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“Shaman, wait! My daughter is very sick, please, can you heal her?” Another woman running after his horse. Gellert sighed. With shoulders stiffened from the expectation of following violence, he lightly tugged on the reins of Aethon to get him to a standstill. Slightly turning around without swinging out of his saddle yet, he tipped his head at the young woman lifting her hem to keep it from trailing through the mud. There had been weeping rain in the air for three days straight now, a misting, whispering rain too light to be bothersome and cold enough to make anyone freeze. There was no escaping it: the water seeped into everything. Even oiled cloth over the back of Aethon was no match to the southern rains. It sat like little pearls of glass in the black hair of the woman in her roughly spun, simple dress as she curtseyed to him, shielding her eyes from the rain.
“Are you one of the King’s magicians, my lord?”
“I am no lord,” Gellert replied curtly, “indeed, a magician on my way home is what I am. The staff makes it sort of hard to miss, does it not?” She had the courtesy to get a little sheepish as he briefly lifted the perfectly balanced staff from birch wood over Aethon to her side. “And what is your name?”
“I am called Amelia, Sir. Please, if you could spare the time, we have shelter and refreshments if only you save my little daughter. She labours with fever, sweats, a nasty cough and she has not been lucid in two days. It is luck that brings you through, I know it.”
“No,” Gellert huffed, “just shit weather. Alright. How young are we talking?”
She chattered on while he reeled Aethon around, making him walk slowly next to the woman stiff with the cold and obvious exhaustion. He had no assault to fear here, he felt. Usually, by now the prickle of a bad omen would run down his neck in time for him to reveal any ill-willed, superstitious fool between the huts. The villages were in a sorry state. King Arthur’s prosperous, lenient fortune did not expand into the very reaches of the kingdom, one of the reasons why Gellert was here in the first place. Not particularly enthusiastically, it should be mentioned. He had further yet to go.
The girl indeed had a fever, and next to her incessant coughs that weakened her considerably and seemed to pain her, Gellert didn’t like her erratic heartbeat. If nothing was done, she would be dead in a few days. Still, there was not much he could actually do for her aside from grinding together dried herbs from his pack and two fresh ones from the edges of the village, bind it into a poultice that he applied to her chest and her forehead, and speak the usual prayers to spare her from the ancestors’ attention yet. Her fever he sought to break with a tea that he prepared for the women with instructions how to do it herself for the next days. Either it would work, or the girl would die. It had nothing to do with magic: this was healer’s work. He had long given up on explaining to peasants that while connected, the two were not actually the same.
“You need a herb woman, not a magician,” he told her with a sigh stuck half-way up his throat. As much as he tried to keep himself aloof from the plebeius for reasons of having been driven out of more villages by stones than he could count on two hands, seeing a girl of scarcely five years die of something so simple as a fever that came with the cold season no matter how thickly the windows were stuffed against drafts pulled unpleasantly at him. “You have almost made it through the cold season. Avoid the rains yourself, wash your hands before and after you touch her. Her mother will be useless for her if you fall sick yourself. Do you have a husband left to care for you?”
“No, Sir,” she replied quietly with downcast eyes. Her ring made of iron told him enough. A soldier’s widow at not even thirty years of age; she could not be older than him. Good grief…
“That is unfortunate. I will send a healer from the capital to look after your village. We don’t need this to spread. Do not be alarmed, please, I have merely seen a fever take out entire settlements too often to be careless with such afflictions. This is not your fault, do you hear me?”
There was a beat of silence.
“Yes, Sir.” When he refrained from saying anything else, searching for the words of good luck and farewell without sounding too pessimistic, she curtseyed again to scuttle over to the single table in the hut where bread gone half-way hard and cheese good enough to eat yet sat. The cold kept edibles longer than during the warmer seasons to come. “Take this for your path, Sir. You have a long way to go with bandits littering the road.”
“Thank you,” he said.
