Merlyn's Only Hope

Prologue

Staring up at the horizon, she saw red hues of sunlight turn to inky black, obscuring the distant gleam of life in the small village far below. She smiled, seeing the glow of a bonfire slowly die, the ashes filling the air like molten angels before falling back to earth, littering the ground with ashen dust. She wiped away her tears, a fond smile appearing faintly on her lips. She would miss this, her mother, her home, her people,

Will.

He saw her, perched on the same tor they had climbed to escape their lives thousands of times in the last thirteen summers, the first at five years of age, when she had accidentally set fire to an abandoned barn. They'd hidden amongst the shrubbery for hours before Hunith had found them, watching wide-eyed as the flames licked at the remnants of the building. He'd seen her cry that day, thinking herself a monster, a criminal, something much more than the small child the world thought she was.

Watching the sleeping village, he realised how right she'd been.
As he settled beside her, his thoughts turned to the moon and stars embedded in the night sky.

"You don't have to go." he whispered, his voice barely audible over the rustling of the trees.

"Yes, I do." Her voice trembled; she refused to meet his eyes. "It's not safe for me anymore."

He sighed, frustration clearly clouding his thoughts. "Then we could run away. Together. To somewhere no one can find us."

"You know I can't do that." she spoke with her head in her hands, her body shaking with a sudden cold.

"Why? We could be happy."

Those words played on her mind as she crossed the border into Uther's kingdom. She'd contemplated running away so many times, leaving her life behind to escape to a place where she could use her magic without fear, without the thought of death.

"We could be happy."

But they couldn't.

Ealdor was never enough. Will was never enough. As much as it hurt her to think it, she needed more, she needed a life less stifling than that of a farmer. On her 9th birthday, she had been given a book by her mother, one written in a language that filled her with a sense of electricity, of excitement and power. The old religion coursed through her veins, and here, she had the key to it.

Flicking through the well-worn pages as she set up camp for the night, she wondered if Camelot was really the place that held all of the answers she still searched for. All she wanted was to feel that same excitement that gifted her when that book was placed in her small hands. She had thought she'd find everything in a solitary fantasy. She new better now; she doubted this 'Gaius' that her mother was sending her to would know much more than she already did.

Finally, through the trees, she could just make out the turrets of a castle, the ghostly image straight out of a fairytale. A flicker of hope registered in her chest as she approached the gates. Perhaps the mystical city would have some answers, some wisdom of her powers.
Perhaps there was a reason for them after all.
Maybe she would be happy.