Chapter Text
“i love you. is it enough? i’ll help you. is that enough?
i should have told you, but i thought you already knew.
i could not find the words to make it clear,
to make you know it.”
— genly / estraven (x)
Before the light, Merlin woke in the cold. It was dark; he was in pain. He was alone.
A vague recollection came: he and the knights, fleeing through a snowstorm.
He’d lost track, panicking, of Lancelot. And in front of him, Arthur was a flag of red in the white, disappearing into static. His friends—scattering, afraid. Morgana and her Saxons gave chase.
And then… and then?
It was freezing wherever he was; closing his eyes and opening them near the same. When he breathed, the cloud dampened the tip of his nose. Jagged-edged manacles bit into his suspended wrists, his skin otherwise numb.
This is bad, Merlin thought, calm yet. Fear numbed up his ankles like drift, but hadn’t piled to his neck. Not yet. He thought, where are the others? Arthur? Lancelot? Merlin had no way to know.
Morgana’s sharp-lipped face, her white skin and hair like a spill of pitch, flashed through his memory. He’d plummeted through some loose snow, remembered being dazed-pinned-suffocating under a massive drift. He remembered a hand made all of bone seizing his arm, pulling him out into the cold air. He’d blacked out.
And now, Merlin was half-sitting-half-dangling with his arms above his head, against a damp stone wall. The bricks leeched heat from his back. A closet? Was he in a closet? His chains clicked, the echo too small for a cell. His shoulders ached. Shivering, which he couldn’t help in such lung-recoiling cold, made it worse.
It had been a year at least since they’d heard any word of Morgana, and even longer since Merlin had seen her. The world had been uneasily silent on the matter of Morgana Pendragon, since she’d been driven out of the castle three years ago, her traitorous Agravaine discovered and dispatched, the kingdom reclaimed. These past years were Arthur growing into kingship, swift and keen and strong. They were peaceful, if not for the occasional curse or beast or assassin—dealt with by Merlin’s skill and Lancelot’s discretion. The weeks were comprised of friendship and feasts and stories from the tavern, and Merlin was proud of these years, more than many he’d seen Camelot through.
Some optimistic courtiers—the ones who didn’t know Morgana—had started hoping she was dead. Merlin knew better. She was too stubborn, and too vengeful to ever disappear quietly. So, when in the third winter of Arthur’s reign of peace, Camelot began receiving strange reports from the north, they went to investigate. The long-abandoned fortress in the frozen region of Ismere had been seen lit again, its black spires alive against glowing blue hills.
Do you think it’s Morgana? Lancelot said, as he and Merlin prepared for the trip.
Merlin said, do you?
It seems strange, Lancelot said. So far north—in a castle so long abandoned.
If it’s not Morgana, it’s someone else who means trouble.
Yes, Lancelot agreed. Will you need me?
Lancelot was his closest friend (barring Arthur, but Arthur was something different entirely), so of course he always would. But what he was asking was if Merlin expected to use magic, in some way he would need Lancelot’s help hiding. Or, taking credit for.
Lancelot was Camelot’s favourite knight—ever since ‘his’ great deed of slaying the Cailleach, thus saving the kingdom from the Dorocha. Merlin didn’t mind lending him that triumph, letting him bask in it, if only because he blushed without fail whenever anyone called him Knight of the Veil, and Merlin liked to tease him. Between then and now, several dozen small deeds Lancelot had also claimed; Merlin didn’t mind so much when it was Lancelot who held them in his stead.
I might, Merlin said.
Mm. They were in Merlin’s room, and Lancelot looked over at him from the window in such a way that the late afternoon warmed his whole silhouette. We’ll have to be careful.
Right—and when are we not?
Lancelot scoffed and rolled his eyes, and Merlin laughed.
They travelled north, the weather changing but their spirits high. Questing wasn’t so bad among friends, and for Merlin, sharing a camp with Lancelot was always a comfort.