To call the trampled path through the endless woods a road was an irony funny enough to scoff at, but he kept his mouth shut about it. At least she had a sensible head on her shoulders. The food he took gratefully, intent on eating it on his way out of this nameless, tiny village as impoverished as the rest of the kingdom’s reaches. No wonder people were pouring into Mercia to the East: Camelot seemed to be doomed.
Perhaps the King would see reason when he rode through here soon. If he was still intent on going after that stupid cup, there was little but to show him the limits of his power. He was a good man, King Arthur, a good King, perhaps the best they would ever have, for he cared not about the nobility’s demands and the Lords’ money meant to turn his head this way or that. The King cared for Merlin, his half-sister Morgana, the stupid cup, his honour, his sword and the kingdom in that order. Mother Earth help him, Gellert was as loyal to him as anyone in Camelot; he had sworn his life and his services to His Majesty without a second of hesitation after having come to Camelot from across the sea. Fate had brought him here. He only wished for fate to care more about the kingdom than its Once and Future King, that was all.
For seven more days, Gellert rode through the mud that coated Aethon’s legs up to the hips and shoulders. Even under the forest canopy, the weeping rain found a way to trail into his neck despite that he kept his woollen hood up and his red cloak drawn closely around him. The only motivation that kept his nights short and the darkened days long was the prospect of Camelot, his dry chambers and his dry bed at the end of the journey. Next winter, Merlin could make the rounds himself again, damn the old man. Albus and him would keep his fires burning.
No, he could not do that to His Majesty unless he brought the greatest hypocrisy upon himself. The truth was that he ached for Albus day and night, the weather only did its part to make him miserable. In short, he was homesick. What an extraordinary inconvenience.
When the walls of Castle Camelot finally came into view, tall, thick, unbreached, proud in the chilled evening air, he actually had to bite back tears of relief. Winter had reduced the flesh on his bones to little left over. The prospect of a hearth-fire with venison on it made his mouth water. Among the town that spilled out all around the castle walls, he was well known, so instead of veering out of his path as though he was bringing an ox herd home, not news of the farthest edges of Camelot, many tipped their hats at him. Every patrol that he had met so far had been equally as relieved to see him for numerous reasons. Still. The truth was that the people of the castle were quite alone in their good will.
A new scar ran down Gellert’s left shoulder where he had thrown off a blow against his neck. It ached in the unceasing rain; periods of dry sunlight were few and far in between, so his clothes clung to him like wet fur. His pack was lightened by all the sick he had treated, which was about the only thing he had been glad about on his return journey. He had learned, he had practiced, he had been alone with nature to root himself in the good earth once more. In truth, he felt more settled now than he had upon taking his leave from teary-eyed, strong, resilient Albus. But by the steadily weeping heavens, he was so damned glad to be home.
After the guards had motioned Gellert through with brief bows and salutations, a single, bone-rattling horn sounded from up overhead in the gatehouse. It was the herald of a member of the royal family coming home. Out the workshops huddled against the inner walls of the outer ring people came pouring in their work clothes with tools still in hand, a woman gifted him snowdrops still plump and smelling faintly of the coming spring that he thanked her for with a nod. At the stables, Aethon was immediately taken into the care of the King’s own stable hands. Merlin’s white mare huffed her greetings to him. The stink of wet horse probably clung to him like a second skin, but in the dry stable with the scent of hay and fur in his nose, Gellert allowed himself to smile. Dear gods above, he was glad to be back.
Through the second ring he passed on foot, sighing about the abominable state of his boots. They were ready to be tossed out. Another horn was blown overhead, and by then, a set of six guards in clean armour and cloaks of a much more vivid red than his own came out to greet him. Compared to them, he looked the part of a common highway vagabond if not for his staff that was half a hand’s width larger than himself. Tempted to use it as a walking stick as Merlin usually did, he let himself be taken into the middle of the squadron, grateful for the (largely unnecessary) protection despite that he wanted to sprint all the way to his quarters to barrel into Albus’ arms. This, at least, showed that he had not fallen out of the King’s favour in his absence.
