by W. C. Conner
Down the hill, Gleneagle arrived to find Roland cradling Caron in his arms.
“She breathes, Highness,” Roland said, “but it is shallow and irregular.”
“Allen,” Scrubby urged frantically. “Get her to Allen.”
Roland lifted her and started back toward the rise to find Allen already on his way toward them. Scrubby trailed along behind them with the talisman that he had retrieved from the ground held reverently against his chest. They met Allen halfway up the hill and Roland laid her gently on the ground before the young wizard. Allen slowly passed his hands above her body as Bartholomew caught up to them, puffing and out of breath.
“This is not an earthly hurt,” Allen said quietly.
Lying his small body prostrate atop her with his ear to her chest, he relaxed as if preparing for sleep and lay thus for several long minutes.
Caron fought her way out of the nightmare she was living. She was surrounded by the screeching and howling of dark and evil things that sprang at her, swiped at her, and reached for her. When she tried to run from them, it felt as if her feet were so heavy that she ran in slow motion. Poisons and acids bubbled in pools surrounding her, the noxious fumes of which swirled like a heavy fog in the air, making her light-headed. The world moved crazily, so that everything she looked at seemed to warp and bend as she walked a tightrope between hostile demons that would consume her with one misstep. All the world was cold and poisonous, and she shied from anything that might touch her.
As she drifted downwards, she felt a touch of warmth. It called to her soul and she responded, reaching toward it.
Voices. She heard voices far away and faint, calling to her, talking about her, pleading with her to come to them. They sounded familiar. They were all familiar, save one.
That’s my father’s voice, and that one is Roland’s. Roland, I am lost. I can’t see you but I can hear you.
There was another voice calling to me, but I do not hear it any... Wait. There, that one, I know the voice, but I can’t place it. It is a child’s voice. What is it saying? What is it talking about? Who is it talking about?
“She will live,” Allen reported from where he lay, “but one of the babies she carries is dead within her.”
One of the babies? He could not be talking about me. I carry only the next prince of Gleneagle. One of the babies?
“It is the female baby, Highness. The boy will live.”
Highness? Female baby? Is he talking about me?
Memories of the past flooded Caron’s mind.
...Are there any other surprises I should know about before they happen?
If there are more, you will know of them as they are needed.
...Will it be you again?
Not this time, at least not directly. I do know for certain that it will be no one we have met.
…It will be no one we have met? Oh, by the gods, Wil, it was our daughter and you knew. You knew! You planned it. You killed our daughter. You killed my baby!
Caron’s mind fought its way clear of the fog surrounding it and her eyes opened to a bright sky and unfocused blobs of shadow hovering over her. She became aware of a weight atop her that scrambled off as she started to move. Roland’s voice came softly to her as her vision cleared. “I am here, Caron,” he said, picking her up once again from the ground and holding her close. She put her arms around his neck as the tears started and she sobbed uncontrollably against his shoulder.
She was alive, but the daughter she had never been aware of was dead inside her. She was alive, but her love for Wil had died with their daughter. She clung desperately to the one man who had been true to her through it all. He was there during her search for Wil, he was there during her attempts to gain entrance to the Old Forest to seek his rival for her love, and during the anxious period of her meeting with that rival, and then being alone with him for over a week in the Old Forest. She clung to Roland and cried hysterically in mourning for all that she had lost in a flash of magical power.
Oh, Wil, how could you do this to me? she wondered as she sobbed into Roland’s shoulder. I love you so desperately and you have hurt me so deeply I don’t know that I can ever forgive you.
Unconscious on the floor of the stone cabin, tears trickled down Wil’s cheeks. Deep inside his regenerative wizard’s sleep, he knew that in trading their unborn daughter’s life for his beloved Caron’s, he had forfeited her love for him.
“You will have to fight from within the Forest using my progeny as your tool,” the shade of Gleneagle had told him. “Use her well and accept her sacrifice as it is intended.”
And Wil had cried his defiance from deep in his wizard’s sleep, “It cannot be! I will not let it be!”
Thus, the prophecy Gleneagle had revealed to him of the loss of one of his female descendants was fulfilled, but not with the one he had anticipated, for Wil had given the son of Caron and Roland a half-sister, a female descendant of Gleneagle conceived of Wil’s and Caron’s love to be the sacrifice in her place.
Gleneagle’s shade floated over him once again, his expression a mixture of unhappiness and admiration of the sacrifice Wil had made. “In the end, we both sacrificed our love for our duty, didn’t we?” He smiled down at Wil’s comatose body. “You have done a noble deed worthy of songs that will most likely never be written, Wilton.”
As the sun set, the shade remained watching over the wizard, knowing he would need his companionship in the lonely months and years to come.
31
Caron sat astride her horse between her husband and her father as they prepared to depart once again from a confrontation at Blackstone.
Once again, the wizard Wilton had been lost to her as she stood before the walls of this hateful fortress. On the first departure four years earlier, her spirit had been buoyed by a hope for a future with Wil. This time, her spirit had been crushed by that same man she had loved so desperately; the man who had used her and his own daughter for his own selfish purposes.