Outside the city, they were greeted with windstorms and fog. By the time they reached the bleak, pale fields that separated the Northern Plains from Ismere-proper, the snow was coming down in clumps. Five paces ahead, and the thickness of it obscured all. They moved slowly through a sparse wood growing out of frozen ground, tracing gingerly along a cliff’s edge, camping whenever they lost the light. Below them, the first frontier of Ismere—a frozen, jagged floodplain—gasped to the grey horizon.
What do you see? Lancelot asked him privately, one night. Merlin was staring off over the edge of the cliff, watching Ismere’s ice below them turn black without the sun.
Just never been anywhere like this, Merlin said, and felt his words fell short.
No, neither have I.
Lancelot seemed statuesque in the thin, silver air.
Morgana appeared to them one pale morning, slinking out of nowhere just as a blizzard began. Leon had been on watch, but the weather made visibility near-impossible; it wasn’t his fault. Behind her, a sizable force of armed men at her command, and in her face—her eyes—the burnished threat of ever-powerful sorcery. Merlin remembered Arthur’s voice—hoarse and panicked like it rarely was—calling for them to run.
The blizzard worsened so fast that he wondered if Morgana was doing it, and he could barely see. Keeping his eyes open for longer than a second stung his vision with ice crystals. In the chaos, Merlin thought he saw someone flung off the ledge in the brutal grip of magic, and his stomach lurched, hoping that wasn’t Lancelot.
*
For several hours, Morgana left him shivering before she showed her face.
In long, frigid moments, Merlin tore at his chains, lost feeling in his hands, and starved. His jacket and kerchief were missing. In only his tunic, trousers, and socks, his fingers and toes were numb. Most of his weight hung off the joints of his shoulders, and he tried to pull himself up onto his haunches. It wasn’t sustainable. No amount of shifting would relieve him.
Over his head, an arrow-slit appeared in dimness and cast a glow over the room as the sun started to rise. He listened to men moving back and forth outside the door: footsteps, clanking of armour, indistinguishable words. Morgana’s force was waking.
The light was mock-yellow, like the colour of egg-white, when the door opened. Merlin flinched, looking up.
Morgana loomed in the doorway, wrapped in furs: a dark robe, and a cloak lined from neck-to-ankle with fox pelt. The hood hugged her neck—soft around her gaunt, chill-flushed cheeks. Snow dust clung to her edges… still, she looked warm, and Merlin envied her.
“Merlin,” she said. He couldn’t tell if she was pleased, staring down at him. “You’re still alive.”
His teeth chattered. “Sorry to d-disappoint.”
“Oh—I’m not disappointed. But you soon will be. You’ll wish you died in that avalanche.”
He doubted that. If suffering awaited him, he was afraid as anyone, but Morgana’s imagination fell short of how much he was willing to tolerate; how much he already had, and would, for the people he loved. His magic glowed like embers in his chest, but he saved his strength by old instinct. Revealing his magic was a card he could only play against Morgana once.
“What are you doing here?” Merlin said. “What advantage is Ismere to you?”
“There are ancient magics, under the Ice,” Morgana replied, and leaned against the doorframe, graceful in the way only warm muscles could facilitate. “Arthur thinks Ismere is a dead land. He thinks, because it’s cold and isolate, that its plains are best abandoned. Well. I know something about isolation. About cold. I know what use there is in abandoned things—I’m wiser than he is.”
Merlin nearly rolled his eyes, and glared at her with all the dignity he could muster. Morgana smiled. It pleased her to see him suffering; he was still astounded to find such needless cruelty in her.
“Did you know, Merlin, that people of magic used to make pilgrimages here? Priests and priestesses of my religion, tracing silver paths over the Ice. Even Druids would come. They followed no compasses, no waypoints. Led only by the winds in the north, they witnessed secrets as old as the world: magic that no one who hadn’t been on the Ice could hope to understand. Tell me, does that frighten you?”
She wanted it to, but Merlin wasn’t frightened by magic.
When he gave her no reaction other than shivering, she stalked into his space. Two steps, and they were breathing the same air. She knelt down, her face nearly touching his.
“I saved you.” She brushed her knuckles against his cheek. He flinched. “Without the magic you hate me for, you would have frozen to death.”
“I don’t hate you for your magic, Morgana,” Merlin said. “It’s what you do with it.”
