by Jack Conner
Baleron and his handlers stopped a hundred feet away.
The Havensril knights unchained their prisoner and prodded him forwards. Gratefully, the young rithlag—Guilost—made his way back to his people, and Ungier seemed genuinely glad to see him, which surprised Baleron, who’d just heard that only Asguilar had truly loved his father.
Baleron’s handlers shoved him forward. This all seemed strange to him—wrong, somehow. Obviously this prisoner exchange was a staged affair, a half-hearted effort on the enemy’s part to fool the humans into thinking it legitimate, but there was more to it than that. The Men had an agenda of their own, and the enemy knew about it, was playing to it.
The human soldiers drew around him in a tight, gleaming knot, and he wondered if any of them had been with the Five Hundred.
Suddenly their swords pointed at his breast and throat. “Sorry, my lord,” said their leader. “But we have to do this.”
He recognized that voice. “Halthus?”
“It’s I, sir.”
“Excellent!” Baleron clapped Halthus on the shoulder, ignoring the other knights’ tension. Halthus had been one of his lieutenants when he led the Five Hundred.
Lifting his visor, Halthus did not look so friendly at the moment, however. “Sir, you’d better come with us quietly.”
Baleron withdrew his hand. He hadn’t noticed it before, but one of the knights carried coils of chain over his shoulder, and he brought it out now and bound the prince’s hands. Baleron, not quite mystified, allowed it.
“I’m not a werewolf,” he said.
Halthus shrugged. “That’s for the mages to decide.”
They led him inside the walls as though he were a prisoner, and the gates closed behind him with a crash that echoed in his ears for long moments afterward. He may be in chains, he thought, but he was home.
The knights led him to their horses and put him astride one. Without wasting a moment, they raced off through the streets with him at their center. It was surreal, after so much time among the horrors of Krogbur, to be home again, to see people—people—and hear the sounds of playing children and the barking of dogs.
Even so, it was grim.
Baleron was dismayed to see large parts of the city still burnt and in ruins from Throgmar’s passage. The Grothgar Castle, or its blackened remains, reared like a lightning-blasted stump from the highpoint of the city, while masses of emaciated homeless people tangled the streets and looked out of grimy hotel windows. They must be refugees from all over the kingdom, their own towns and cities consumed by the devouring armies of Oslog.
Baleron turned to Halthus. “Did General Kavradnum ever mass an army out of the soldiers of Aglindor and the other cities?”
The knight snorted. “Some army! They botched the attack on Ungier. Our sortie was nearly unable to reach them.” Darkly he added, “Only a few survived. And their cities were left defenseless. They did not stand for long.”
The knights rode to the largest surviving palace in the city, home to one of the noblest Houses, the Husrans, who, Halthus explained, had offered up their abode to the king and had taken up residence with another great House with whom they shared many ties, the Esgralins.
The knights stopped at the palace’s gate and were inspected by a coterie of five sorcerers, who took custody of Baleron, bringing him into a room within the outer wall, not far from the hastily-erected barracks. His chains were removed, and the mages made him stand in a circle of chalk while they all pointed their staffs at him and closed their eyes, chanting in a hypnotic baritone. The ends of their staffs glowed, and he felt hot. They made him remove his sword, and began again.
For four days they kept him there, testing him, scrutinizing him, and for four days he counseled himself to be patient. He could not blame them for their caution. After Rauglir’s deception, they should be paranoid.
At last—to the delight of Baleron—Logran himself attended the proceedings. Baleron was happy to see him again, but the sorcerer did not look glad to see Baleron. The Archmage just frowned sadly at the prince and waited until his subordinates were finished. When that time came, their leader turned to him and said, “We’ve done all we can do for the moment, Master Belefard.”
“Well?” he asked them.
“It’s him, as near as we can tell, but . . . there is a taint.”
Logran nodded. “Yes, I can feel it.”
Baleron said, “It’s me, Logran. It’s me.”
