Board Thread:What If?/@comment-5674726-20140630220202/@comment-24762954-20140827133336

ReganX wrote: Fimber wrote: I think another hint for Nimueh's deliberate choice was the fact that it never happened again ever after her death. Several people were saved from certain death with magic but no life in exchange was demanded. Maybe that was the reason why they either made Nimueh being the one responsible from the beginning or changed it all in "Le Morte d'Arthur" later in order to let Merlin and others heal people without killing someone each time magic is practised for healing purposes.

On the other hand, when Uther was saved from Erdward's bugs the life for a life-policy was nowhere to be seen either.

I'd be more inclined to think that it was a case of it no longer being convenient for the writers to acknowledge the life for a life provision after it was used to off Nimueh than that she had apparently rewritten the laws of magic to kill somebody for every life created/saved by magic.

Alternatively, while no life was ever explicitly demanded in exchange for a life saved, it may not mean that the price was not exacted.

Take Merlin saving Morgana in The Crystal Cave as an example. Kilgharrah warns Merlin that the evil that will follow will be his own doing and its undeniable that Morgana did a fair bit of damage after her life was saved by magical means. We were told that the price of a life is a life but it was never stated that the price would be paid immediately. Ygraine lived around nine months after magic was used to give Arthur life. Her cause of death was also natural rather than a magical sickness like Hunith's.

One could make a case that Merlin did have to pay a life for saving Morgana: Arthur's. Probably all those people simply were saved in different way, namely by healing magic. Merlin was capable to trade Nimueh's life for Gaius's on his own and probably could do it again but in Morgana's case he went to Kilgharrah and ordered to give him the spell and in Uther's he was looking for it in book(s). And nobody ever used a spell to mirror life - Nimueh only summoned a rain and Merlin had no way to know it.