by Jack Conner
Baleron said nothing, and Logran waited until he could stand no more of it, and demanded, “Well?”
Baleron took a deep breath. “I’m Doomed, Logran. I’m the godsdamned Ender! Wherever I go, I spread misery and evil.”
“Nonsense! The prophecy is mere propaganda.”
“But don’t you see? The curse binds me to fulfill it, whether it’s real or not. The Doom makes it real! But ... with this sword ... I can do some good. Let me do it, Logran. It’s my only chance to redeem myself.”
Logran sighed.
Sensing imminent victory, Baleron added, “If I can’t fight the Shadow, Logran—if all I can do is spread the Wolf’s will—I think I will go mad.”
“I will not aid your suicide.”
Baleron studied him. He could see no give in the sorcerer’s face. Yet suddenly the prince felt much better. He smiled and rose to his feet. “I would be wise to listen to you,” he said, and took the sorcerer’s hand.
Logran was surprised for a moment, but he recovered and shook the prince’s hand enthusiastically. “You always were a good lad, Bal. You’ll be fine, don’t worry. I’ll see you through this. I know in times of doubt the mind plays tricks on itself, but have faith in yourself and all shall be well, I promise. If you have any problems, my friend, know that you can always turn to me.”
“Thank you.”
Baleron moved to the balcony, where Lunir waited for him, hove into the bird’s saddle and was off.
He meant to fly to his own balcony, as Amrelain would be waiting for him, and he could do with her company, but when he cast an eye toward the wall he saw something strange. He saw a stirring upon the battlefield, between the wall and Ungier’s encircling camp. He couldn’t make out what the activity was, and he veered to investigate. He flew toward the South Gate, where the king would be.
Setting down near Lunir’s pen and handing the bird over to its handlers, he scaled the wall and joined his father and Rilurn, who stared out over the battlefield much as he’d left them. Even before he joined them, he heard strange music, a haunting melody of stringed instruments. Then, looking out over the battlefield, he saw the cause.
The day’s dead, all of the ones that lay upon the battlefield—friend and foe alike—had risen.
“Dear gods!” he heard himself mutter. The sight chilled him to the bone.
Not only had the fallen warriors waked from death—they were dancing. Spinning and cavorting among severed limbs and blackened earth, the corpses danced. He saw a dead Borchstog with its remaining arm interlocked with that of a Havensrike soldier, both doing a jig together. He saw the burned, skeletal remains of a man leaping and pirouetting near a burning catapult. A decapitated vampire pressed against a half-Troll. Other animated corpses played fiddles. Melancholy yet jaunty music drifted on the smoky wind. Thousands of bodies moved about the battlefield. Engaged in obscene parody, some writhed in the ground in groups of ten or more.
Horror filled Baleron. He sought out the vampires he knew were responsible for this, but the night was dark and the huddled ranks of the enemy endless.
“Bastards!” he said.
“Steady, son,” his father cautioned. “This is just Ungier’s way of demoralizing us. We won’t play his games, so he plays his own.”
By the light of the torches along the wall, Baleron glanced sideways at Albrech and saw that his father looked very stern.
In quiet tones, Baleron said, “Father, you said you would consider giving me a command of my own, and I think I’ve proven my ability to lead one today. Give me some troops and I swear I’ll bring the fight to the enemy. I will make it my mission to lead my men beyond the walls, to single out the leaders of Ungier’s host. To take them down. I need this, Father. We need this. We cannot afford to fight this defensive war. They’ll wait until we’re weak, then crush us. We cannot outlast them. Give me some men. I will make you proud.”
His father studied him with hard blue eyes that had rarely seen his youngest son with favor. Perhaps he thought of Baleron’s Doom. Perhaps he weighed this against Baleron’s charge today that had rescued near a hundred men.
At last he nodded, half to himself, and said, “Very well, Baleron. I will give you your command.”
“Are you sure about this, Father?” asked Rilurn.
“I am.”
Finally, Baleron would lead men once more. It half-surprised him that, after all he’d been through, he still valued his father’s opinion so highly.