Logran’s frown deepened. “The sad part is,” he said, “that it just might be. If it is—if it’s truly you, Baleron—then I apologize.”
Baleron felt a knot of ice form in his bowels. “Why?”
“Because we must consider you dangerous, a threat to the king. Look at it from our point of view and you’ll see we have no option. If it were up to me, we’d simply cast you out . . . or destroy you.”
“What!?”
“The wolves are at the door,” Logran said, “and now in comes one pretending to be a sheep—a black one, perhaps, but a sheep nonetheless. The only logical thing to do would be to put you down.”
“Logran, it’s me! It’s really me! I’ve been to Krogbur, the Black Tower of Gilgaroth!”
“There is no such place.”
“There is, and . . .” Baleron wanted to tell it all, about the tower, and the army—all he could remember—but Gilgaroth’s spell bound his tongue, and he realized he could say no more. All that came up was a dry cough, and then he started to suffocate. There was suddenly no air in the tight room. Agonized, his lungs on fire, he sank to his knees, holding his hands to his throat and wheezing for breath.
Logran’s hairy eyebrows crinkled, and the other mages drew back as though expecting Baleron to slip into monstrous form and run amok.
Gradually the dizziness and shortness of breath receded, though, and Baleron fell back gasping.
“I . . . I cannot . . . can’t tell you anything,” he managed. “I’m—sorry.”
Logran shot a strange look to his lieutenant, and they frowned together. The others looked wary, their staffs all leveled at the prince as soldiers would level crossbows, and with the same gravity.
Logran said, “In any case, it is not up to me. The king hates Baleron too much to slay him, and no words of mine will convince him that you’re not his son. He may not believe your lies, but he can’t entirely discount the possibility of your survival, either.” He sighed. “He wants to see you.”
Accompanied by a gaggle of knights and half a dozen mages, Baleron was shown inside the palace proper, which was a beautiful and graceful affair, much unlike the stark Castle Grothgar; these spaces were light and airy and cheerful, or had been. Now all was bleak and gray and cold, and the high spaces only made Baleron feel forlorn as he passed through them.
He was shown to the new Throne Room, which had been converted from the grand ballroom of the Husrans. Social occasions here had been a thing to remember and to talk about for weeks afterward; Baleron could remember he and Sophia dancing across this very floor, gay music playing. Sometimes, when the Husrans had employed a sorcerer for the evening, the revelers could even waltz through the very air amidst glowing balls of multi-colored light . . . but those days were gone now. Aristocrats would have to amuse themselves elsewhere.
A grim-faced King Grothgar sat his throne, wearing all black, still in mourning for his wife and sons. He’d been lost in brooding contemplation before Baleron’s entrance, and he only looked up distractedly—but, when his eyes found Baleron’s, they hardened. They turned to ice.
The prince was reminded once more of what a forceful presence his father had, and what cold and penetrating eyes. Yet, for all that, there was a glimmer of hope in them—more so than in Logran’s, anyway.
Guards shoved Baleron to within twenty feet of his sire, then forced to him to his knees for the second time that week before Albrech said, “You may rise.”
Baleron rose, finding it difficult to meet his father’s gaze. He’d been sent here to
kill the man. Yet for some reason he felt warmed by his father’s presence. Was it, he wondered, the call of blood and kin, or was it the protected feeling a father brings to his children, or something else?
“Tell me,” said Albrech, “are you my son?”
“None other.”
“How can I be sure?”
Wondering that himself, Baleron said nothing.
“I was fooled before,” mused the king, “and it cost me dearly. Then I failed to notice the telltale sign; Rolenya did not sing. Would not sing. That was a distinctive characteristic the demon couldn’t mimic. As for you, the only distinctive characteristic I can think of is a penchant for fouling things up, the more profoundly the better.”
“Father, I—”
“Don’t you call me that! How dare you!” Albrech leapt down from his chair and stalked over to Baleron, knocking knights and sorcerers aside.