“You have no idea the things that have been done to me, for what I am.” Pain crossed her face, but Merlin found that—starved and freezing—he had no compassion left to examine it.
She touched his neck, delicate, like she was aware of how vulnerable she’d made him. His breath quickened, remembering what had happened to him the last time she suspended him at her mercy.
“Do you have another snake for me?” he said. “You know what they say about failure—if at first you don’t succeed…” Morgana’s face twisted in rage.
She gripped his chin; he jerked, some base part of him recoiling. She would enjoy hurting him if he pushed her, and fear drenched him, Merlin’s mind flying to far corners: remembering her fomorroh, and the famished haze of waking from it. Remembering the brutality it left behind, itching in his dreams, even after he and Lancelot had trekked into the woods, fought her, and put the multi-headed mother-serpent into the flames.
“No, Merlin,” Morgana said, squeezing the soft flesh under his jawline. “Making you a puppet would be too easy. All that movement would keep you warm.”
He looked into her madness and didn’t flinch from it, though he was afraid. After the battle over the fomorroh, he’d recovered by the fire, Lancelot standing steady guard while Merlin collected himself.
He hoped Lancelot made it out of the ambush alright. Merlin wanted him fiercely.
“I want you to be quite the horror,” Morgana spat, “when Arthur finds you.”
The horror?
Her magic hit against his shackles, and they snapped open, dropping his arms. Pain splintered through his shoulders and sides, and the rest of him pitched forward into Morgana’s waiting, ungentle grip. She bound his wrists in rope tight enough to cut off his circulation.
His magic roiled, but he kept it down.
With shocking strength, Morgana dragged him out and took him through several rough, unfamiliar corridors of her ancient keep. They went down some stairs, and came into an open courtyard.
The cold slapped him in the face. Merlin lost his breath, squinting in the sudden light. His entire body locked up in reaction to the cold, and the snow—calf-high—gathered and packed at his ankles, in the wilting lips of his socks. His near-bare feet hurt over the courtyard frost. She hauled him through a gate, and into a walled alcove open to the sky, in the centre of which was a pit dug into the ice.
Its opening was narrow, its edges teeth-like, and Merlin understood.
He struggled, but couldn’t get out of her grip before she brought him to the edge and he lost purchase on the ground as she threw him in. His stomach was in his throat. He gasped, fell, and hit the bottom hard. Shock rattled his body.
A scraping sound: she was dragging something over. Merlin looked up, spots in his vision, and saw a circle of light with Morgana’s face in it. A sickly moon, being eclipsed by a heavy piece of wood.
She was trapping him in. Morgana grinned.
“Now you will know how I felt,” she said, “being truly alone.”
*
In Morgana’s pit, he dreamed of Lancelot: of a blazing fire in the hearth, and wine they’d shared by a fire after a feast, the night Lancelot had been honoured for saving Camelot from the Cailleach. At the end of the evening, when courtiers stopped singing and minstrels packed for home, Merlin and Lancelot continued a private, lazier celebration.
Camelot is blessed to have you, Lancelot mused once they were alone, his eyes dark and dancing as he stared into the fire. Without your magic, there would be no ‘Knight of the Veil’. How long will I continue to take credit for your deeds?
For as long as you will, Merlin replied, meaning to jest. Instead, it came out sad. Lancelot frowned at him, worried he’d said something to offend, but Merlin shook his head.
Really, Merlin said. How else am I meant to do what I do without anyone suspecting?
Still, it’s unfair—dishonest. I feel guilty.
Don’t. You’re doing me a favour, Sir Knight of the Veil.
Lancelot blushed, Merlin laughed at him, and Lancelot blushed harder—Merlin thought Lancelot looked charming with flushed cheeks. He leaned over and refilled both of their cups with more wine. They’d both already had quite a bit to drink. Merlin was languid and warm and pleased. He never felt invisible when he was with Lancelot, not like he often was in Arthur’s eyes. It was nice. It was more than nice.
Mm… then that’s alright, Lancelot said. I do like doing you favours, Merlin.
Merlin snorted. What’s that mean?