“I won’t disappoint you,” he said.
“Don’t worry about me.” Albrech nodded toward the Borchstogs. “Worry about them.”
And so, once more, Baleron became a leader of men. He assumed command of five hundred soldiers along the western arc of the wall, and, bolstered by Rondthril, he led them with grim determination, even as the siege stretched for two weeks, then three.
True to his vow, he led his men in wild charges beyond the wall, where they brought considerable slaughter to the enemy. Once, utilizing Shelir’s charm, he captured a vampire and brought it back inside the wall for purposes of what he called “interrogation”. Afterwards he stuck the vampire’s head on a pike along the wall; it would have burst into flames come morning, but due to Gilgaroth’s ever-present storm clouds no sunlight reached it, and so it stayed, and Ungier raged.
This feat earned Baleron’s command much fame in Glorifel, and his men became known as Baleron’s Fighting Five Hundred, and they became a symbol to the Glorifelans of the resistance to Gilgaroth and Ungier. Sometimes, though, Baleron felt that the people feared him as much as they feared the Enemy.
Baleron heard a rumor that Albrech might make him a general, and he rejoiced. He’d become an empty thing, he knew, a thing of blood and death, but at least he was good at it, and at long last he’d earned his father’s favor, his life’s ambition.
Meanwhile, the war rolled on. Its conclusion seemed inevitable.
But then one night during the third week Baleron awoke to great cry. He slept along the wall with his soldiers, and hearing the noise he sat up with a start. Men along the parapet were yelling.
Baleron rubbed the sleep from his eyes and ascended a stone staircase to the top of the wall, where he demanded to know what was going on.
The nearest man pointed, and Baleron was shocked to see a serath—a Great Swan!—winging in out of the west, and upon it was a rider whose long black hair swept back away from her pale face. She was clothed in a long white fluttering dress, and to Baleron she seemed like an angel—or a ghost.
She was too far away to see clearly, and Baleron fetched a spyglass and brought it to his eye. Almost frantically, thinking crazy thoughts, he found the figure through the glass and studied her features, which began to crystallize as she approached the lights along the wall, and then all of a sudden they snapped into focus.
Baleron gasped and stumbled back. He felt the world tilt beneath him.
Nothing would ever be the same again.
Rolenya had come home.
Chapter 10
From the camps of the Borchstogs, arrows whistled upward, raining all about her. Cold fingers touched Baleron’s spine, but she was high and her serath eluded the bolts, at least for the moment. White dress streaming behind her, she drove toward the walls like a moonbeam.
Ungier roused his glarumri to hound her. The great crows’ black shapes lifted off from the ground and cut through the night towards her, their riders readying bows and poisoned arrows.
She flew closer and closer to the walls.
Suddenly Baleron felt new worry. Logran’s wards incinerate her. He called on the sorcerer, who arrived from his position further along up the wall, and said, “Let her through!”
“She should first be approved by the king,” Logran said.
“She’s approved by me! Let her in.”
Reluctantly, recognizing the princess and desiring to obey Baleron, Logran said, “Very well. But if she turns out to be a spy, it’s on your head.”
The squadron of glarumri pursued the swan and its rider, firing not just poisoned arrows at her but arrows of flame as well. It was a surreal sight to Baleron—the beautiful princess on her white swan, with moonlight spilling softly down on them from a shaft through the black roof of clouds, winging in above a dark horde and before the foul crows of her enemies while storm clouds flickered and brooded above, and flaming arrows sizzled through the air about her.
“Do something!” Baleron ordered Logran. “Strike down those arrows!”
Logran’s eyes closed. “I’m trying! Necromancers block me!”
“Curse them! I’ll do it myself!”
Baleron shouted an order to the captain of his archers to ready the marksmen, then quit the wall and mounted Lunir.
“Don’t be a fool!” called Logran, but Baleron ignored him.
“Away!” Baleron shouted.
