The Shadow of the Moon

Chapter 14

The sun sat plumly in the sky, grinning down on the white turrets of Tintagel with a blaring light that illuminated everything it touched with light. The breeze combed the castles' ivory walls at it wove it's way through the quiet citidel. The city, normally bustling, was covered in a pole as the townsfolk nervously awaited news of their king, Arthur, who lay sick and wounded in the King's chambers of the castle. Rumours travelled the streets like theifs: under the cover of darkness and spoken in hush tones, word spread of the King's mauling by a fierce monster as he fell to protect the people - the country - he loved.

A bird lazed its way through the updrafts of the citadel like a small bit of paper as it chirped and flew to it's familiar perch on the windowsill of the invalid king. The room sat empty, air heavy, not a hint of levity except for the bird and the prone figure of the hurt king - Arthur sprawled out under the light blankts of the summer. As the brown bird trilled a delicate song indingnatly, the man with the golden hair groaned and shifted in the bed before he bolted up as though electricuted, eyes filtering around his quarters in a blind panic.

Arthur's heart skipped a beat and then another one. Two beats. His eyes tore around the empty room, panicked about how he got there and why he was alone. He remembered, the beast, the battle and then....His beating heart crumbled at Merlin's absence, concern that his sorcerer had abandoned him zipped through his veins with the speed of a tachyon. Giving no thought to his side wounds that buned hotly like his love for Merlin, Arthur threw himself from the bed, in desperate search of answers. He took one step on uneasy feet before subsiding to the ground, dragging the bedsheets with him, which landed softly on his bear golden stong chest with a light poof.

Immediately, the broad oaken door to his chambers crashed open, Arthur gazed at it in hop. His, heart sinking a little when he saw Leon's armoured form, coiled like a well oiled gear ready to pounce sword drawn to investigate the calamitous noises.

"Sire!" the curly haired knight said gladly, striding to his side once he saw the king sprawled on the floor.

"Merlin?" Arthur asked from his position, accepting his first knight's help to clamour back into his bed with all the grace he could muster, feeling like a poor baby oxen taking its first cautious steps in a world where it needed to run immadietely: weak and shaken and unprepared.

"Merlin's not here, sire" Leon explained in a gentle voice of reason emitting from his mouth.

"Where is he?" asked the king's desperate eyes and mouth.

"Sire you need to rest" Leon insisted, inspecting critically the kings handling mortal wound, he moved his chin haughtily in an attempt to muster dignanty.

"Merlin!" He cried again. Hope rising and then shattering within him, a rollercoaster of pain, as another familiar head poked its way around the door.

"Princess! You're awake!" grinned Gwaine, white teeth glittering around his smile.

"Gwaine! Where's Merlin?" Asked Arthur, trying to sit up again. Leon arrested him.

"Sire I must insist!" he insisted.

"Get off me! We need to go and get Merlin. Gwaine have my horse prepared I want to leave immediately, I-" Arthur batted the first knight's careening hands away, resisting their medicinal touch and standing out of bed again. Leon sighed deeply and shared a glance with Gwaine, gesturing his hands in expectant help. The sick king glared at his cahooting knights.

"Sup?" came a voice through the chaos, one so deer to Arthur in its familiarity that it embraced him comfortingly soothing away all of his worries away. Merlin stood in the doorway looking between the all quizzically holding a piece of toast.