Inside the innermost ring of walls, waiting for him were Lancelot and Gwaine, both the very picture of duty until he came into view in the courtyard. Seeing the unfathomably large keep again made Gellert smile up at the patchy sky. Wonder of wonders, he had actually made it home.
“Look what the cat dragged in!” Gwaine crowed, breaking into an ear-splitting grin before he thumped Gellert’s back. His pack was taken from him by ever-noble Lancelot who slung an arm around his shoulders and pulled him in briefly enough to hide the emotion in his eyes. Between them, Gellert felt like a reed in between oak trees, but he was perfectly alright with that. They could get sweaty and dirty on the training grounds, he had his magic to do what ten swordsmen could not.
“Glad to have you back, snowflake. You alright? Nothing too bad on the road?”
“Oh, you’ve no idea,” Gellert huffed, but he slung his own arm around Lancelot’s ridiculously firm waist and let himself be led into the hall. “Glad to be back. Any idea where Albus and Master Merlin have holed up?”
Gwaine clicked his tongue.
“Merlin has gone out to collect something or other shortly after His Majesty returned from a three-days’ hunting trip at which he - what was it? – Ah, he accidentally disturbed a dragon that he subsequently accidentally killed in self-defence. You only just missed Merlin coming back, still angry as a wet cat, with a basket full of mushrooms. I do hope he’s not going to try to slip any of those in His Majesty’s soup tonight. His Majesty’s already lightly wounded, nothing to worry your pretty little head about, but he certainly doesn’t need the shits too because his beloved Consort – sorry, his Court Magician who is unfailing and never makes a mistake, of course –“
“Gwaine,” Lancelot intercepted curtly after spending a full minute looking like he had swallowed something very sour. Gwaine was just about the only person at court who could go around spouting this nonsense unpunished. Putting him into jail meant that they had a prison riot at their hands by midday. Gellert found him insufferable, but the man was freakishly good with two daggers, and that made him interesting among the heaps of sword-roughened muscles walking around like they owned the place.
Merlin and Arthur, on the other hand, were the worst kept secret in all of Camelot. That ship had sailed long ago. Still, no need to shout it about in the courtyard.
“How does His Majesty manage to get himself into these situations constantly?” Gellert huffed in disbelief hopping up the stairs to the main entrance. That meant letting go of the two walking, talking ovens – something about being unfairly fit apparently also meant a lot of blood that had a lot of space to circulate underneath the skin. They looked so comfortable in their stiff armour even in the weeping rain.
“More importantly,” Gwaine twinkled at him in mischief, “how has he managed to get out alive the past forty years?”
Gellert knew full well that the King was laden with protective tokens sewn into his clothing, spells woven into the very fabric, invisible shields against magical attacks activated in necklaces and cures against every possible poison known to man hidden in the precious gems atop his many golden rings. He would know: Albus had created similar treasures for him before his winter circuit.
“You know, I think you should ask my Master that personally.”
“No,” Lancelot said, “you really shouldn’t.”
“Oh, it would be entertaining. The two minutes before he throws you out the laboratories are enough for me to steal Albus away from him.”
“Ooohh, barely come home and already on a rescue mission?”
“Fuck off, Gwaine,” he responded cheerfully walking backwards into the hall, immensely glad about the slight elevation in temperatures. It was dry if nothing else. Dusty, smelling of straw, soap and woodsmoke. Mother Earth, he had missed Camelot. Gwaine’s hand he lightly beat away from ruffling his matted white hair which had gotten him the nickname:
“That spot in your bed’s taken, snowflake, though if you’re offering-“
Lancelot still was the smarter one of the two. Smartest one in the Knight’s Order, to be honest. He got a grip on Gwaine’s collar at the neck to yank him away from Gellert’s playful shove with the staff as if it was second nature.
“We’re going. We are. Going. Forgive him, please, he’s an idiot and he’s bored.”
