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They drew rein, and sat gazing around them.
They had followed the path through the deep forest, and it had opened out into this clearing. In the centre of the clearing stood a stone-lipped pool filled with glittering water. The wilderness had overrun the stone ruins that gleamed like bone, there, between the trees, but the forest itself stood back from the pool. The branches bowed low toward the pool from a distance, as if in a gesture of deference; so that the water lay open under a window of blue sky.
“We will camp here tonight,” the prince said, eventually. “It is early to set up camp, but I doubt we’ll find a better place than this before dark.”
“It is beautiful,” the magician said, agreeing with the words his prince had not said.
It was cool and quiet. The clearing around them was a tapestry, woven from deep russets and greens and blacks, spotted with gold patches where the sun danced on the forest floor. The air smelled damp and fresh. Invisible birds piped in the canopy, and the water that ran down a stone channel glittered silently like glass.
The two young men dismounted and watered themselves and their horses from the cold, clear water. Then they went about their routine of setting up camp in a comfortable silence. Prince Arthur tended their horses, unsaddling, feeding, grooming and finally hobbling them to graze freely, while his magician explored their surroundings, and collected firewood for their campfire.
When Merlin returned to the pool, the prince was sitting on the stone edge, one knee drawn up to his chest, gazing thoughtfully into the crystal water. Merlin reported that the buildings were entirely ruined, with collapsed roofs, filled with brush and unpleasantly damp inside. And, he said, grinning, he had found a whole tangle of berry-bushes that were perfectly ripe and ready for picking.
That night, the prince and his magician supped together like wild gods, on berries straight from the branch, washed down with water so icy it nipped at the throat. It was declared to be a meal fit for a prince.
After the meal, they sat on the stone ring around the pool, dangling their feet in the water and watching their horses graze. Merlin picked up parts of Prince Arthur’s armour, and with the calm of great practice, began reinforcing the protective layers of spells he had inlaid into it. The prince watched him, fascinated as always by the exercise of magic.
“Why do you suppose no-one lives here anymore?” Merlin asked, without looking up from his work. His fingers were busy on the steel, rubbing and massaging, and his eyes fluttered with gold.
“I don’t know,” Arthur admitted. “I didn’t even know there was a ruin here.”
“I can tell you this much,” Merlin said, lifting his eyes to glance at the silent trees. “This place has seen magic.”
“What sort of magic?”
“It’s hard to tell. I think, all different kinds. I can feel the echo of it in the shadows.”
… … …
Arthur was awoken in the middle of the night by the sound of retching.
He sat up on his elbows, his blankets falling from his body, and gazed into the dark. “Merlin?” he called, worried. “Are you all right?”
The reply came back hoarsely from somewhere in the trees. “I’m all right, Arthur. I think I had too many blackberries, that’s all. Are you well, yourself?”
“I’m all right. You sound awful. You’re sure you’re all right?”
“Better out than in…” He heard the sound of crunching steps coming across the clearing; unsteady steps, as if Merlin was weak on his feet and treading hesitantly. “I think the worst is over, though. I’ll be right as rain in the morning.”
“You’re the expert.” He lay back down in his blankets. “Have some water; it’ll clear your mouth out.”
…
But in the morning, Merlin was not as right as rain.
He moved rather more slowly than usual; stiffly as an old man, and he carried his head low. He made no complaints, but Arthur looked at his pallor and his solemn expression, and decided against riding on that day.
“I am in no hurry,” he said. “Don’t be sorry, Merlin. There’s really no-where else I would rather be than here, right now.”
“I may have picked up something from that last village we rode through,” Merlin said apologetically. He had his blanket wrapped around his shoulders for warmth, in spite of the summer heat.
“Well, if you will insist on stopping to look at sick people, you’re going to catch things,” Arthur chided, his brows arched teasingly.
“You know, I am still nominally a physician’s assistant. I’m supposed to look at sick people,” Merlin chided. “People would wonder if I didn't. But that woman just had a bit of a cold. It will pass in a few days.”
“We can afford to stay here for a few days. I’ll set a few snares so that we can spare the rations,” Arthur said, getting up. “You just sit there, take your time and get better.”
He went over to the spring, and after a few minutes Merlin got up and joined him, holding his blanket around himself like a shawl. They sat on the stone, and gazed into the depths. The water was so pure, it was as if there was no liquid under them; only a pane of dancing glass between their eyes and the fallen leaves on the pool’s floor.
“It’s beautiful here,” Merlin said. He dipped his hands into the water, and drank from his cupped palms.
“I meant what I said,” Arthur said. He lifted his gaze from the pool to look at Merlin. “There’s nowhere else I’d rather be, right now. In a place like this,” he gestured around him at the serene clearing, “Everything is simple. I can pretend for a little while that you’re just an itinerant magician, and I’m just another simple knight errant.”