The glarum cawed in protest but flapped his wings and leapt into the night. Baleron wore a shield on one arm, several daggers on his chest, carried Rondthril at his hip, and even as he flew he notched an arrow in his bow.
Without a thought, he left the protection of the wall behind. His blood pounded furiously as he flew closer and closer to Rolenya.
Ahead, her swan flew swiftly, gracefully.
The glarumri gnashed their teeth as they closed the distance. Flaming arrows arced out. Their deadly rain grew more precise with every second. Lightning reflected off their wolf-shaped helms.
Baleron fell upon them.
He drove Lunir straight into their midst. So focused were they on Rolenya that they hadn’t seen him coming, and he laughed as they scattered before him.
His bow twanged, and Borchstogs fell from their mounts. He tried not to shoot the glarums themselves, but when one flew at him, talons outstretched, he shot it through the throat, and it spiraled, dead, to the ground far below.
A Borchstog fired a crossbow at him. He raised his shield arm. The bolt clattered off.
He flung a dagger at it as they closed the distance and the blade buried itself in the Borchstog’s eye. The Crow Rider slumped backward.
Its glarum came on.
The impact of Lunir and the enemy bird shook Baleron’s very bones. A terrible squawking and cawing ensued as the two glarums battled. They grappled, spinning entangled through the night, and Baleron held on for dear life as their talons raked each other. Their long, armored beaks stabbed deep into tender flesh. Black blood spurted. Black feathers filled the air.
At last, Lunir, ever vicious and ill-tempered, eviscerated the enemy glarum, and it fell away, loops of intestines trailing behind.
A quick look confirmed that Rolenya was nearing the wall. Almost within bowshot now.
Three glarumri still pursued her.
With a quick word to Lunir, Baleron chased after them, notching an arrow. Waited. There! He fired. The missile struck the Borchstog’s back, right below a piece of armor. Dying, the glarumril slid halfway out of its saddle. Its straps held it in, but the crow was off balance and veered away.
Baleron’s archers on the wall fired then, a hail of precision. The long bolts flew to either side of Rolenya, taking down her remaining two pursuers in twin explosions of black blood and black feathers.
At last, she passed over the wall. Safe.
A flaming arrow whizzed past Baleron’s head and he turned back to face the oncoming glarumri. They were too many. Desperate, he angled Lunir down, down and down, then pulled up right before they struck the ground and fled fast toward the wall.
He led his glarumri pursuers within range of his archers—arrows shot out—and he looked over his shoulder with relief to see crows and riders spiraling down behind him. Finally, he too passed over the wall.
A look to the left showed Rolenya circling above a courtyard. He went to her. She set her serath down near a fishpond with a sculpture of an ancient queen rising from its center, and Baleron set down beside her.
A crowd gathered about the returned princess, bigger by the moment as word spread. Among those gathered was Logran, looking strangely grim among the excited townspeople and soldiers.
Baleron’s attention was solely for Rolenya. A bit dazed, she watched the townspeople with a lost expression, as if intimidated by their numbers. She made no move to dismount from her swan, so Baleron slipped off Lunir and went to her. Took her hand.
Startled, she turned to him. This was her first true glance at him, and it changed her whole face. Her blue eyes grew huge and she lit up like a candle.
“Baleron!” She smiled happily. On the instant, she slid down from her swan and threw herself against him. “Baleron!”
He laughed. “It’s me, as ever was,” he affirmed. In her ear, he whispered, “You’re home.”
“It’s like a dream.”
He held her tight. He could hardly believe it. But her warm body felt very real.
Shortly King Grothgar arrived. He pushed his way through the jostling crowd, and they made way for him, their shouts and laughs receding. All wanted to give him this moment, this reunion.
His expression at seeing Rolenya was a thing to behold. His mouth gaped open, and tears filled his hard eyes.
“Rolenya!” he cried, and rushed to her.
“Father!” she shouted.
Logran stepped between them—and, to Baleron’s surprise, forcibly pushed them apart.
“No,” the Archmage said sternly to the king. “It could be a trick.” Looking at Rolenya, he said, “She could be a spy. We must test her.”