Taking back his offered pack from Lancelot, Gellert merely threw him a lax approximation of the King’s salute and waved them off with the staff. Though it wasn’t exactly heavy as he had to fight with it, by the gods would he be glad to finally put it down. He watched the two grown men, seasoned fighters, fearsome Knights of the Kingdom push and pull each other out of the main doors, and to his great exasperation, already found himself in a much better mood. He had missed those idiots.
“Get him to play fetch, maybe that’ll make him bearable for a minute!” he yelled after them to the snickering amusement of servants whom he nodded at in passing. Gwaine threw him the finger.
Skipping up the grand stairs, Gellert passed the Banquet Hall, the Council Chambers, the Dining Hall all on top of one another, the guest chambers, from thereon up winding towers and past the library, ducked through the servants’ hallways underneath the roof trying his very best not to end up in the way, skidded around a corner into the west wing and hopped back down dirty wooden stairs to the staff quarters adjacent to the main citadel. Normally, Master Merlin was most likely to be found near the King, wherever that was on any given day. The smell of toasting mushrooms in front of the laboratories, a much more pleasant scent than he was used to down here, told him otherwise.
He barely remembered to knock before entering. The runes carved into the wood flared up white at his touch. How thickly it was embossed with silencing spells he only noticed upon carefully swinging it open. The voices inside were intimately familiar to him, though seldomly this loud. Merlin hated shouting. So, Gellert bit back his laughter as he silently crept inside and put his pack down by the door.
A long, comfortably warm room with window recesses carved into the stone stretched out in front of him. Down the centre, there were many tables full of flasks, bowls, mortars, overhung with dried and drying herbs, two rabbits yet to be skinned by the large fireplace at the far wall and a treasure trove of precious gems lined up on the shelves. To the right almost hidden by standing shelves full of scrolls a door led to the sleeping quarters, and in front of that door, Albus stood holding a bowl full of cream, silent and unobtrusive as a statue. Gellert was too busy staring at him, waiting until he was noticed, to listen to greying, unbowed Merlin tittering on about – ah, fuck. He had hoped to avoid the King until tomorrow when he was less exhausted and thus tended less towards tired, snappish honesty. Apparently, he had caught the tail end of a conversation that had Albus pale and stone-faced.
“Do you suppose my salves grow on trees?” was a phrase that Gellert had heard many, many times directed at himself already. It never failed to make him want to reply with something that started with ‘actually’ and usually ended with a childish complaint that ‘we collect these herbs for you’, so he had learned to keep his big mouth shut. The King, however, never had learned that lesson around Merlin. Might have had something to do with the reverse being true also.
“I will replenish your stocks, of course. Again, you have my apologies and my thanks. I know full well that I am in the best of hands.”
Ah, flattery. A serious strop, then. It had been a while since Gellert last heard the King apologize for something in earnest. While he debated whether he could simply replace Albus with a Shade of himself to pull the real deal away to snog him senseless outside, Merlin’s shockingly golden eyes flickered up to the King’s face still engrossed in… sewing his leg back together. So much for a light injury. Both were seated in front of the fire so that Merlin could mop a cloth into hot water repeatedly that Gellert didn’t have to come closer to guess was a deep pink. The scent of blood and herbs was heavy in the air underneath the toasting mushrooms which Albus kept a silent eye on. That, and Master Merlin with his quick, steady hands.
“One of these days, Arthur, I am not going to be here to keep you from bleeding out. Our healers are good, seeing as they have every single one of them been my students, but they do not possess an ounce of magic in their blood, and if not for that, I have stopped counting the instances in which you would have been dead as a door nail, do you hear me?”
The King leaned forward on his rustic stool then, lightly grasping one of Merlin’s wrists. Any other man would have lost a hand for that.
“Which is why I need you with me when I go to the Holy Land. Do you see that now? Today was an unfortunate accident on a hunting trip. The Holy Land is said to be vast and beautiful, but dangerous too. You could learn much, my friend.”
