In the Land of Stories Old

Chapter 55

Their re-emergence from the Valley was greeted with much relief, which quickly became worry when Merlin immediately lay down on a blanket and fell into a deep sleep. “He is fine, that is my fault,” Jack explained before anyone could get too excited. “Merlin woke me last night and swore fealty to me, as he needed to have permission from the reigning king of Valeureux to begin undoing the damage which had been done.”

“And?” Pino asked, raising an eyebrow. “Aside from being tired, he looks…less tired than I have seen him since before we were cursed.”

“Also Jack’s fault,” Arthur said. “He called forth the family magic in the ruins, it’s in the form of a gold tree. It cleansed the crowns and the signet ring, but then it let us know it wanted Merlin so Jack dragged him under the tree and asked it to restore his vassal’s power as he had need of it.” He made a face. “I think none of us really thought about how deep Merlin’s well of magic would get after the thing with the guards. He cleansed the taint from the entire herd of horses and didn’t even go down to half-power.”

“Because I had ordered him not to,” Jack added grimly. “His swearing fealty to me led us to a terrible discovery, as he was not able to lie to me when I asked him a question.”

“Why would Merlin lie to you?” Hans wanted to know. “Even when he says he is ‘fine’ and we know he is not, that is not a lie—he honestly does believe he is fine.”

“No, he does not, actually.” Jack sighed. “Merlin is under a curse, one whose sole purpose is to kill him. It is a curse on the Black Castle which is tied to the royal line—to the males specifically, I think, whether they are born to the line or marry into it. The self-sacrificing behavior and its after-effects which we have joked and teased and scolded him over of late were neither his fault nor entirely his choice. When we questioned him, Arthur and I, he told us that the curse drives him to that behavior and makes everything more ‘magically expensive’ for him as well.”

“Meanin’, I think, that we’ve never actually seen Merlin back up to full power since we stopped bein’ dwarfs,” Arthur said. “He’s been runnin’ at half or less all this time. And just like our old curse, this one protects itself. He can’t talk about it, he can’t even think about it. He apologized in advance, by the way, for all the attitude he’s gonna be throwin’ around when we try to keep the curse from pushin’ him into drainin’ himself to death. He knew he wouldn’t be able to remember.”

“He is unable to see a way out for himself, and nearly cried over the fact that he would not be able to grow old with his wife, surrounded by their children,” Jack said, and pulled Snow into a comforting embrace when she started to cry. “We will find a way to save him, Snow, I swear it.” He nodded to the triplets over her shoulder, doing his best to ignore the golden glow of royal magic his words had called forth. “Merlin did not believe this curse would touch Elana, in fact he does not think she can tell it apart from all of the ‘dark shite’, as he called it, which is already saturating the very stones of the Black Castle. And we told him we would attempt to ‘remind’ him of it once we had left the Valley…but I do not think that would be a good idea. I will try it once, just to see, but if he reacts as I expect then we will not try again. It could cause his magic to lash out…”

“Not a problem,” Snow said, softly. He gave her his handkerchief, and she dried her eyes and looked up at him. “We don’t want to do it if it will hurt him, of course…but you’re forgetting all the vows and such he arranged so carefully for our marriage. Merlin’s magic can’t harm me, not ever, whether he’s in control of it or not.” She found a wet, wobbly smile. “That’s how I survived our wedding night. When a magician lets go of his magic, he lets go of his magic. The air in our bedroom was so thick with it that it was like being underwater in a golden sea.”

Pino and Kio nodded, but Noki was frowning. “What about the elves? Do you think this curse is hidden from them as it is from our princess?”

“I’d guess so?” Arthur said with a shrug. “They seem sort of all-powerful compared to us, but they really aren’t.”

“They aren’t,” Snow confirmed. “There are hard limits to what the elves can do. They can sense magic, Merlin says he thinks they can see it, like he can when his mage-sight is active, but again, our castle is…well, echoing with the remnants of a whole bunch of dark shite.”

Arthur chuckled and took her from Jack to enfold her in a hug of his own. “Not your fault, Snow. Not your father’s fault, either—in fact, a lot of his problem may be the curse affectin’ him, now that I think about it.”

“It isn’t trying to kill him, though,” Hans mused, and shrugged when everyone looked at him. “It is not. So something has changed. Before it sought to…I don’t know, weaken the line? Or simply limit its spread? But obviously not destroy it, because all of Snow’s ancestors were able to sire children before they either died or were killed. So why would it be trying so hard to cause Merlin to kill himself before he and Snow can have even one child to inherit the throne?”

Kio raised an eyebrow. “Unless the curse knows something we do not?”

“It doesn’t,” Snow told him, gently extracting herself from Arthur’s hold; she knew he’d needed the comfort as much as she had. “Merlin and I took…precautions to keep that from happening right away. We wanted things to be more stable in the kingdom and around the Isles before we started having children.”

“Not to mention, Merlin would never in a million years have been able to keep that to himself. And he’d have called off the quest right then and there, shadows and evil blood-drinkin’ trees be damned.” Arthur was frowning, though. “I feel like we’re missin’ somethin’ here.”

“You are.” Pino shook his head. “You are overlooking the fact that you found the key to the solution to our shadow problem within the Valley, just as Gothi said you would.”

“But we did not…” And then Jack got it. “Dammit!”

He stomped away from their camp, cursing, and Arthur’s eyes widened. “Magic freed and claimed. We never did need to find an artifact, or some secret trick of old magic…we needed to free the most powerful magician alive from the curse that won’t let him use his power they way he’s meant to.”

“So now we just need to figure out how to do that,” came from Hans. “Meaning we need to get back home, and quickly.”

“We will need Elana’s help with this, I think,” Noki said. “She is the only other trained magic user we know that we can trust—the other mages, they are jealous of Merlin, and it would not do, I think, for them to find out just how powerful he truly is.”

Snow went to her sleeping husband and plopped down beside him with a sniff, running her fingers through his hair. “All because his parents couldn’t be bothered to count.”

fanfiction In the Land of Stories Old