And Lancelot looked down at his cup, like he was surprised at how much it had loosened his tongue. In his eyes was as strange, glowing heat.
Nothing, he said, his voice so low Merlin nearly didn’t hear him. Just that you’re my friend. And so… I’ll be at your service, for as long as that’s true.
Merlin couldn’t help thinking that he’d meant to say something else, but he didn’t ask. Still, he thought of that evening often, and wondered. Wondered about the embers in Lancelot’s eyes, and the sweet-scorch of his dropped voice…
Caught so was he in his dream, that he didn’t realise it was real when, somewhere cold and hostile, Lancelot spoke, and grabbed his shoulder.
“Merlin,” Lancelot said, shaking him.
Merlin, numbed hazy, moaned.
“Merlin? Can you hear me?”
He strained to open his eyes. A tender thumb stroked his face, pressure-only.
“…L’nc’l…t,” Merlin slurred. He couldn’t feel his lips, couldn’t move them. And one of his eyes had a thin crust of ice over it, keeping it shut. The world swam into focus: he was laying, curled up, on snow-slick stone. Lancelot—dressed as one of Morgana’s guards—was holding his face, smoothing back his hair, melting the ice on his lashes to help him see.
“Good lord,” Lancelot said. “We need to get you warm.”
“‘M f’ne… ‘m warm.”
“No, you’re not,” Lancelot said. “You’re freezing, Merlin.” He sounded urgent.
Why? Merlin thought, faint. I’m safe with you. I’m always safe with you…
Overhead, clouds like the sea roiled a thickening grey. Wind battered against stone somewhere distant. An infantile light was climbing into the pre-dawn sky. With sluggish limbs and mind, Merlin realised he wasn’t in Morgana’s pit, where he’d been for hours (or had it been days?), and his wrists were no longer bound. Lancelot must have found him, freed him, pulled him out of the dark.
Morgana was wrong, he thought. It wasn’t Arthur who came for me.
Snow was coming down, clumping thick as walnuts. Lancelot leaned over as if to shelter him from it. Mere paces away, the opening to Morgana’s pit gaped as if to swallow him back in. And he was exhausted, wanted to sleep…
“Merlin?”
Darkness sank back over him.
“Merlin.”
Lancelot struck him, hard. The pain ripped him to awareness, stinging all-over.
“Don’t fall asleep,” Lancelot said. “Swear to me.”
Merlin had a vague recollection that he’d already fallen asleep, after Morgana closed him in. Curled up with his knees against his chest as cold got into his throat. Sleep descended on him like a black wave, and he’d sunk, the beat of his heart slowing. For hours, the only part of him alive was his magic. With the certainty of a dream, he knew that without it he would be dead.
“…H’ve magic.”
“It doesn’t make you impervious to cold.” Lancelot stood up and took off the stolen cloak he was wearing, wrapping him up; it was long and fur-lined, enveloping Merlin in warmth so total that he started shaking anew.
“Stay awake,” Lancelot said. “We’re getting out of here.”
He lifted Merlin up, and draped him over his shoulder.
It was dim yet, and when they entered the inner bailey Merlin only heard wind. It must have been very early, the guards still half-asleep, or else exhausted from a long watch. Coherent thought was slow to return. They were unobstructed, though at every movement, Merlin thought he saw Morgana’s outline appear in shadows.
“Two guards, there,” Lancelot whispered, moving steadily. Running would draw attention. “They’re warming their hands. Not looking.” Merlin shuddered and closed his eyes.
They moved, reached a door, went inside. They were not caught.
In the corridors, the storm outside was muted, the wind distant, and their lonely steps sounded hollow. Merlin felt as if there was ice in his skull. He pressed against Lancelot’s steady back for warmth.
“She’ll have no horses,” Lancelot muttered. “Not this far north.”
So how were they meant to escape? Her keep was days from warmer weather—in all directions stretched frozen desert. Lancelot stopped to readjust Merlin’s weight before beginning to check doors along their way.
“Ah.” He found something. “Here.”