The damage to her body had been repaired quickly enough by the healing skills of Allen and Bartholomew, but her emotions were still shattered, and for that the healers had no skill. Roland often found her crying uncontrollably at unpredictable times and she found herself having morose thoughts without provocation.
Her father had counseled with her as her physical strength returned. “There was a prophecy in the scrolls which I re-read when Mitchal told me of your organized opposition to Greyleige, daughter,” he told her as he sat at the edge of the cot in which she rested. “I had nearly forgotten it until you and Styxis faced one another. In the scroll, a brief mention is made of the sacrifice a female descendant of Gleneagle would make in the defense of life.” He picked up her hand which felt cool to his touch. “When I saw you lying on the ground, I was certain you were the descendant of the prophecy, but it was not you, and I rejoiced in that discovery.”
Roland said nothing when Gleneagle shared the knowledge with him, but he looked thoughtfully toward Caron who was sitting in the sun at the time, a closed expression on her face. He knew she mourned for the daughter she had never been aware she had growing inside her, but with Gleneagle’s revelation, he now knew she was devastated by the emotional loss of Wil.
Roland had always understood and accepted that Caron was in love with Wil, but it had been a love in the abstract, for she had not been able to see him since the confrontation at Blackstone. Now there was an entity, a body, a person she had spent a long week with and with whom he was certain she had lain.
He struggled through long hours of contemplation on the ride back to Confirth, assessing within his mind how he truly felt about Wil now that the dynamic had changed. At the last, he decided that nothing truly had changed: Both of them were still desperately in love with her and she still loved both of them – though she no longer acknowledged her love for Wil – and she was still his wife.
On the last night before their arrival back at Castle Confirth, Roland lay on his back, looking at the diffus
e glow from the light of the full moon through the thick, oiled linen of the tent roof. Caron lay curled in a semi-fetal position with her back toward him. Her tears had stopped, but her breathing had not yet settled into the regular pattern of sleep.
“Caron?” he said softly. She stirred but did not reply.
“She was Wil’s, wasn’t she?” There was no harshness or accusation in the question. He had asked it quietly, attempting to help her face the truth about what had happened.
Caron curled more tightly into her protective fetal position as the tears started once again.
Gleneagle’s revelation of the prophecy had confirmed his suspicions. He had guessed that the daughter who had been killed by Styxis’s attack had been Wil’s and he sensed that Wil had lain with her knowing their union would produce a girl, and knowing as well that his daughter would be sacrificed to save Caron’s life.
Roland turned onto his side and cuddled into her back with his arm over her, holding her tightly against him as her body shook with the sobbing she was unable to control.
“Had Wil not done what he did, it would be you who was dead,” he murmured into her ear. “I owe him a debt that can never be repaid. That which I hold most dear is in my arms right now because of his manipulation of life; a manipulation that was at once incredibly selfish and incredibly selfless.” Her head moved slightly in recognition of the truth of his words, but it didn’t change the pain of her losses.
Roland closed his eyes in respect and sorrow as he comprehended the full gravity of the sacrifice Wil had made. You’re a better man than I am, he thought as tears threatened, for I doubt I could have sacrificed the possibility of any future with the woman I love as you did.
32
Deep under Blackstone, parties of Drogol’s Northmen searched the chambers and cells for whatever they could find. Gleneagle had promised them that any treasure they found was to be theirs, and they were being careful to guarantee that nothing of value was missed.
At the lowest level, eerie laughter could be clearly heard echoing from corridor to corridor. It was difficult to tell where it came from and they turned their heads from side to side as they moved to locate its source. After two false starts, they found themselves in a low and narrow passage off an otherwise unused hallway. It was clear the laughter came from that passageway.
The fetid smell of human waste and decay assailed them as the door to the cell from which the laughter issued was pushed inward. Across from them a man dressed in the remains of a wizard’s robe was crouched with his back to them, his hands covering his neck and head. The laughter had died down when he had seen the light of the torches, though it was obvious he labored to suppress the chuckles that escaped him involuntarily.
“You come,” the leader of the search party said in heavily accented common speech.
Gregory stopped laughing altogether at those words and drew himself more closely together. He shook his head violently in denial. “No come,” he said mimicking the heavy accent of the man who had come to release him. “No come.” He laughed quietly once more and turned toward the Northmen, covering his eyes with his hand against the pain of the light from the torches they carried. “No come. No come. No come,” he repeated before once again breaking into wild peals of hysterical laughter.
Shrugging, the leader of the Northmen withdrew his people. After instructing three of them to remain behind to clean the cell and provide the madman with some food, he led the group back to the surface to report that they had found one more wizard still alive in the bowels of Blackstone.
“The wizard Gregory has been found, Highness,” Geoffrey reported. As Gleneagle raised his eyes from the papers before him on his desk, Geoffrey added, “He was found in unspeakable conditions at the lowest level of Blackstone’s dungeons. He is quite mad, Highness. He speaks nothing but gibberish when he speaks at all, and laughs hysterically almost without stopping. The guards say it is most unnerving.”
“Where is he now?” Gleneagle asked.