Friends. So they were back to square one today. Grand. That bad, then. Merlin’s eyes, flickering gold as he let go of whatever charm he had held the King’s leg together with before he had sewn the long wound running next to the shin shut, spelled nothing short of disaster.
“The answer is still no.”
The King slumped back, taking his hand back to himself. There was disappointment, hurt and something much deeper in his entire demeanour. He would never, ever, be seen like this outside these rooms.
“Merlin.”
“I am the High Druid, your Majesty. As such, the protection and guidance of my people lie with me.” The suture seemed to be done. Drawing himself up by his pride alone, Merlin straightened, strong and burdened with his own obvious pain. “I am the pillar of their small communities scattered over your entire kingdom. They have no-one else. Should any harm befall me, they would be doomed. Don’t – do not guarantee me safety, my liege, you know that I do not like promises which cannot be kept. Acknowledge it or not, but I am the last shield preventing the final bloodshed between my people and yours. Your father was a monster, Arthur, and as kind, as – well-meaning as you are, bless your reckless fool heart, such slaughter cannot be undone. It cannot. You have killed another source of magic in this land today. Think on that when you ride to retrieve your dead saviour’s grail.”
Gellert startled when he turned his head to look directly at him.
“My child, you are safely returned to us.” And there it was: the warmth that everyone so adored in Merlin, golden hearted, respectful Merlin who commanded respect with his raised chin alone. The unbroken, that was what they called him. Gellert went down on one knee lowering his head, keeping the birch staff upright with both hands as he tried to calm his heartbeat.
“Every word of what you said is true, Master. I have come home uninjured, but the realm is troubled. At your earliest convenience, my liege, I would speak with you in private.”
The mighty Once and Future King of the Blessed Realm Camelot sighed a deep, regretful sigh that tapered off into a groan as he pushed himself up to his feet holding onto the fireplace.
“Welcome back home to Camelot, Gellert. Rise, young man, you have done well. How much have you heard? You must forgive my inattentiveness. I fear that I am going to spend the rest of the day in the haze of willow bark tea.”
When Gellert straightened, it took all his willpower to fix his gaze on the King instead of letting if flicker to Albus in the corner of his vision.
“No forgiveness needed, your Majesty. I meant not to interrupt your conversation. All that I humbly ask of you is not to take my Master from us in darkening times, and if you can spare some more patience for your holy relic, the kingdom would benefit from a royal tour through the far recesses. Winter has done a number on the borderlands. There are bandit castles to the eastern border with Mercia, an outbreak of the plague last autumn has depopulated a whole strip of land to the north, and the south-eastern marshes are war-torn almost all the way to Londinium. The west stands strong against the Bretons, that is one of the only good tidings that I bring.”
Crumbling up the wet cloth that he had used to wipe the last blood off his hairy leg, the King slowly did a short few steps to hold out a hand for the bowl which Albus was clutching like he had entirely forgotten its existence. Instead of letting Merlin smear the wound as usual, the King dipped two clean fingers into the white mixture of fat and herbs to trail it wincingly down the long cut. Gellert did not believe for a second that it came from the dragon itself; the leg would have been gone in that case and the King with it.
“That is ill news indeed. Thank you for your honesty. I see my beloved’s way for blunt request in you. I like it better than the wily words of my advisors, so I will ask you one more thing: would you have said the same before you overheard our conversation?”