“A simple knight erratum,” Merlin corrected, setting his head on one side, his eyes narrowed cheekily. “A knight erroneous. To be corrected in a later edition. Life is never going to be that simple for us. You know that.”
“Would you like me to push you in, Merlin?”
Merlin grinned openly. “Two can play at that game,” he said, and made a little flicking gesture with his fingertips.
Arthur felt himself being shoved bodily backward, and clutched at the stone under him with a squawk. “If you weren’t sick…!”
Merlin laughed at him.
…
That night, Arthur did the cooking instead of Merlin. He roasted freshly caught rabbit on a spit over the fire, and supplemented it with more berries, the last of the dried peas, and hard-baked bread. Merlin got back under all their blankets after supper, and curled up in a ball.
“This is definitely the influenza,” he observed, without moving or opening his eyes.
“Is it?”
“Headache, aches in the body, weakness, and a general malaise. Influenza, no question about it. And my magic feels funny, as if it’s less than it should be.” He swallowed, and shrugged himself deeper into his blankets. The top end of his blanket lifted of its own accord, and folded itself snugly around his ear, tucking him in against the night air. “The flu takes some sorcerers that way. It will pass.”
“Is there anything I can get for you?” Arthur asked, from where he knelt on one knee, stoking up the fire and adding more deadfall to it. “Anything you want me to do?”
Merlin opened his eyes blearily and blinked up at him. “Just need time, that’s all. Warmth, rest, and plenty of fluids.”
“All right.”
Merlin yawned. “If you really want, you can make some tea.”
“You have tea? Here?”
“Camomile tea, in my saddlebag. If you could make me a decoction of that it would be very nice. Very nice indeed.” He let his eyes slide shut and sighed deeply.
“I’m sure my cooking skills can manage a cup of tea.” Arthur straightened, and picked up their pot to fetch water. “Tea it is, then, coming up in a few minutes.”
Merlin wriggled in his blankets. “Camomile. Matricaria recutita. It’s good for so many things. Soothes all sorts of digestive troubles … stomach spasms … muscle pains … nervous complaints... very good for period pains…” His voice trailed away sleepily.
Arthur knew he was listening to a potted version of one of Gaius’s lessons. “You’re a lot sicker than I thought if you have period pains.”
But his joke fell flat. Merlin simply said, “My head hurts,” and rolled over. His blankets rearranged themselves obediently around him again, so that Arthur was left looking at the back of his head.
Arthur felt slightly let-down. He felt himself trying to think of another joke, something to cheer him up, make him smile – but he forced down the urge. Merlin was sick; he couldn’t be expected to appreciate a good joke, and trying to jolly him alone probably wouldn’t help anyway.
He’d regain his sense of humour when he got better. That would be tomorrow, probably. He went to fetch the water for the tea.
… …
But the next morning, when Arthur opened his eyes, rolled over, and cast his first anxious look at Merlin, it was obvious that Merlin was not better. If anything, he looked even worse.
When Arthur expressed his worry, Merlin waved him away. “It’s just the ‘flu. Let me sleep, Arthur. It’ll pass.”
“Are you in pain?”
“No. I’m just so tired. Please, just let me sleep, Arthur.”
Arthur spent the first part of the day watching him, worried, but also bored. He couldn’t leave the camp to go hunting. Merlin told him to go, but he wasn’t willing to leave Merlin alone. So he stayed in camp.
He sat, drawing idly with a stick in the leaf litter, turning over the leaves and examining the insects underneath, while Merlin slept. The horses grazed contentedly, hobbled so that they could not wander far, and the sound was rhythmic and hypnotic.
Merlin drifted in and out of sleep, talking little. He woke when Arthur disturbed him, and when it was time to eat, but then as soon as he lay down his eyelids slid down again, and he was out.
By that afternoon, Arthur could not shake off the gnawing worry that Merlin was sicker than he said he was. The idea sat in his mind like a cloud, and was not lifted when Merlin awoke briefly, asked for tea, and then insisted again that he just had the influenza. He drank the tea, and then huddled back in his blankets and went back to sleep.
Arthur began to be alarmed, that evening. Merlin’s face had gone desperately pale, and his hands, when he moved at all, seemed to grasp feebly, as if they become an old man’s hands during the day.