A heavy door groaned on its hinges, and Merlin felt Lancelot tense with the effort of pushing it open. There was a fresh gasp of cold, then they were somewhere new. Lancelot set Merlin down against a wall, and he raised his head to see where they were. A shed.
They must have been just-off the main keep, in a storage barn; its roof was short, sturdy, made of thick beams of old wood. The walls were stone, and against them were piled barrels and crates of dry goods, and stacks of canvas, furs, and firewood. Morgana was well-provisioned. Three dog-sledges with long metal runners leaned on each other at the far end of the room, where a pair of bolted stable doors rattled like rabid jaws, the white-wind behind them famished.
Outside was the storm.
Lancelot shoved something heavy against the door, then took care to tuck Merlin into the cloak to keep him warm while he searched the crates, determining what they could steal. It came to Merlin much too late…
“The others?”
Lancelot looked over his shoulder, and Merlin finally noticed healing scrape marks across his cheek, and a puffy bruise on his lip. Lancelot hadn’t come unscathed through Morgana’s attack.
“I lost track of them.” Lancelot frowned. “I’m alone.”
“We’ll find them,” Merlin said, thinly.
“Yes,” Lancelot agreed. “We will. This, first.”
He dragged over a sledge, and began loading it: a large folded canvas, furs, whatever else he could manage to tie down. He had no gloves; Merlin could see his hands were stiff and clumsy as he lashed everything tight. That done, Lancelot searched a long time before he found an old pair of boots. They were too large for Merlin… but it was better than being in socks. The storm outside was likely days-wide. They would need supplies if they wanted any hope of surviving this escape.
Once the sledge was full, Lancelot carried Merlin over, and took back his cloak before tucking Merlin gently in amongst a nest of furs he’d made. Merlin was still shivering in every part of his body.
“There’s nothing to pull us,” Merlin said. He didn’t mean to sound so scared, or so skeptical. And he felt bad when doubt crossed Lancelot’s face, just for a second, before he replied so gently that something in Merlin’s chest lurched.
“It will be alright,” Lancelot said. “I’ll push. It won’t be so bad across ice.” He placed a final blanket over Merlin, the gesture oddly intimate.
For some reason, Merlin remembered the once he’d broken down and wept in Lancelot’s arms. It wasn’t his proudest moment: had been after he failed to heal Uther. When he was sure he’d turned Arthur against magic forever, and he’d found himself in Lancelot’s chambers—rattled, scared, self-loathing. Lancelot had shown him such tenderness; he’d never known its like ever since.
“I’ll help,” Merlin said.
Lancelot understood that he meant, with magic, and nodded once.
“Don’t tire yourself,” he said, and laced up his cloak.
He put up his hood, and wrapped his hands in cloth. It wouldn’t do much, but it was better than nothing. While he did this, Merlin reached beneath him, through the furs, and felt with his magic at the base of the sledge. The sledge was mainly wood, except for the runners. It was planed, sanded, and varnished: well-made. Morgana must have paid well for it, or else killed the craftsman. That was grim.
Merlin thought of drifting leaves and snow-dust over frozen streams. He willed his magic through his wrists and the tips of his fingers. Heat swelled inside him.
When Lancelot pushed open the tall barn doors, the blizzard rushed in like a charging army. Hard ice crystals stung Merlin’s face, turning his nose and cheeks red. He gasped, and only managed to choke on the cold. At least, Merlin thought, she won’t be able to track us in this storm. Lancelot gazed, daunted, into the unyielding grey-white and took a breath that no doubt froze the inside of his lungs.
“Marvellous luck,” Lancelot said, dryly, as if reading his mind. “Natural cover.”
Merlin scoffed, then, a second later staring into weather that could very well kill them, it was funnier and he laughed properly. He felt the sledge moving under him as Lancelot braced himself against the back of it, giving it one hard shove.
The runners scraped against the stone floor, then over a wooden launch ramp, and then—
They were cutting across packed snow and slick ice. Merlin closed his eyes, and felt his magic begin to work on the runners, lightening the entire load of the sledge, making it skate.
They began to pick up speed, and went off into the freezing cold.
Behind Merlin’s eyelids, the world turned white.