“Yes, Sire,” he answered immediately, glancing at Merlin so briefly that he couldn’t make out the details of his relief. “I came across a young mother – my age, I would say – a week ago in one of the numerous villages to the south. Off the trading route, as I wished not to get robbed a fourth time, for all the risks that the marshes bring for stones flying my way. She was kind to me after I did what I could for her little daughter unconscious with a fever. I imagine that the poor thing has departed by now; I could do little but to dry to draw out the heat through her skin, give her something for her chafed lungs and tell the mother to please wash her hands often. Being a soldier’s widow from the iron band around her finger and her living alone in a tiny, damp, dirty hut, she had no means for medicine, and these regions have not seen a herbal woman all winter, as they are few and far in between. I am no trained healer, Sire. My Master is the best in the whole kingdom, but my talents lie elsewhere. My understanding of the healing arts is well-developed, my memory is good and I have nimble hands to make poultices with, I can reliably sew shut wounds, I even assisted in five different births as the occasion called for it. But I can only do so much.” Drawing in a deep breath, he closed his eyes to hurtle through these dark thoughts that had plagued him for weeks. “Even if your holy grail could heal the sick, revive the dead and make friends of all people, you could not bring it to every single one of your subjects. It is physically impossible to be everywhere at once, and you would get nothing else done in the meantime. What we need, my liege, if I may speak freely –“
No protest came. The King gestured with his dripping rag.
“Go ahead while you are already at it.”
Refusing to be chastised, Gellert blinked and squared his shoulders. If he looked at Albus staring holes through him now, he would falter.
“The land needs schools. Magical ones, yes, but first and foremost for training healers. That will not solve our bandit problem nor the misfortune of people freezing to death in their huts which have been re-built a half dozen times because every army coming or going comes marching through, feeding off the land. But it would greatly elevate the farmers’ children, wives, sisters dying in the hundreds unnecessarily. They produce your grain, Sire. And they need to see you. Camelot is very far away indeed when one is surrounded by miles of forest, enemies to the east and only begrudging allies on all other sides. Your kingdom needs you.”
Slowly, through visible pains, the King sunk back down to his stool with his injured leg stretched out in front of him.
“You are not as angry at me about the dragon as your Master is.”
“No, Sire,” Gellert admitted despite his earlier exasperation. That wound looked nasty, and without Merlin’s magic, it would kill him in under a week with festering. “Dragons are notoriously hard to talk out of eating you when you have accidentally woken them from long slumber. I reckon you had no choice. Our people will burn and bury them with the proper rites.”
With a great, heaving sigh, King Arthur put the bowl of salve on the floor and tipped his head back with his eyes closed. It was an immense show in trust. Then he gestured for Albus to stop looking quite so statuesque, quirking a little smile that made him very handsome. In between his bouts of extraordinary stubbornness, Gellert could see what Merlin saw in him.
“Go on, you are practically vibrating out of your skin, both of you. Put your staff down; you have fulfilled your duty. I will bother you no more and leave you to your reunion. You have given me much to think about, young man. For what it is worth,” and there he opened his clear blue eyes to look directly at Merlin himself, “I truly am sorry. For upsetting you so by getting wounded on a stupid rock, even if the fall saved me, for killing a creature that you hold in high regard and for not being able to greet one of my own properly. It has been a long winter for all of us.”
One of my own. Before Albus collided with him, Gellert could make out Merlin lowering his head in gratitude with wet eyes. Then, Gellert’s world consisted only of the sweet herbal smell of Albus’ hair and the warmth of his breaths coming fast against his neck. Albus gave a sound similar to being punched in the gut, a mixture of a groan and a sob and laughter all at once. That was all the warning Gellert got before his legs wrapped around his hips. Holding him up was a matter of long familiarity. Staggering back against the door more or less in control of his own balance ripped one of these laughter-sobs from him also, and if Albus’ trembling hands in his hair had not done him in, the quick prayer laced with magic mumbled into his collar did. Shuddering from head to feet, he nudged Albus’ cheek with his nose so they could look at each other, drinking each other in.
“You came back. By all the gods in the backwater hedge ridges, Gellert, I thought you would never come back home. Robbed three times! Are you alright?”
Those blue eyes. Blue as a cloudless summer sky.
“I am now. Kiss me hello? You’re heavy.”
A noise of outrage escaped him that opened up Gellert’s entire heart. Albus’ feet gently slid back down to the floor, Gellert’s head hit the door, and then they proceeded to completely forget about the King and their Master in quiet conversation by the fireside. They had been young once too, after all.