Chapter Text
None listen.
In a din of shrieking and clashing swords, running feet and panicked voices, none of his men were listening.
Not to Arthur, their commander - their prince.
This was his mission to lead, on behest of their king. The orders were given; and yet he stood in the forest before the druid shrine as useless as a fawn under an arrow while his men disobey him.
“Enough,” Arthur says, although it barely carries. His grip tightens on his sword, flinching like an unbloodied boy as Ser Cador brings a druid woman low and still on the lichen covered earth.
Kills.
It is unjust to turn away from it, as Ser Cador kills a druid woman, and she falls low and still onto the lichen covered earth. Heavy mist parts as she drops, only to enshroud her like a cloak where she lies, the air smelling of blood and petrichor.
These people harbour magic users, he knows. Such a thing must never be forgotten. His heart lurches traitorously inside his chest anyway, a familiar sort of agony. Perhaps his father has been right in his criticisms; Arthur is soft, with too much care in him for those who are not his people. Unsuitable.
A child’s thin wail comes to him over the clashing of the fight, and the hair on his arms rises.
Yet what sin so great could have been done by a boy who looks like he would have stood no higher than Arthur’s hip?
With the swing of a sword the boy is silent, eyes staring unseeing in death. Arthur’s vision swims as his panic rises, the taste of bile at the back of his throat. Time seems to be moving too quickly, his heart fit to burst in his chest for how rabbit-fast it beats. He wishes Leon were here, although it makes him feel like a child himself, or Morgana. Morgana would know what to do; the older girl never would have been disobeyed to begin with, he thinks.
It is with cold comfort that he tries to soothe himself; this camp is not idle. The Dragon King Balinor of the Perilous Lands, the greatest betrayer Camelot has ever known, is funnelling magic users for his army through camps just such as these. For every druid who lives at the mercy of the crown, innocent lives - his people’s lives - are traded. They are at war.
Arthur should be grateful for the lesson, for his men, who are stronger than he. Yet he cannot be.
“Please, enough!” A prince never begs. A prince might wish, though. For all the good it does him.
Pressure builds in the air, a shadow falling over his eyes as his ears ring.
He’s heard of this before from Gaius; that a man’s own heart can fail him so thoroughly that he drops down dead from it. Arthur’s knees hit the bloody ground, but his sword stays in his hand, which is good, he supposes. If he is to die he would rather it be with a sword in his hand.
Or perhaps it is not his heart’s failure at all, it occurs to him belatedly, dull and numb as a tremendous crack resonates out from the forest.
Although that might be kinder than what comes instead.
Trees snap apart as easily as kindling. The shadow blots out the sun, followed by a bolt of that wind spears out of the distance, violent. The low fog of the damp forest tears away, leaving everything in stark, colourful clarity.
A roar sounds, low and dark and deep. So thunderous that the earth beneath him trembles, sticks and stones bouncing in a jittering dance, offerings spinning off of the shrine and into the spilled blood. His head rings like a struck bell while he holds onto the ground with both hands.
There is only one thing this can mean.
The Dragon King has come.
Arthur staggers to his feet, scrambling to lift his sword once more. At least his fragile heart will not falter to face this enemy - King Balinor is hardly a child who has wronged no one. How many are dead from his hand? Under Arthur’s feet the forest floor spins with his dizziness, ferns and blood mingling in a dirty swirl. Even so, on legs like water he stands.
“Run,” Cador tells him, from where he lies flat on his back next to the woman he had slain. She says nothing, of course, as she is dead.
The dragon comes into sight, and Arthur inhales sharply, something prey-like and animal in him recoiling. The size of the teeth alone - he could stand side by side and be a height with even one of those fangs, and that cavernous mouth is full of them. His sword dips in fear before he rights himself. Scales bigger than his palm armour the beast from top to tail, shimmering with an otherworldly hue like hellfire.
Courage.
He needs courage. To stand before his enemies, and face death as a man. For there is no other way for this to end, not as long as he is a true son of Camelot.
He makes a strike against the dragon’s scales, only for it to bounce off, useless. Another, and another - the dragon does not even look at him. Each glistening scale is as thick as an iron shield, Arthur’s sword sparking as it crashes against them again and again, less and less skillfully as he grows desperate. Ignored.