“He is in the cell off the guardroom at present, although he doesn’t seem to be a danger to anyone.”
“Let us see what we can learn of this unfortunate man,” the Prince said as he stood and started toward the door.
Gregory looked up as Gleneagle walked into the guardroom, then stood and shambled to the bars of the cell. His maniacal laughter had stopped with his recognition of his sovereign. At a signal from Gleneagle, the guards unlocked the door of the cell and swung it open. The Prince reached out his hand in invitation to the broken wizard who reached for it tentatively. Grasping Gregory’s hand firmly, Gleneagle drew him forward and sat him down on a bench next to a table. He took a seat on the bench opposite him, looked deeply into his eyes and waited.
Gregory’s eyes held for several seconds before they shied away. “The spell holds,” he said in what would be the only words the Prince would hear from him that made any sense. He was silent for a moment before he giggled. “It holds. It holds. It holds.” And with those words, he laughed as if delighted by the most amusing joke he had ever heard. “It holds. It holds. It holds.” His laughter fell off to be replaced by nonsensical mumbles interspersed with giggles.
“See to it that Gregory is made comfortable in one of the visitors’ bedrooms,” Gleneagle said to the sergeant on duty. “Make it one of the rooms with the decorative ironwork on the windows, and post one man outside his door. Do not lock it, however. Should he wish to leave the room, have your man follow him to keep him from harm.”
He looked to Gregory and shook his head in sorrow before turning to Geoffrey who stood just inside the guardroom door. “I am going to send him along to the wizards at Wisdom to see if there is anything they can do to help him.”
The warm days of summer had scarcely begun when Scrubby turned the corner with his little cart behind him filled with the scraps from Three Oaks. He paused as always and looked toward the east, hoping for visitors from afar. Having been outside the boundaries of Wisdom on more than one occasion, he often found himself itching to see more of the world even though he was well content with his life with Mattie and the children.
His musings were arrested by movement on the road in the valley. It was a large party that, even from this distance, Scrubby could tell was from Gleneagle. He stopped and sat down on the bench that stood against the courtyard wall to await the approaching group.
Scrubby was disappointed, however, when he didn’t recognize any of them as they rode slowly past the gates of the inn. Except... There was a man riding at the center of the group who wore no uniform. He had a wild look in his eyes and his heavy beard hid his face, but there was something about him that seemed familiar.
Scrubby walked along beside the slow moving horses, trying to get a good look at the face of the man in the middle when he raised his head and looked full into the swineherd’s eyes.
“Gregory,” Scrubby whispered as he stopped in his tracks. Turning, he ran back to the inn and burst through the side door to the kitchen.
“Gregory’s alive,” he announced excitedly to Tingle and Thisbe as they looked up from where they stood working on the dinner that was to be served to their patrons that evening. “A bunch of Gleneagle’s soldiers just rode past with him in the middle.” He looked back and forth at the two of them who laughed as he finished. “He really needs a shave.”
Eldred looked up from where he worked with a draw knife to shape a length of wood destined to become a table leg. He set the knife down at the serious look on Thomas’s face.
“They found Gregory and have brought him home to Wisdom,” he said. “He awaits us in the meeting hall.”
“Is he well?” Eldred asked.
“He is broken,” Thomas replied. At the question in Eldred’s eyes, he added, “You will understand when you see him.”
Eldred opened the door of the meeting hall to find a small group of Gleneagle’s soldiers sitting together in one corner of the hall. Alone at the center of the room sat Gregory who looked up at E
ldred’s entrance. Thomas had told him of the circumstances of Gregory’s discovery in the fetid cell deep below Blackstone as they walked over from the woodworking shed.
“Hello, Gregory,” Eldred said softly. “We have missed you.”
Gregory stood up uncertainly, staring at Eldred. After several long moments he smiled. “It holds,” he said. Seeing the look of puzzlement on Eldred’s face his smile faded and he repeated, “It holds. It holds. It holds. It holds.”
Eldred saw the manic look in Gregory’s eyes change to one of happiness as comprehension dawned in the elder wizard’s face.
“Ah, I understand. Your spell of binding still holds the darkness,” Eldred stated.
Gregory smiled broadly before starting to babble, “It holds. It holds. It holds.”
“Well done, Gregory,” Eldred said gently as Gregory’s babbling ceased. “You have acquitted yourself beautifully.”
Gregory laughed aloud and resumed his seat. “It holds. It holds. It holds.”
“Have him looked after, Thomas,” he said to the younger wizard who had followed him into the meeting hall. “I believe holding onto his spell of binding was the only thing that kept him alive in the dungeon of Blackstone, and in that he has redeemed himself.” He shook his head sadly as he looked at the broken wizard who chuckled to himself as he rubbed his hands together in satisfaction.
“He will need constant care, Thomas. Even had he not redeemed himself by maintaining his spell of binding, we could do no less for this wizard who cared so much for the people of Wisdom that he ultimately destroyed himself.” He stood for a moment watching Gregory chuckling and murmuring. “If anything good is to be found in this, we can be thankful that he wasn’t able to follow Waldron’s path.”