“Lord, don’t!” advised Logran, stepping between father and son, and forcibly halting the king with a hand on the latter’s royal chest, just as, on a previous occasion, he had prevented the king from embracing Rolenya. “It’s a demon. It has to be. There is no other reason Gilgaroth would have arranged this but to loose another of his agents in our midst. The only reason we allowed him to enter, remember, is that he brought the sword with him. Remember.”
Trembling, the king nodded and took a step back. “You’re right, of course.”
“Right about what?” Baleron said. “What use is Rondthril to you?”
But Logran never got the chance to answer.
In that endless moment, it occurred to part of Baleron even as he was asking the question that he was as close to both Logran and the king as he might ever be. They might kill him. They might imprison him. It was unlikely they’d ever let him this close to one, much less both, of his primary targets again. If he wanted to save Rolenya, now was the time. After all, Ungier was seemingly untouchable; there was no way Baleron could kill him and so make Rondthril a threat to even higher powers. This left Baleron with no plan and no recourse save to either let Rolenya be thrown to the Borchstogs or else save her by guiding the fall of Havensrike.
A creeping coldness came over him. Tendrils of ice snaked their way throughout his body, even his mind . . .
Urgently, he pushed it away.
My Doom! Damn it all, this is it! Steering me along my path. It makes me do what I’d tend to do anyway, but it makes sure that I do it, and to it to the Shadow’s satisfaction. That is why Gilgaroth holds Rolenya against me. Not just to lay a claim on me, but to give my Doom something to work with, some leverage to move me by.
But I will not be moved.
He thought all this in the flash of an instant. Even as he put the question about Rondthril to Logran, he made his decision and forced down that creeping, icy tendril, tried to lock it away within himself.
Rolenya will be cast to the Borchstogs!
I will not be moved!
He shoved that icy tendril down, down, though it squirmed and twisted, and its voice reverberated throughout him. He saw an image of Rolenya being tossed to the ravening hordes, the hordes that viewed torture as the ultimate act of veneration to their dark master . . .
He fought it.
His Doom was strong, though.
And it was not alone.
Baleron and his left hand shared the same blood, and, as Baleron reasoned afterwards, the foul spirit of Rauglir tainted that blood, spread the demon’s influence throughout his entire body.
Just the same, it was indeed the left hand that darted to the side at that moment, just as Logran was prepared to answer the question (or not) put to him. The hand struck like a snake, moving lightning-quick, wrenching a dagger loose from one of the knights, where it was strapped to the man’s side.
Stepping quickly forwards, Baleron, or at least his body, drove the curved blade into Logran’s backside—the Archmage had been facing the king—severing the sorcerer’s spine and puncturing his left lung.
Blood burst from the sorcerer’s lips, as Baleron saw when the man twisted in pain, and the mage’s brown eyes flew wide.
Rauglir only seized control of Baleron’s body for a moment, while Baleron was still wrestling with his Doom. As soon as Baleron felt the alien intellect surge through him, he was able to fight it, to wrest control away from the demon.
But too late.
Logran sank to his knees, the dagger still in his back, blood trickling down his brilliant robes and from the corner of his mouth.
The king looked from his ghastly face up to Baleron’s, and rage took him. He gave a great bellow and jerked out his own sword, steel ringing.
Baleron, his left hand covered in Logran’s blood, stumbled back, blinking, not quite sure what had just happened. Had he just murdered Logran? And what had been that other presence inside him? It had not felt like his Doom—
All the sorcerers had their staffs leveled at him, and the knights had drawn their blades, but the king roared, “Stay your hands, damn you! He’s mine!”
Reeling drunkenly backwards, Baleron tripped and fell to the marble floor, then stared, confused, as his father loomed over him. The king raised his blade so that it glittered in the torchlight, and there was a mad look in his eyes.
Baleron raised his hands to ward off the blow, shouting, “No! Father, don’t!”
From somewhere, he heard laughter. It coursed through him, echoing in his mind, bouncing almost painfully in his skull, and with a start he recognized it.