“Run , fool boy,” Cador tells him again, voice sticky-wet with blood. This time right by Arthur’s ear, dragging him away by the elbow even as the knight limps, clutching at a wound on his side. “You can do nothing, do not waste yourself here, go-”
“You would be wise to listen,” the dragon hisses, a laugh in his voice as he turns to pin Arthur in place under great golden eyes. A shudder runs down his spine, and a cold fear-sweat beads across his skin. He had not known that dragons could speak. “Pay heed to the murderer, child, and flee. It need not be your destiny to die this day.”
“I am a noble knight of Camelot.” Ser Cador stands between Arthur and the beast, head held high, breath catching as he staggers into a stance. “And you will not touch him.” Around them the fighting is coming to a humiliating and swift end. Knights are rounded up like cattle, marched by magic, or druids; sometimes both.
“I say only what I see,” the dragon says, head lowering to the ground and sliding forwards like a serpent, breathing them in deeply, “and I see only what I say. You still drip with their blood.”
Ser Cador pushes Arthur away as he lunges forwards with a cry, sword raised. The dragon does nothing, enduring his attack with a crackling laugh. He noses forwards in a delicate movement, sending Cador crashing to the ground like swatting a bug from the air. “I see nothing in the shape of a man,” the beast mocks.
“That’s enough,” a new voice sounds down from atop the dragon. He unseats himself with practised ease, waving a hand and wordlessly wrenching Arthur’s sword from his grip and away before his boots even strike the ground.
Arthur’s palm stings at his side, empty.
King Balinor is not much younger than his own father. Crownless, but this can be no one else. His dark hair is greying at the temples, pulled half back in braids and shining with loops of metal woven throughout. His clothes are not that of a king, but barbaric and savage, bundled like winter in furs and leathers. A long skirt like a woman’s, although split into pieces for riding, dark hose and boots plain to view underneath, with a quiver strapped to his waist and a bow upon his back.
He stands as though a weight sits on his shoulders, stooped and weary, but his bright gaze is clear and fierce. His face is unmoved, a harsh cast about his mouth that speaks of many frowns, a sad tilt to the shape of his eyes. Which turn unerringly to Arthur.
“You, boy. Come here.” He inclines his chin.
When Arthur does not move on his own he is moved by Balinor - quite against his will. Pulled forward, toes dragging along the ground until he hovers in front of the king, caught tight in an invisible fist. Balinor reaches a gloved hand and pulls down Arthur’s chain coif, exposing his golden hair, turning his face this way and that.
“You look so much like your mother,” he says, and Arthur spits on him. Balinor doesn’t strike him in retaliation, merely wipes his cheek clean with the back of his wrist. “More spirited though,” he adds. “That will serve you well.”
“Release him,” Cador commands, although he cannot even stand.
“No,” Balinor says plainly, calm as anything. “Go back to Uther, and tell him I hold Ygraine’s son as my peace hostage. If the boy is worth anything to him we will speak.”
Balinor leaves him hanging there with no further concern, Arthur’s legs going numb as he squirms to free himself. Useless against whatever magic holds him, and beneath notice. The ignominy of being ignored burns him, even as he is grateful for it.
The king goes around the camp, speaking in low tones to the druids who yet live. Curious eyes fall on Arthur where he struggles in the air, a spectacle - but at the word of their king it seems Arthur’s fate is set and he is worth no further thought.
His knights have been shepherded together kneeling in a tidy row, one after another, bound. Ser Orsric catches his eye for a moment before Arthur sees his face pale in panic, looking high above Arthur’s head. Hot breath steams down from the dragon who towers above, and he swallows. Brimstone tickles his nose.
He can’t draw enough air.
Under the dragon’s head the sun is hidden entirely.
“So small,” the dragon says. Strangely he does not sound mocking, merely marvelling. Arthur is not that small. He is fifteen as of this past summer, and nearly as tall as a man fully grown.
“Big enough to choke you ,” Arthur promises around the stone that sits in his throat, yearning to make himself as unappetizing as possible.
“I shan’t be eating you today, young prince.” The dragon booms a laugh.
“Nor any other day,” Balinor chides as he returns, one of the druids at his side. He takes off one of his many layers, throwing it around Arthur and pinning it in place like he is dressing an infant. Arthur flails and strains, but can barely budge.
“We shall see,” the dragon teases. And isn’t that a thought - Arthur had not known that dragons could tease, either.