“Test her?” the king spat. “But it’s Rolenya!”
“It’s me,” she said.
Logran shook his head. “It must be done.”
“It’s all right,” Baleron told her. “They had to do the same to me. It’s the only way.”
Reluctantly, she nodded.
Logran and his sorcerers took her away.
Baleron hated to see her go, and Albrech certainly did, but both grudgingly understood the necessity of it.
For several days Logran and his brethren kept Rolenya locked away in their temporary headquarters along the Wall while they analyzed her. Baleron and the rest of the family, especially his father, waited anxiously until at last the sorcerers finished. As it happened, Baleron was the first to be told.
He was once again with Amrelain, having dinner and wine after a hard day’s fighting, when Logran appeared in his suite.
Baleron stood up instantly, apprehensive. “Is it Rolenya?”
Logran nodded, pleased. “We’ve finished testing her, my prince, and I’ve good news to report.”
“It’s her! It’s really her!” Joy filled him. During the days of waiting, he’d agonized over the thought that the woman he saved might be an imposter.
Logran nodded proudly. “Indeed she is.”
“But why did it take her so long to find her way here? Why did she disappear like that?”
“Apparently she escaped Celievsti on swan-back and spent many weeks wondering alone, reeling from the shock. I think she likely suffered some head trauma, but if so she’s recovered. Go to her. We’re keeping her in a room on the wall, near the South Gate.”
Baleron finished dressing. “Why haven’t you told my father the news yet?”
“You were the closest to her. I figured you should go to her first. Besides, it is late and the news can wait till tomorrow, but she should see at least one familiar face before then, and I’m sure you have plenty of catching up to do. I’ll tell Madam Hyulen to prepare a suite for her tonight.”
“Very well. And thank you.” To Amrelain, he said, “Go on to your quarters. Rolenya and I have much to talk about.”
She stuck out a full lower lip. “Are you sure?”
Baleron laughed. “I’m sure. Fear not, I’ll call on you soon.”
He departed for the stables and saddled Lunir. Lunir, sensing his excitement, cawed enthusiastically.
The great metropolis of Glorifel—with all its spires and arches and monuments and delicate bridges o
ver rushing streams, its architecture heavily inspired by the elves and all the more beautiful for that, home to half a million people—wheeled and spun below, its lights flashing and streaking, but Baleron hardly noticed. He almost couldn’t believe it. Rolenya, alive!
He’d given her up for dead, or nearly so. Could she really have escaped the destruction of Celievsti? It was almost too much to ask for. The gods weren’t this merciful—at least, not to him.
He followed the lights of King’s Road, the main tree-lined boulevard that led straight from Grothgar Castle to the South Gate, over bridges spanning dark streams and one river and over and through hills, and then he was there.
The thick gray line of the wall rose into view, as well as the high heavy arch of the gate. Beyond, the bonfires of the Borchstogs leapt high into the night.
Landing Lunir, he instantly leapt off the glarum and alit on the cobblestones with a spring in his step.
“Rolenya!” he cried. “Rolenya!”
With a smattering of footsteps, a group of armored soldiers came into view. The cluster of knights folded away and there she stood in their center, newly clothed in white and freshly washed and ravishingly beautiful. Long black hair framed her white face, and her lips looked very red.
She gave him a secret smile and said, “I’m here.”
With that, she ran into his arms and flung herself against him, giddy.
He noticed she looked happy, at least on the surface, but underneath he could sense a certain solemnity, a sense of mourning, which he found imminently understandable. After all, her true father had perished mere weeks ago, as well as thousands of others of her kind, and her true kingdom had just been invaded and would soon likely fall to the fires of Gilgaroth. Inside, she must be devastated. Not to mention the fact that the recently learned truth about her heritage had just severed her from the only family she’d ever known. Just the same, it was no wonder that she had returned to Glorifel rather than Clevaris. This is where she’d grown up, the only home she’d ever known. Added to that, Clevaris was even more inaccessible than Glorifel. Perhaps she’d flown there first.