Rauglir.
The top hand he had raised had been his left.
King Grothgar frowned at the gruesome stitches, but he didn’t stop swinging. He raised his blade as high as he could, then brought it down savagely. The large sword hissed as it cut the air.
Baleron had lived through too much to die like this. He rolled aside.
The mighty sword smote the marble where he’d lain, sending up chips and sparks. The impact was so great it tore the weapon loose from Albrech’s hands, and the sword clattered loudly to the floor.
For a moment, Baleron and his father looked into each other’s eyes. Lord Grothgar moved.
Baleron was faster.
With fear-spurred reflexes, he seized the sword. His legs lashed out, swept the king’s feet out from under him, and the monarch toppled with a cry. Even as he struck the ground, he found himself in the grip of his son. Baleron pressed the sword to his father with his other hand, and rolled them both away. The mages and knights scattered.
When he was clear of the press of people, Baleron jerked his father to his feet and pressed the edge of the blade to his throat while the other arm he locked about Lord Grothgar’s left arm and chest. He backed up against a wall.
“Don’t move against me,” he warned the gathering.
One of the sorcerers dropped beside Logran, putting his hand to the dying man’s chest. An orange light suffused the skin of his hand.
Albrech struggled in his son’s grip, but when the blade drew blood from his throat he quit.
Baleron’s left hand shook. It tried to, under its own power, reach around and throttle Albrech. Startled, Baleron exerted every ounce of his will on it. Sweat wept from his pores. A cord on his neck popped out and the clenching of his jaws nearly shattered his teeth. At last, though, he mastered the hand and forced it into submission.
“You dog,” Albrech was snarling. “You filthy little worm. I should’ve known the Wolf would corrupt you. You always were weak.”
“No, Father,” Baleron wheezed. “I’m cursed, but I’m no traitor. If I was going to kill you, you’d be dead already, and the gods may damn me for sparing you yet, as by doing so I’m condemning Rolenya to a fate worse than death.”
“What are you babbling about?”
Before Baleron could answer, all the soldiers in the palace seemed to run into the room. A gaggle of archers aimed their weapons at the renegade prince, yet no man dared fire lest he strike the king.
“Rat!” hissed the father to the
son. “Snake! Weasel! Traitor!”
“I am not a traitor!” Baleron said, hearing the desperation in his voice. That icy feeling was returning. A cold tendril tried to force its way into his mind. He blocked it, barely. His left hand shook.
“Murderer!” Albrech said.
“That I am, but not for Logran; there’s something inside me, Father. I think—yes—it’s the same demon that possessed Rolenya.”
The knights and sorcerers erupted in a clamor, demanding the king’s release. Baleron ignored them.
“Listen to me, Father,” he said. “There is no way you can win out against the Dark One.”
“Craven!”
“I’ve seen his resources, and they’re beyond anything you or the Union can summon. He’s grown strong in his time sealed off from the world, free to breed his minions at will. There’s more. He’s brought his own demons over from the Second Hell. He’s built a huge tower, Father, a doorway to Illistriv. Flee, Father. Break through this rabble of Ungier’s and take your subjects north—far north. Take them to Wethelion and the Tower of the Sun. Assemble there with your allies and prepare a defense. If I should die, remember that.”
“You would have me run away like a coward!”
“I am your son!”
The king sneered. “I have no doubt of that. Oh, I know it’s you, Baleron. Only you could make such an awful mess of things.”
Baleron looked about at the assembly of soldiers and mages, and they glared back. None spoke now. All was silent as a tomb.
“How do you propose we get out of this?” Baleron asked in his father’s ear.
“I propose we don’t.”
He acted fast. One of his hands reached up over his shoulder and clawed at Baleron’s eyes so that the prince reflexively released his hold on his father’s throat; at the same time Albrech gripped the naked blade with his bare hand and shoved it away. Rubbing his throat, he stumbled aside, giving the archers an open shot.