He sat and watched Merlin, trying to convince himself that he had nothing to worry about, but could not shake the feeling that something was wrong. All right, Merlin wasn’t feverish. And he wasn’t delirious. And he wasn’t battling for breath. He wasn’t coughing, or vomiting, or…
But surely it wasn’t right, just to sleep and sleep. He was just lying there, sleeping and seeming to grow smaller and weaker every hour. Every time he woke up, he seemed to say less, and move about less. His usually fastidiously clean-shaven face was already grubby with a growth of beard. His cheekbones stood out sharply under his skin, as if he was losing weight in front of Arthur’s eyes.
By nightfall, Arthur was beginning to worry that Merlin might not just be sick. He might be seriously ill.
And if he was…
Arthur knew nothing of nursing the sick. Merlin was the one with the medical knowledge, but Merlin was already too weak to look after himself.
What if it rained? The cold would make him worse. It might give him a chill. Or pneumonia. And then he might actually….
His mind shied away from the thought, as if thinking it would bring it from his mind into reality, like a fish drawn to the light on a hook. Merlin insisted that he had the flu. Merlin should know. Healthy young men did not die from the flu.
Perhaps they could move to the ruin, if it rained.
He would not disturb Merlin with his worries now. If he had to, he could carry Merlin to the ruin.
He felt very alone – more alone that if he had, in fact, been alone. To sit in a camp with Merlin in total silence was unearthly. Merlin had kept up a non-stop babble of conversation, for so long, and in so many camps, that Arthur had grown used to the sound. Merlin talked and talked, he gabbled and babbled, endlessly, unstoppably – it was a miracle he hadn’t yapped out his secret years before he actually did. For there to be silence between them, on the rare occasions when there was, made a hole in Arthur’s world, a deep lack that Arthur himself usually felt compelled to fill with one-sided babble of his own.
But now he could not. Merlin needed his rest. He could not disturb his healing with babble.
Arthur looked after their horses, collected another rabbit from his snares, and sat alone watching Merlin’s restless sleep, silent and worried.
Perhaps he should have loaded his friend onto his horse on the first morning, and ridden for a warm inn with someone who knew what to do.
But it was too late, and it didn’t matter, now. Merlin would feel better in the morning. He had become ill so fast. Surely he would recover just as fast.
Day slipped into darkness, without a change. Merlin did not wake when Arthur went to bed.
… …
The next morning, there was no improvement.
When Arthur knelt at his side and pressed his hand to Merlin’s shoulder to wake him, at first there was no response. All their blankets were now tucked around Merlin, as well as Arthur’s red cloak. He could feel the coldness of Merlin’s skin. He panicked, and shook harder, terrified he would not wake, but the dark blue eyes opened and looked at him blankly.
“Merlin?” he asked. “Come, sit up and eat this.” He proffered the bowl of soup.
Merlin looked up at him expressionlessly, his unshaven face as pale as wax, and frowned blearily. “What?” he muttered, dazedly. “Where am I?”
“We’re in camp. You are very sick, Merlin. I’m going to help you, but you have to sit up and eat this.”
“Arthur?”
“Yes. Come on, sit up.”
Merlin sat up, with Arthur’s arm behind his shoulders, but he was clearly so weak that without the support he would have sagged back again limply. Merlin was trembling visibly, and Arthur decided to forego the spoon in favour of simply holding the bowl to the bloodless lips and letting him drink the lukewarm liquid. Arthur wrapped his right arm around the thin shoulders, and lifted the bowl with his other hand.
Merlin drank, like a child, and let him know when he’d had enough by coughing on the soup.
Arthur moved the bowl away to give him air, but when he brought it back again a trembling hand came up and pushed at his wrist. “No more,” Merlin whispered.
“Come on, Merlin. I know it doesn’t taste very nice, because I’m an even worse cook than you are, but you have to eat.”
“No more.” Merlin turned his face away.
“Merlin, you have to eat something. Come on, just a bit more,” but Merlin squirmed out from his arms and slumped down again in his blankets.
Arthur sighed, and set the bowl down. “All right. We can try again later.” He re-tucked the blankets around the still body, while Merlin watched him expressionlessly, without moving to help him.
After a few minutes, Merlin spoke. “Who are you?” he asked.
Something in Arthur’s chest tightened; an unbearable tightness that took his breath away. He doesn’t know me. What disease is this? He managed to suck air past his terror to speak. “Don’t you know? I’m Arthur. I’m your friend.”
“A friend?”
“Yes. I’m your friend.” It was more than he could bear, this. He leaned closer to the long pale face. “Look at me. I’m Arthur. Don’t you know me? I’m your friend.”
Dark blue eyes looked at him, mildly worried. “I don’t think I know you. Who are you?”
“I’m Arthur.”
This went on for a while, until Arthur’s eyes were too filled with tears to see the terrifying alien blankness on the familiar face, and then he got up and walked away. He sat on the stone around the spring, and splashed the cold water on his face.
