The War Of The Black Tower (Book 3) (7 page)

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.