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It would be a long time.
Merlin knew this as he knew his name and could feel his magic and as he knew every one of Arthur’s habits. The good, the bad and the endearingly stupid.
He sat on the banks of the lake, staring into its still surface. He wished for a ripple that would signal his king’s return, tried to will it into existence. It rarely did so, but the natural and unnatural worlds disobeyed his commands. Arthur would not return until Albion’s need was greatest.
Albion’s – not Merlin’s.
It would be many years until that came to pass. Merlin seemed to know this instinctively. Gwen’s reign would have long ended. Camelot would be irrevocably changed or have fallen into myth and legend. Alive only in stories and the memories of a lone immortal. The people and the landscape would shift and power would change hands and Merlin would have to watch it all. He would have to watch his friends die one by one, while he remained.
Life would be his prison, as death was Arthur’s.
He sat here on the banks of the lake, delaying the inevitable return he would make to Camelot. To Gwen and Gaius and Leon and all those who had known and loved and admired Arthur. To those who would remember and celebrate and mourn him. Camelot would be haunted by its dead king. He had bled for his kingdom enough that his essence had leached into the stonework and the earth and the people. Merlin knew that returning to Camelot would be a special kind of pain. He would delay it as long as possible. Instead, he would sit with the image of Arthur’s greying skin and icy touch. He would sit with the remembrance of his dead weight in Merlin’s tiring arms. And Kilgharrah’s cruel words.
No man, no matter how great, could know his destiny.
He never had a chance to change Arthur’s fate. That hurt. Merlin had so much power and he would never be able to do the one thing that mattered – drag Arthur back to the land of the living.
He had done so much. He was so much. He had bent the rules of magic to his own will. Had commanded the greatest living, magical beast. He was heir to the Dragonlords and the last of their kind.
And he was still subject to the will of fate.