“What are you doing?” Arthur demands, as Balinor lifts him carefully onto the dragon’s back, moving him up and around like he is a puppet on strings. The king strides up the dragon’s side afterwards in two quick steps, so light that Arthur wonders if he’s used magic for that as well. There is no saddle, merely a strange leather harness that Arthur is tied to.
“It’ll be cold,” the king warns, tucking Arthur’s new furs around him snugly, explaining nothing, “and the air is very thin. You won’t be used to it and you might sleep; don’t try and fight it. I will not let you fall.”
“I might,” the dragon says, dripping with amusement. “I wonder if I would be fast enough to catch you, if I did?”
“Kilgharrah,” King Balinor says with the same weary sigh that Arthur has heard from his nannies countless times. Before he outgrew them, of course. Balinor settles behind him on the dragon’s back, a warm mass. Arthur refuses to be grateful, but he is glad to not be left alone with the dragon.
“Knights of Camelot, face the shrine.” Balinor calls down. To fancy it a shrine is a stretch. It is more of a large flat rock, with charms and strips of cloth being the only things to mark it. Woven symbols hang down from the trees, bobbing in the air. Arthur is not a heathen, but he still looks.
The dead boy lies between the dragon and the shrine, and Arthur looks . This should not have happened. The sin today is theirs. He should have been able to control them.
Some of the knights do, some do not - proud men facing death before dishonour.
“These people were peaceful. They could have been your neighbours, your wives, your sons and daughters. Blood has been spilled.”
“Lies,” says one of the knights, a man Arthur had only met for the first time today. “Pagan, death-worshipper - ” His head spins round with a crunch, and he drops down dead, neck broken. Arthur’s eyes grow wide as he lurches backwards, only to crash into the unmovable wall that is the Dragon King.
“Innocent children have been slain,” Balinor continues as though he had not been interrupted. One hand grips Arthur’s elbow in a mocking attempt at comfort. “And balance will be restored. Bow your heads, and repent. Live to tell your king I have his son.” He waits, looking at each knight in turn. “Or meet a swift death. You will not suffer, and that is more mercy than you have shown this day.”
The strange silence in the forest lingers a heartbeat too long for the dragon, who breathes in with a sizzling, sparking sort of noise. Beneath them that great chest expands; and it is nothing like being atop a horse.
“They are deaf and blind animals, not capable of thought,” Kilgharrah says, taking one step forwards, sending Arthur rocking back into Balinor once more, nearly falling. “Nor of compassion. You ask too much of them. I shall eat them, instead.”
“They were women and children,” Arthur manages to shout down to the knights over the dangerous rumble coming from the dragon. He would not like to test if the dragon is merely teasing now. “Have honour.” A prince never begs, he thinks, but then again sometimes Arthur is not a very good prince. He begs.
These men; some of them have raised him and trained him since he was a boy. Fear grips him as they are slow to move.
Some of them - not enough of them - bow their heads to the shrine. In sincerity or desire to avoid being eaten by a dragon Arthur cannot say, and whatever the druids think of it Arthur cannot tell, either. Those who live stand among their dead like statues, and if any of them disagree none of them dare challenge their king.
Some things are the same in every land, perhaps.
The rest die, as Balinor promised.
Limp on the ground they are much the same as the bodies of the druids. Balance, the king had said; and it horrifies Arthur to see it, but there is a certain undeniable truth there. They are all made equal in death.
Cador’s glassy, unseeing eyes fix on something further than the living can see, just as the druid woman’s do. Futilely Arthur wishes he knew her name. That his knights had listened to him. Balinor still would have come, but -
“Hold on,” the Dragon King says, Kilgharrah bracing beneath them.
“My father won’t give ransom,” Arthur says in a rush, his heart fluttering like a thousand birds taking flight all at once, “he will never bend to your demands.”
“I am very sorry to hear that,” Balinor sighs.
Arthur is pressed down nearly flat at the force of their lift off as those massive wings spread, thankful for being tied to the harness for the first time. The ground grows farther and farther away, the trees shrinking, the red specks of his knights' cloaks hidden by the canopy - gone.
The air is thin, he recognizes dizzily. Just like he’d been told. His body is pulled every which way by the wind; he doesn’t know how Balinor stays steady. His silly pile of cloaks makes more sense now, too, and his skirts.
Arthur’s knees are ice cold, still wet with blood from when he fell. He blinks, head lolling.
“Just sleep now, Arthur,” Balinor soothes him, “we’ll be there before you know it.” It won’t matter, he thinks, his father won’t come for him.
