” Caradoc says, voice low and rough. The older knight looks troubled as he gazes upon the bird. Arthur nods, gesturing for the knights to go ahead- death will be a kindness, in this case. One of the younger ones ready his crossbow.
And then there’s a scuffle at the back, several exclamations from the knights- and a thin, black-topped blur is speeding towards the prone figure of the bird. Sir Caradoc lets out a short exclamation, hand reaching for his sword.
The figure turns, and Arthur finds himself eye-to-eye with Merlin’s pale face, dirt streaked across his bony cheeks. The boy’s mouth hardens into a thin line of determination, and then-
His eyes flash gold.
Arthur stiffens despite himself. He knows that the boy’s magic is well-restrained. He knows that the knights are well-experienced in these matters, that the cuffs will do their job. He knows that the boy cannot harm him.
But Arthur’s has been a lifetime riddled with danger, the first sorcerer having made an attempt on his life when Arthur was only eight, and he will never forget that initial flash of gold- those raging flames that had seemed to encircle him, choke him, set the world itself on fire.
Something in the air shifts, a sharp, clear burst like a breath released, and then before Arthur’s unbelieving eyes- the bird stretches its wings, throws its head back in triumph, and, with a few beats of its powerful wings, is airborne.
The boy watches it go.
Another split-second, and the knights spring into action. Someone produces a second set of cuffs, these traced through with strange runes and reinforced with thick cast-iron chains. Arthur watches, numb, as rough, gauntleted hands circle the boy’s thin arms, as the second cuffs are cinched tight around the boy’s bony wrists.
“-impossible,” Arthur catches, as Caradoc confers with his squire. “Unheard of- to resist the pull of cold iron-“
Unprecedented. Powerful, then. Arthur remembers the touch of the boy’s magic- clear, pure, strong. Like the first sweet breath of spring. Like a clear singing brook.
And he did not fight back; did not try to hurt any others- instead, he chose to set a broken bird free.
Arthur does not understand him.
“Why did you do that?” Arthur asks, later, when everyone except for Arthur and the boy are alseep, save the guards posted near the perimeter of the camp. The boy raises his face. He looks tired, drained; presumably the feat he’d performed earlier had taken a lot out of him. Understandable, if it’s anything like that time father had made Arthur run laps around the training fields in padded, sweltering winter armor last summer. Firelight dances across his nose, shadows pooling in the recesses of his cheeks. It makes him seem older. More tired.
The boy tilts his head, and there is a glimmer of orange in his darkened eyes. “Because I knew I could.”
It isn’t the answer Arthur had wanted.
-
Arthur wakes the next morning to news that the waterways had flooded. His tent is soaked through, even with the thin layer of wax the royal quartermasters had supplied; and Arthur shivers in his moistened bed-clothes. Winter rains are treacherous things; snow, you could brush away, but rain seeps into your bones and stays.
“I’m afraid we’ll have to wait a day or so, sire,” Caradoc reports, once Arthur is changed into his spare set of clothes stowed in the bottom of his pack. “The waters have bloated, and there is no way of telling where ice may be hiding beneath. Our scouts have found an overhang- not much, but we would be drier. Permission to move?”
Arthur nods, and the move commences. It’s one more night out in the wild. Another night of harsh discomfort, another night away from the warm beds and plentiful foods of the village keeps. But still, Arthur isn’t surprised to realize-
He is relieved.
Because now he cannot fool himself any longer, and when Arthur is completely honest with himself, he does not want to see the sorcerer-boy burn.
The boy who has kept the dignity of a prince throughout captivity, the boy with the dead man’s eyes. The boy who was powerful enough to resist the thrall of cold iron, if for a split-second; the boy who used that power to heal a bird.
The boy, with bird’s bone hands and a mother who darns his clothes.
Arthur could not bear to see him burn.
In another world, he thinks, biting his lip, he might have come to respect the boy in his own right. In another world.
-
Night falls.
In hindsight, Arthur thinks, the choice had been made for him from the beginning. There had been no choice for him, from the moment he had set his eyes upon the slip of a boy, and thought: Look at those limbs; I could have broken them in my sleep.
It’s easy enough to get past the guards. There had never been guards set aside just for the boy, because no-one wants to guard a sorcerer, even if it is naught but a young child. The guards set at the camp’s perimeter are drowsy and worn, after the long grueling trudge to the rocky overhang they now camp beneath, through drizzling rain and biting-cold winds.
The boy comes to disturbingly fast when Arthur jabs a finger into his side. Arthur watches the glint of the moonlight off his eyes as his eyelids snap open, face snapping around to face Arthur; and then relax, as it registers who exactly had disturbed his sleep.
Had the boy had much cause to fear those come to take him away in his sleep?
It is a sobering thought. Quickly, Arthur brings his finger up to his lip in the universal motion to shush. The boy’s eyes widen a little, and for the first time, Arthur reckons he could see a spark of life in those depths.
“I am going to need to be quick,” he whispers, as he deftly brings a piece of wire from his horse’s saddle to slot into the cuffs’ key-hole. He is glad now that he’d paid attentions in his lessons; young princes are never exempt to kidnappings, and the need to always be able to free himself from restraints had been drilled into him from a young age. “You won’t have much time, once you’re free. There aren’t any guards near the west perimeter. Find your way to the stream, if you can. Make your way back home. Retrace our steps. Don’t leave prints of your own.”
The boy’s eyes have been growing progressively wider, and by the end of Arthur’s words, his breath hitches a little. He finally looks his age, now; pale skin shivering a little with some unnamed emotion, breaths coming in quiet, snuffled huffs. His eyes are painfully hopeful, his lips parted slightly.
“You’re freeing me,” he whispers. Arthur, despite himself, can’t quite help the wan smile that rises to his lips.
“Whoever gave you that idea?”
For the first time since Arthur has seen him, the boy smiles back. He shakes his head, biting his lip. A faint click signals that the lock is free. There’s a faint, almost inaudible whoosh, and Arthur has to stop himself from flinching noticeably as the boy’s eyes glow a bright, searing gold before easing back into blue.
“Quickly,” Arthur hisses, his heart pounding in his ribs. He will have to return to his bedroll, if he is to avoid suspicion. He is Camelot’s only prince; he cannot afford to leave her. “Remember what I said.”
The boy’s hand comes up to grasp Arthur’s arm in a surprisingly strong grip. It’s soft. Warm. Alive.
“My name is Merlin,” he says, voice quiet, words fast. “I won’t forget this. I swear by the goddess, I won’t forget.”
A glimmer of gold, the faintest of breezes, and the boy is gone.
The alarm goes up around midnight. “What’s going on?” Arthur yells, as he pretends to rouse himself from his bedroll, sword tight in his grasp.
“The sorcerer, sire,” someone yells back. “He’s escaped!”
“Spread out! Search to the East,” Arthur commands, careful to keep his face grim. “The going would have been easiest.”
“No sign whatsoever, sire,” Caradoc reports come dawn, head hung, a repentant expression on his face. Arthur dismisses him. If anyone were to look upon Arthur at that moment, they would see the grim, angered prince; aghast at the idea that a sorcerer has managed to slip his grasp. They would see a heavy countenance, a troubled, loyal prince to his realm.
But inside, his heart soars, very much like the bird that takes after the sorcerer-boy’s name-
Merlin.
To be continued…