Could he try to tie Merlin to his horse, and lead him out of the forest? It was a day’s ride to the nearest village – two days at the slow pace he would have to take. Could Merlin manage two days tied over his saddle? Was it better to ride with him to the village that had not, in fact, had any sort of physician, or leave him in his warm blankets to fight his way through whatever he was fighting? Which would be better for Merlin? He could not even wake Merlin to ask him.
If only he had not stopped in that village! Merlin would not have stopped to see that sick woman at the village forge. He would not have caught this… whatever this was.
Was that village woman even now suffering from the same thing? Were there others outside the forest with it? Beyond the wall of trees, what was happening? The contagion could have spread. The whole world could be in the grip of a raging pestilence, with thousands of others lying as Merlin was.
No! It could not be happening. It was a dream, a horrible dream. Merlin was going to be better in the morning!
He went back and sat watching Merlin. He felt horribly alone, and desperately helpless.
Merlin lay just feet away, swaddled as comfortably as he could be, with fresh water close at hand if he woke and asked for it. His deeply-sunken eyelids twitched in a dream. He lay right there, close enough to touch, but impossibly far away.
Arthur, watched the pale face twitching restlessly. He knew that in his sleep, Merlin was fighting a desperate battle. He was fighting all alone, unaided, and Arthur wished desperately he knew how to help him.
For all his power and his titles – for all his might in battle, and his victories, and his fame – he was helpless to do anything but watch, and nurse Merlin as best he knew how. He could not help his friend to fight.
Arthur wished he had a god to pray to, but the new religion had always sounded too far fetched for him to believe in, and he doubted the Old Gods would heed the prayers of a Pendragon. He had helped kill too many of their worshippers. He sat, and watched Merlin, and wanted to scream denial at the silent trees. Instead, he found himself weeping.
… …
At noon, he tried to wake Merlin again, but this time when the eyes opened there was nothing in them. The beloved dark blue irises had gone a pale colour – not the bright gold of magic, but a watery grey like old linen.
He didn’t bother with soup, this time. He poured water into the unmoving lips, and watched to make sure each sip was swallowed.
Then he went away again, and sat next to the spring with his head in his hands, bent double over the ache in his heart as if he could thaw the pain out by hugging it.
Merlin was heaving his breath in and out of his chest noisily. His breathing was uneven. A few short pants, interrupted by deep sighs, and every so often a silence, a pause that stopped Arthur’s heart every time. And then the cycle began again with the panting. It seemed to cost him a great effort to breathe, because he was pale, and coated with sweat.
The first time he’d heard that gasp for breath, he had frozen still, terrified, praying that he had not heard it, but there was no denying it now. He knew what the irregular breathing meant. He’d heard it before. Once heard, that breathing could never be mistaken for anything else. Merlin had but hours to live, a day or two at the most.
How had this happened so suddenly? It could not be happening. Healthy young men did not simply lie down and die from the flu!
There had been no warning. There had been no sudden crisis, or injury, or battle. They had ridden here, happy and healthy, and then Merlin had slipped, gently, quietly, by imperceptible degrees to … this.
There was no point now, in wondering if he should tie Merlin to his horse, and ride in search of a physician. It was too late for a physician to help Merlin. It was too late.
He’d wept earlier, but now he found that he could not. The tears had all been scoured away, replaced inside him with cold certainty and dry icy dread.
Earlier, he’d wept, in fear for Merlin’s life. He’d wept because Merlin might die, but now he found it was different. He had no more tears left. Before, Merlin might die. Now, Merlin was dying.
He found that the difference between the fear and the certainty was more enormous than he could contemplate. His mind cringed away from the knowledge.
Merlin was dying, and Arthur could not bear to sit and watch him any more.
He put his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands, and stared unblinking at the grass between his boots. He could hear that terrible panting behind him. He couldn’t bear to hear it, but he was more terrified to hear it stop. He was pinned here, too hurt to watch, too hurt to not watch for more than a few minutes.
If Merlin was awake, Arthur would be with him every minute. If Merlin was awake, he could tell Arthur what to do. If Merlin was awake, Arthur would be with him, holding him, helping him, savouring this last time with desperate love.
But Merlin was not awake. Merlin wouldn’t know if Arthur sat next to him, or not. Merlin had already gone. His cheerfulness, his loyalty, his bright trust in Arthur, his quick wits, were already gone, dissolved under the attack of whatever was killing him.
If only he hadn’t stopped at that village…
If only Gaius was here…
If only he’d turned for home as soon as Merlin fell ill…
If only he knew what to do…
Merlin was dying, and Arthur could not weep. He could only wait.
… …
“You’re a very bad servant,” the voice observed.