“He won’t,” he slurs, but his breath leaves him.
The world has grown blurry, and he slides down into the welcoming darkness, lightheaded and out of body. He thinks he might be sick.
Then he doesn’t think at all.
***
When he wakes it is not swift. He swims up to consciousness from under murky water, in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room. Even the scent is strange, herbal and smokey.
Someone has changed him out of his mail and into a loose tunic and tucked him under layers of blankets, so many that he can barely lift his arms.
It is dark, only illuminated from the moonlight streaming in from the open window, catching on motes of dust. Weariness pulls at his eyes, fighting to go back under. He makes to sit up, but his stomach quivers in rebellion.
“It’s the air sickness,” King Balinor says from Arthur’s bedside, voice quiet. At his left sits a boy a few years younger than Arthur, seeming to take up more space than he has body. He’s half in his own chair, half sprawled against the king, and somehow still half across Arthur’s bed as he sleeps on, oblivious. “You will feel better in a day or two.”
The king whittles a little wooden figure, not even looking at Arthur.
“My son,” Balinor says, after a time, blowing a bit of wood dust off of his work. “In a different life… a better life, you would have grown up as brothers. I hope you can come to be friendly with one another.”
“My father won’t give you anything,” Arthur rasps, voice hitching. He feels wretched.
“I don’t want him to give anything,” Balinor explains patiently, still whispering into the dark room. “I want him to stop killing peaceful magic users. To stop patrolling the borders-” He holds up a hand as Arthur scoffs weakly, “or to at least let the druids pass out of Camelot. It is not fair, is it? To trap them there, when they would leave with no quarrel on their own?”
Arthur cannot disagree, but he does anyway. It’s the principle of the matter.
“So they may come together to join your army?” he wheezes, and the boy stirs, pale fingers clenching in the bed covers before he yawns awake.
“Army,” the king huffs a small laugh. “You will see for yourself, my army. The druids have no interest in battle,” Balinor says, putting one hand on his son’s head and stroking that dark, curling hair as he rouses. “Did those men today have any weapons to defend themselves? The women?”
They both know the answer to that question. Arthur sniffs, scrubbing one hand on his cheek to rid himself of a tear, weak. His father would be ashamed.
“Oh, you’re awake!” the boy says, blinking sleep from his eyes.
He must have no sense, Arthur thinks.
“Merlin,” Balinor says, setting down his little figure - and Arthur can see now that it is a dragon. A far friendlier dragon than Kilgharrah, though, with stubbly fat legs and happy curving eyes. “This is Prince Arthur. You’ll be kind to him, as he’s far away from home.”
“I will,” the boy promises easily. Thoughtlessly. Arthur wonders what kind of charmed life he lives, enviously watching the king stroke his head, uncaring that Arthur can see.
“And Arthur,” Balinor blinks his sad eyes at him, something fiery stirring in them even in the dark of the night. “You will be kind to Merlin, of course.” Arthur can just bet what will happen if he isn’t.
Merlin blinks huge blue eyes at him, smiling. His ears stick out, and his grin is sweet and full of even white teeth. He looks like someone who would get a lot of cheek pinches on his dimples and extra bits of food from the most gullible kitchen maids.
“I’ll do no such thing,” Arthur says, jutting his chin out even as Merlin sits up in shocked affront. “I’ll fight you, every day, and King Uther will not give you what you please. And I’ll go home-”
Balinor sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“Or die,” Arthur concludes, flopping back onto his pillows, exhausted. Air sickness is terrible.
“You won’t die,” the king says, hiding his amusement in that way that adults always try, but Arthur sees right through him, “and my hope is your father values you more than you think.”
Arthur knows better; Balinor will learn.
“There are three spells on you,” he continues, pulling at Arthur’s arm as he jolts, trying and failing to wrench himself free. Balinor shows him a series of many tiny glowing runes encircling him from wrist to elbow, so small and cramped they look just like three solid bands; pointing to them each in turn as he explains, “So that you may not wander too far. So that you may do no harm to yourself, or others. And so that none may harm you . With those you will be trusted to have more freedoms. Perhaps Merlin can show you around tomorrow if you are feeling well enough.”
Balinor releases Arthur’s arm, and he tugs it back to his side, staring at the shimmering spellwork. He grips his own wrist so hard he fears it will break. He wants to tear the markings off of his skin, but when he rubs a frantic hand over them they do not so much as smudge.