Arthur jumped at the sound. The battle of Merlin’s breathing had been the only sound in his world for so long that the sudden noise of a voice seemed unnaturally, grotesquely loud. He jumped up, but he had been sitting still for so long his muscles had frozen, and he wobbled on his feet. When he turned to see who had spoken, he had to search the edge of the clearing before he saw the speaker.
“If I were your master, I would hit you, but he won’t, because you’re a very bad servant. And you ate all my berries, too.”
It was a faun.
Arthur thought for a moment that he was dreaming, but Merlin was still noisily heaving his last breaths, and that was no dream.
“Who are you?” he asked the faun, sitting very still, and examining it.
He had always imagined that fauns were bigger, human-sized at least, but this one was tiny, no taller than Arthur’s knee. He looked like a boy from the waist up, with tangled black hair, but below his waist he had stout dun-coloured hindquarters. His little cloven hooves trod restlessly in the leaves, a constant quick stepping like a nervous colt.
Arthur wished Merlin was awake to see this. Neither of them had ever seen a faun before.
The faun cocked his head on one side. He rotated his jaw for a moment, rhythmically, exactly as a deer might, and regarded Arthur with wide eyes. “I live here,” he said, as if that was an answer. “Your master is dying.”
“He’s not my master,” Arthur corrected, still not moving. “He’s my friend.” He found his eyes filling again, uselessly. Friend, brother, confidant, adviser, protector… and he was dying, and all that he was and might have been was moot.
“Of course he’s your master!” the faun complained, skipping a little on his tiny hooves, and revealing a little tuft of tail. “He’s a great sorcerer, isn’t he? You’re only a mortal. But he won’t hit you. He’s dying. It’s the water.” He nodded nervously, a quick up-and-down flicking movement of his head and neck.
“The water?” Arthur turned, to look behind him at the spring. “Is there something in the water?”
The faun stared at him, and dared to step a little further out of the sheltering trees. “Don’t you know?” His boyish soprano took on the high disbelieving note of a child amazed at the stupidity of adults. “Everyone knows the spring is cursed. That’s why they call it the Cursed Spring, my grandfather says. You must never, ever, ever, drink from the spring, because the witch the mortals drowned in it in the Olden Days cursed the water for all time. Never, ever, ever drink the water from that spring. It’s the Cursed Spring.”
He pirouetted on his hocks, and would have been gone if Arthur had not jumped up. “Wait!” he cried.
The faun stopped, skittish, facing into the trees, but peeking back over his shoulder as if afraid that Arthur would grab him – as in fact, Arthur might have done, not too many years ago.
“Why is he sick? Why am I not sick too?”
“Because you’re just a mortal. If someone with magic drinks the water, it sucks all their magic out – gone, gone, gone, my grandfather says. But you’re just a mortal. You don’t have any magic to suck out.”
Arthur turned to look at Merlin – pale, weak, shivering Merlin. His mind ran back over the last three days. Arthur had been giving him water for days! All that tea!
“Oh, gods above,” he whispered.
“In the Olden Days, my grandfather says, if mortals had magic that they were scared of and wanted to get rid of, they used to come here and drink the water, and the water would suck all their magic out. Gone, gone, gone.”
“What happened to them? Did they get sick too?”
“I don’t know.”
“You must know something! There has to be something – something I can do! Think!”
The faun looked scared. “Maybe you can ask the Sidhe?”
“There are Sidhe here?”
“Of course not! They live under the lake.”
They had ridden past the lake on their way here, and would have stopped there instead of here, except that for some strange reason nobody lived on the lake's shore. That was understandable, if it was a gateway to the Other Country. “Would the Sidhe help?”
“Well. They won’t help you. But they might help him. But they might not. Or they might kill you.”
He had nothing to lose. He was willing to try anything. “Will you show me the lake?” he asked.
The faun hesitated. “My grandfather says I must leave the Sidhe alone. Never, ever, ever, talk to the Sidhe.”
“Your grandfather is very wise, but you don’t have to talk to the Sidhe at all. Just show me the way to the lake, and I will do all the talking. All right?”
The faun flicked his head up and down in a nod. “All right. I will show you.”
… … …
Arthur wrapped the blankets around Merlin's body so that they would not fall loose. Then he lifted Merlin up into a fireman’s lift, as carefully as he could. Merlin weighed appallingly little, even bundled up in the roll of blankets, and he didn’t wake when Arthur picked him up. When Merlin’s body was balanced over his shoulders, as gently as he could, he turned to the faun.
“Lead the way,” he said. The faun bounced on his little heels, flicked his tail, and skipped away between the trees, following the overflow channel from the spring.
The spring, and their horses, was quickly lost to sight behind the trees. The forest, that had been so lush and green around the spring, was revealed deeper in as grey and cold.
It was easy going, at first, through drifts of dead leaves, with thin whipcord saplings in vertical clusters like hanging wires. The light dimmed as they went further from the spring. The stone channel ended where the overflow water joined a shallow stream. They followed the stream downhill, through trees that grew denser and darker with every foot they went downhill. The faun led him, picking easily through spaces that Arthur had to barge his way through, and occasionally skipping on the spot to wait for him to catch up.
It seemed to take hours, and Arthur was soaked with sweat under his mail and gambeson, scraped, and scratched by twigs and thorns. He lurched and slipped over roots and bushes and treacherous patches of wet leaves. He had to push his way through branches with his free hand, trying not to let Merlin get scraped off by sharp points. At least the sleeping face was somewhat protected by the bulk of his own armoured shoulder. He cursed this treacherous forest, that had seemed to green and calm and lovely, but was now trying to bar his way, as if it wanted to prevent him saving Merlin.
At last, at last, the stream dropped over a last embankment, and the calm sheet of the lake opened before him.
It was as still and perfect as glass. The blue sky and snowy clouds were perfectly mirrored in it, as if the lake was not so much a body of water but a hole scooped from the land and filled with an extra fraction of sky. The scalloped shoreline was lined by trees, concealing the banks on either side. Nothing moved, not on the water, or above it.
The bank shelved gently, and Arthur passed the faun to stop at the water’s edge.
“Thank you,” he said to the faun. “I am in your debt.”
“A mortal is in my debt?” the faun said, astonished.
“I am very in your debt. Now, then. What do I – how does one call the Sidhe?”
“I don’t know,” the faun said. “Most people try not to.”
“Good point.” He stooped, and very gently let his burden slide backward from his shoulders to the ground.
The long bony face was not scratched, at least, and Merlin was still breathing. But his face had gone a ghastly fishy pale, made worse by the incongruously wild growth of beard. It seemed obscene, somehow, that such a healthy beard should thrive on the face of a man who was sliding inexorably into his death.
Arthur stroked the rough cheek, his heart burning, and then stood up.
The faun had vanished.
Arthur sat down on his heels again. “I wish you could tell me how to call them. You would know, I think. Really, Merlin, what will I do without you? I know what I would like my reign to be like, but I don’t know how to get there from here.” He stroked the motionless cheek again. “I need you, Merlin.”
There was no reply.
He stood up again, determined. The Sidhe had to come out now and again, or where did all those stories about stolen children come from? If there was a chance, even a tiny miniscule sliver of a chance, then he would try it.
“Sidhe!” he shouted. “Sidhe in the lake! I need to speak to you!”
A bird, unseen until now, took off from its shelter under the cover of a willow, and launched itself into flight across the water. Other than that, there was no reply.
“Sidhe in the lake! I need your help!”
The lake lay under the blue sky, unmoved. Perhaps he had better be more specific. “Sidhe of the lake! I, Prince Arthur Pendragon of Camelot, need your help!”
Nothing. Perhaps flattery…?
“Sidhe of the lake! Lords and Ladies! Immortal fey! I, Prince Arthur of Camelot…” Inspiration struck. They wouldn’t listen to him, would they?
“Sidhe of the lake, I call on you in the name of Mer- Emrys the Sorcerer! The last Dragonlord! He needs your help!”
Nothing. The lake just sat there.
Arthur turned his back, sagged to his knees in the mud. Tears sprang up in his eyes. Merlin’s face before him blurred, and he began to sob.
“Why are you crying?”
He jumped. The voice came from behind him – from the lake. It was a clear, perfectly enunciated soprano voice. He stood up quickly, and turned, wiping the tears from his eyes.
A … young woman … stood a few yards away in the lake itself, her long silky skirts falling into the water and seemingly merging into the dark green depths. She was impossibly pale, as if carved from frozen milk, and she was beautiful. Her eyes were green, her nose was arched, and her hair fell in a long blonde curtain – parting around long ears that pointed out horizontally like a horse’s.
Not a young woman, then.
Arthur pointed down to Merlin at his feet without taking his eyes off the Sidhe. “My friend is dying, and I don’t know how to help him. Please – will you help him?”
She stood knee deep in the water, he noticed, but where she was the water had to be waist deep, at least. Either she was standing on something just under the surface – or she was not, in physical reality, standing at all. He wondered what he was really looking at. He hoped he wouldn’t find out.
“We may. What ails him?”
“He drank water from the Cursed Spring. He is a sorcerer, and the water is killing him.”
“The Cursed Spring strips the magic from all who drink from it,” she said, slowly reciting, as if to herself. “But he does not have magic to give. He is magic. He cannot give that which makes him what he is. The water is stripping him from himself, tearing the very fibre of his being apart. He is not dying. He is … ceasing.”