It’s all for nothing.
His father will never even allow him home, now. Arthur is branded with magic - he is lost. Utterly lost.
“I don’t want to show him around any more,” Merlin says bluntly, wrinkling his nose and ignoring Arthur in favour of his father. “I want to see you tomorrow instead. My egg is going to hatch soon, you should come watch with me.”
His egg? Arthur cannot begin to guess what this means, but he tries to commit everything to memory, despite how foggy he feels. He pries his hand free, white fingerprints dotting his arm side by side with the sigils when he does. Who knows what will be important. The ways of the Dragonlords are inscrutable.
“You’ve been saying that for a year now,” Balinor smiles tiredly down at his son.
“I’m still right - to a dragon a year is not very long at all.” Merlin rolls his eyes. “I can hear her, she’s trying to sing me her name, but we don’t know it yet.” He kicks his feet, which are too big for his frame, like a puppy before their growth spurt.
Uther would never stand for this sort of behaviour.
Balinor, however, just pats his head again, ruffling Merlin’s hair until it is a fluffy cloud of curls. It is not so long as his father’s, but long enough to brush his cheeks as he grins.
Maybe it’s to hide his hideous ears, Arthur thinks, picking at the embroidery on the blanket with a trembling hand. His knuckles are red and wind bitten, fingertips aching.
“Tomorrow is a new day,” the king says, soft as he looks fondly upon his son, “anything might happen.” His frown lines turn instead into smile lines, and in doing so transform his whole face into something far less frightening than the grim man who had abducted him.
Arthur decides that he hates Merlin.
“Little bird,” Balinor says, and Merlin blushes, eyes flickering to Arthur and back to his father. At least he has the sense to be embarrassed. Little bird. “Have a heart. Arthur is alone in a new place. Tomorrow-”
“Is a new day,” Merlin says sullenly, finally reprimanded, although Arthur does not understand the how or why of it. Balinor hadn’t done anything, not even yelled. “Fine. Are you very hungry?” Merlin asks Arthur, his face scrunched up under his wild nest of hair. “Thirsty?”
He is hungry enough to eat a horse and then thirsty enough to drink a barrel of water to follow it, but he’ll hardly say so. These people are not his friends - they are his captors.
His stomach growls in betrayal, and he fights down an embarrassed flush.
“Why don’t you go to the kitchens and see what you can find, hm?” Balinor suggests, shooing Merlin up and away with gentle hands. “I know you’ve long since sussed out where cook hides all the good stuff.”
“Alright,” Merlin grouses, throwing one last dour look at Arthur before he vanishes out of the room through a heavy wooden door.
“Merlin is thirteen in a few weeks,” Balinor says, after the footsteps stop echoing down the hall. “Just over two years younger than you, if I remember rightly.” When Arthur says nothing he settles more deeply into his chair. It creaks in the quiet room. “I was there when you were born, you know. It was summer, midday. I held you.” He pantomimes holding up a baby with a bittersweet smile and Arthur’s mind reels.
Had this man known his mother so well? To compare Arthur to her even now, fifteen years later? To hold him as a child?
Had he been there when she died?
“What-?” He clicks his mouth shut. Five candle marks into captivity and he’s ready to weep and beg secrets from his abductor. His father won’t speak on his mother - no one in Camelot will. It might as well be that she had never existed at all, for all he knows of her.
Balinor is a liar, he tells himself.
“You have her ring,” the king says, and Arthur wonders if he had spoken out loud, or if sorcerers can all read minds.
Or maybe he is just that transparent. Arthur closes his hand over his mother’s ring where it sits, hiding it from view - too little too late.
“And her hair, and her eyes,” the king continues, standing to look out of the window, giving Arthur the illusion of privacy. He wipes quickly at his cheeks again. If the king has more to say he keeps it to himself, back rigid as they linger in silence.
The border of the bedding is a brassy colour on a field of green and blue. Embroidered dragons, stylized out of one line repeating over and over again, and Arthur flicks at a loose thread. The rune markings on his arm glow, a dull but unmistakable shine.
“What was she like?” Arthur asks, desperation warring with common sense. But Arthur is a fool, and his mawkish feelings always override his sensibility in the end.
“Kind,” the king says eventually, after much thought. “Her heart was vast and endless. Well loved by all who knew her.”
And she is gone, only Arthur remains.
A poor trade.