Arthur staggered. “There must be something that can save him!” he cried.
“Perhaps. But there is always a price to be paid, for invoking the help of the Sidhe Elders. The balance of the world must be maintained.”
He straightened his spine, and drew his head up. “Anything. Name your price, and I will pay it.”
“Anything? He is ceasing. Great magic has a great price, Prince Arthur. A life for a life, a soul for a soul, coin for coin and blood for blood. The gate can be opened, but the toll must be paid. Are you still willing to pay the price?”
She wanted his life? His life? He was a prince – and Merlin was …
But he lowered his eyes to the waxy face at his feet, and without willing it, he knew better. Merlin would be a great physician. He was already a great sorcerer. He was unique, irreplaceable, a pinnacle, standing above the tide of humanity like a lighthouse.
“My life for his, if that’s what it takes.” Even as he said it, the enormity of his decision took his breath away. He shivered, involuntarily. He was laying his life down for Merlin's, not in the heat of battle, but deliberately. “Yes. I agree. I will pay whatever price you ask.”
“Why?” It might have been a demanding question, but there was a curious note in her voice that made her seem almost human.
“Because … he is who he is. He’s precious to me. Even without his magic – even before I knew he had magic, he was precious. And … he’s going to be a physician. A good physician will bring more good to my people than any number of princes and warlords. I’m just another prince from a whole lineage of princes – in a century I’ll just be an entry in a genealogy list. Forgotten.”
He wasn’t sure if the expression on the white face was genuine astonishment, or only gloating. He wasn’t sure he cared. “And it’s my fault that he’s sick. I rode out to hunt. I chose the route. I decided to stay. These are my own lands – I should have known about the spring. It seems only right to trade my life to undo my mistake.”
“You would give your life, to save his?” She tilted her head to one side, gazing at him closely. “Do you know what a rare thing that is? That a creature as weak and feeble as you should be willing to lay down his own brief life, for that of an immortal fey?”
“A fey?”
She pointed at Merlin, still unconscious at Arthur’s feet. It was the first time she had so much as looked at him. “Sidhe blood runs in his veins,” she said. “He is only part human. Half of his bloodline comes from our world, and not yours.”
“He’s a Sidhe?” Arthur said, astonished, looking down at Merlin – looking down at Merlin’s ears. Those long protruding ears he’d affectionately tweaked so often.
“He is what our people call a ‘cambion,’ – a hybrid. Half of one blood, half of another. He has all the vigour of a mortal, allied with all the power of the fey. Mongrel strength.”
“Does that mean you will help him?” he asked hopefully.
“We will try to help him. We can share our magic with him. But you must play your part.”
He nodded, firmly. “I’m ready.”
“Bring him to me.”
He bent down, and gathered Merlin into his arms again, for the short haul to the lake itself. He ran one arm under his knees, and the other under his back, and heaved him up. He held the warm weight close for a moment, and then turned and stepped resolutely down into the lake.
He sank almost immediately up to his knees, the water slopping over his boot-tops and streaming down inside his socks. Another heaving step, and he was thigh deep. Another, and he was in cold water up to his waist, feeling the weeds licking against his legs, holding Merlin just clear of the water. His boots were probably ruined. Merlin would be livid, but Arthur was going to be dead in just a minute or so, so it wouldn’t matter.
“Place him in the water,” the Sidhe commanded.
“He’ll sink!”
“He will not sink. He will come to me.”
Arthur sighed. “Sorry about the cold bath, my friend,” he whispered to Merlin, and then gently lowered him into the water. He had to bend his legs to do so, and the cold water climbed higher up his torso. He felt Merlin’s weight being taken up by the water, and let his arms come away. He straightened his back, and stood looking down at his friend.
Merlin floated. His face was above the water, and his knees, and his hands, but most of him was in the lake, buried in green water. His sleeping face was serene. Gently, he floated away from Arthur, toward the Sidhe, as if drawn on a current that Arthur could not feel. In a smooth glide, he reached her, and she reached out her hands to him, placing one palm on his brow.
“Wait!” Arthur cried out, realizing that this was the time. “What must I do now?”
“You? You wait.”
With that, she dropped vertically into the water. Arthur cried out, but Merlin was already gone, sucked away beneath the surface of the lake.
He found himself standing waist deep in the water, staring wildly at the ripples spreading out in rings from where they had disappeared.
… … …
If he was going to die, he decided after a few minutes of standing in the lake, he might as well die on dry land. He turned and slopped his way out of the water. His clothing was soaked, and his boots were filled with water, so that he sat down on the bank and pulled them off.
It wouldn’t be so bad to die, he supposed. Other people managed it all the time. Then again, if it was as simple as that, somebody would probably have taxed it.
He wondered how long it was going to take. He imagined that it would happen at the same time as the Sidhe – what had she said again? – ‘shared’ their magic with Merlin. When that happened, Arthur would die.
He hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye to Merlin properly, but he decided that he didn’t have to. Merlin would understand anyway, once he found out what had happened.
He hadn’t had a chance to tell anyone else what had become of him. His father would never know what had happened to his heir. The Crown Prince’s fate would remain one of those mysterious disappearances that are never solved, and the crown would pass on to one of his foppish cousins. Perhaps Uther would accuse someone else of his assassination… but it was a little too late to worry about the political repercussions now.
If Merlin was smart, he would avoid going back to Camelot and telling Uther that his son had exchanged his life for that of Merlin’s. He could imagine all too easily the disbelief, and dawning rage, that would come over his father’s face, at being told that little bit of news. No, Merlin wouldn’t be that dumb. No-one would be that dumb. He found that he could laugh, at the idea.
He sat on the bank of the lake, his socks just clear of the water, and hugged his knees. It seemed that every breath was filled with meaning, now. He could feel his heart beating, and the air in his nose. The sweat of his walk had long since cooled, and his wet clothing now made him feel cold, in spite of the warm sun.
It occurred to him to wonder what would happen to their horses, if no-one came back to get them. They were hobbled, at least, not tethered. They would presumably wander off, slowly, when they realized that no more oats were forthcoming. Or someone else would arrive at the spring and find two expensive riding horses with no riders – a surprise windfall.
He tilted his face up to the sunshine, his last sunshine, and waited patiently.
No-one can sit and wait forever, and maintain the same tense expectation. Sooner or later, the minutes must blur, and the moment become less meaningful, and the muscles relax.
He woke up lying on his side on the lake bank, aware of splashing noises.
Arthur sat up, startled to find he’d fallen asleep. He turned to look back at the lake.
Merlin was in the lake – Merlin, alive and well and wading towards him through the water.
Arthur was on his feet before he knew it. “Merlin!”
Merlin stopped, propped his hands on his hips, and grinned at him, and it was the old Merlin grin, wide and gleeful, and the sparkling intelligence had returned to his dark blue eyes. And he was even clean-shaven, too! “Did you miss me?” Merlin teased, ducking his chin and quirking his brows, as he always did.
“Of course I missed you!”
Merlin resumed his sloshing progress, thigh deep, then knee deep and Arthur reached down to grasp his hand and haul him up onto the shore.
"I thought I would never see you again!" he said, and the depth of his relief must have been in his voice, because Merlin laughed at him, and the laugh undid Arthur. To hell with dignity, his arms went about Merlin’s body of their own accord, and he clasped his friend to his chest. “Gods above, you’re alive, you’re alive,” he laughed.
He felt Merlin’s arms go around his back, hugging back. For a moment, Arthur squeezed him as tightly as he knew how, and then let go, and stood at arms length with his hands on the skinny shoulders. “Look at me!”
Merlin grinned at him, and Arthur put his hands on the sides of his face, the better to gaze at that grin. He was aware that he himself was grinning like a lunatic, but he didn’t care. “How much do you remember?”
“Not much. The last thing I remember is … eating roast rabbit? How long was I sick?”
“Three days. I thought you were on your way out. But now look at you! You’re alive! And … so am I!” He was alive too. Whatever price the Sidhe demanded, it was clearly not Arthur’s life, but something else entirely. He would worry about the true price later, but right now he did not care.
“You’ve waited here for me all this time?” Merlin said, and he pulled his head out of Arthur’s hands to look around them at the empty shoreline, and the quiet lake.
“What do you mean, all this time? It’s only been a few hours. Merlin, a few hours ago you were breathing your last, and here you are, alive and well as if nothing happened! Gods above, it’s so good to see you!”
“A few hours?” Merlin asked, visibly startled.
“Not more than three. And look at you now! Whatever the Sidhe did, it’s a miracle!”
Merlin’s face was suddenly sober. “Arthur,” he whispered, “I was on that side for about six months.”
Arthur frowned at him, suddenly struck. “Six months?”
“She had a lot of things to teach me…” Merlin turned his head to gaze back at the lake, and Arthur turned with him.
There was no sign in the sheet of water that anything other than fish lived in it. “They do say that time moves differently in the Other Country,” Arthur said, hesitantly.
“She said so, too.”
For a long moment they stared at the lake in silence.
“Let’s get out of here before she changes her mind.”
“Good idea.” Without any more debate they turned in unison, and Arthur led the way up the streambed.