“She wanted you very much,” Balinor says.
“Are you reading my mind?” Arthur accuses furiously, bringing his knees to his chest. His feet are bare, and his toes are cold; somehow leaving him feeling more vulnerable than ever before.
“No, I just have a son,” the king looks over, a small smile tugging at the corner of his mouth before he turns away again. “My wife, Hunith,” he says, staring out the window. Arthur wonders what he sees. “She died in childbirth as well. Many years ago now - Merlin would have a brother, had they lived. Mordred, we were to call him. Some things not even the greatest of magics can heal.”
Half of Arthur wants to console him in kinship. Half of him wants to say that is what you deserve, that is what magic does .
So he says nothing at all.
The door opens again eventually, and Merlin kicks it shut with one foot, nearly tripping and sending it all crashing to the ground. The tray full of food merely floats though, the sloshing goblet freezing in the air, the berries spinning in a circle before all settling back down neatly in their bowl. Arthur takes a shaky breath, eyeing Balinor.
Was it him? Or the boy? Does everyone here do magic?
“Sorry,” Merlin says, biting his lip.
“You’ll grow into your feet,” the king comes and takes the tray before further mishaps can occur, setting it down on the foot of the bed. “You should eat, and then sleep,” he says, somehow making it a suggestion and not an order - even though Arthur knows an order when he hears one. “I will see you in the morning, and we will discuss things. For now you only need to worry about resting.” He reaches out, like he might pat Arthur on the head, just as he had done to his own son. Arthur pulls his neck in like a turtle, and the king lowers his hand. “Goodnight, Arthur.”
“We’re not friends,” Arthur says, staring down at the runes that bind him, and Balinor only gives him another one of those sad smiles before he leaves, Merlin lingering by the open door.
Arthur supposes there is no reason for the boy to fear him, even if Arthur is twice his size. He’s magic, and Arthur is bound. He wonders if he throws the tray and everything on it at Merlin if the younger boy would catch it with his magic again, or if the binding would stop Arthur from trying entirely.
His arms shake, so he will have to wait to find out another day.
Merlin comes up to him, taking the wooden dragon off of the bedding and placing it on the sideboard. It’s ancient, just like all of the furnishings here. He supposes the Perilous Lands do not get much trade, not like Camelot.
A new sorrow finds him at the very thought of her - and he wonders if he will ever set foot there again.
“I hope you feel better tomorrow,” Merlin says, frowning, opening and closing his mouth as though he has more to say. “I’m sorry you’re sick.”
“We’re not friends,” Arthur says again through his runny nose, wishing that Merlin had stayed behind to taunt him instead.
“I wouldn’t want to be friends with such a cabbagehead as you anyway,” Merlin swears, spinning on his heel and retreating to the door, before he hesitates, “but I still hope you get better.”
It swings closed behind him with a short creak and the snap of a latch.
Good, Arthur wipes his nose. It would not do to forget he is a prisoner here. Berries glisten enticingly in their wooden bowl, and he smells porridge. Nothing has ever smelled so good in his life.
He keeps his resolve to not eat it for maybe a minute before he instead resolves to keep his strength up. Halfway through the bowl of porridge, which has honey in it and everything, he starts to feel steadier. The berries are sweet, and the water is clear and clean.
He watches the moonlight stream in through the window before setting the tray to the side, swinging his bare feet out of the bed and onto the cold stone floor. It is an effort to walk such a short distance, but he would at least see with his own eyes.
Rumours abound about the Perilous Lands - he has seen the border himself, even if only once.
Rancid and burnt, a bog suitable only for witches to live in.
Outside the window it is nothing like that. Lush looking fields and shrubs spot across the landscape; although it is hard to see, for how high up he is. Wind blows in through the open window, chill against his sweat damp-face. A tower, then. It is nothing like Camelot, there is no city to be seen. A few squat buildings and huts scatter far below.
Even if Arthur wasn’t bound here he is too weak and too high up to attempt to flee. He could jump -
His arm gives a phantom throb, and his feet step backwards all on their own.
He can’t harm himself either, he recalls, shuffling back to bed. He can’t do anything at all. Not that any of it will matter. Whatever Balinor says about it, Arthur knows the truth; Uther will not bend, and Arthur will die here, forgotten.
The bed is still body-warm when he crawls back in, trembling.
The fat little dragon looks at him, grinning. He turns it around so it’s facing the other way, and goes to sleep.