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For the first time in hours, Kilgharrah had gone quiet in the back of his mind. Days, perhaps. Ever since he was fastened into cold iron, and Balinor was dragged away in chains of the same. Betrayal, Balinor thought, always seemed so distant and bizarre to him. Until King Uther had done this, under a false truce, and Balinor had been too hopeful for the bloodshed to end, so he had listened. As the chains were unveiled and the treachery had slotted into place, Kilgharrah had screamed at him in his mind while Balinor ordered him to enter the caves below the citadel. “Wretched fool,” the dragon had snarled at him. “You have condemned us both!”
Balinor’s eyes had grown damp with tears. It was a terrible thing, to order a dragon to dishonor itself. To tell such a noble creature to stand down, to be wrapped in chains. Kilgharrah roared as the cold iron burned him, while Balinor trembled and waited for the shrieking to stop.
When the terrible deed was done Balinor lifted his head and he was immediately treated to a pair of guards, who slipped a chain of cold iron around his neck. The pain had been so great, it took all of his willpower to stay on his feet. Uther watched him through hard green-grey eyes, unmoved and unflinching. The dragon roared above their heads, loud enough to shake the cavern, as he pulled with futile effort at his chains, but he could not break free. Balinor fell to his knees, so full of despair and grief at what had been done. “I’m sorry,” he told Kilgharrah. I thought this was the only way to end it. Uther promised he would stop the Purge if I obeyed.
That traitorous tyrant speaks with a forked tongue of lies, the dragon snarled at him through his mind. And you were a fool to believe him. So this is how the last great line of dragonlords ends — at least you will sire no foolish children to take your place after you.
Balinor awoke in the lower cells, the cold-iron enforced bars closing in on him, so escape was futile, and even were it not, the door to the prison was enchanted. Magic users once cast the very spell that was now designed to keep them in, and Uther had reinforced his cruelty and lined the bars with cold iron. After his capture and waking in the prison he fell into a fitful doze. No food was brought to him, and even though he called out for someone to bring him water, or food, or anything, he was ignored. There were no guards. Why would a guard need to watch over a prison from which there was no escape?
A noise from the upper corridor stirred him. Torchlight scattered over the uneven stones of the lower cells. Balinor lifted his head at the intruder and straightened. From the light he could make out the worn robes and the weary, lined face between the grate. Gaius stooped beside his cell, keys jangling in one hand as he fumbled with the torch.
Balinor blinked sleep from his eyes as he slowly came to the dreadful conclusion that it was no hallucination. Gaius was there with tim. The cell door swung open. Gaius lifted the torch over his head and held out his hand. “Quickly, my lord.”
“Gaius?” Balinor croaked.
“Quickly,” Gaius hissed. “We have only a few moments before the guards in the corridor return.”
Balinor pushed himself to his feet and followed. “Where are we doing?” he asked Gaius in a whisper.
“I have a cousin,” Gaius murmured. “She lives in Essetir, near the border of Camelot. A small farming village, it’s called Ealdor. Uther’s men will not think to look there. You will be safe.”
Balinor’s gut clenched. After the last few days, hope felt like a worn, long lost friend, and it settled heavily in his stomach. He followed Gaius through the winding stone passages until they dropped lower, and then the ceiling slanted until he was forced to hunch, and Gaius proceeded on, hobbling as he went. “You will need to keep going until you reach the end of the tunnel,” Gaius warned him. “There is an iron gate. Then stick to the forest, hide from the patrols. I will do my best to distract the king and ensure your safe passage.”
Years later, Balinor was only left to wonder what exactly had alerted Uther to his escape. Whatever it was, he doubted Uther would ever have revealed his source, or who exactly betrayed Gaius and tipped off word of his escape.
Guards swarmed them in the lower tunnels, seizing Gaius by the shoulder. Cold iron was clasped once more around Balinor’s neck, even though he tossed back at least a dozen knights with his magic. It wasn’t enough. All the magic in the world meant nothing to the sheer number and force of Uther’s knights, who were determined to take blood, but Balinor never surrendered, even when he was dragged away in chains. He screamed and writhed against the cold iron keeping him there and his cries echoed down the stone walls.
He heard from the whispers of the guards outside his cell — for Uther was no fool, and would not make the same mistake, even with a seemingly impervious prison to contain magic users forever — that Gaius was sentenced to be burned at dawn. Balinor fought desperately and bravely against the bars of the wretched cage Uther kept him in, but he could not get free. He could not save the old physician. Even from his cells, he could smell the wood and the burning flesh.
He hoped Gaius had looked up from his pyre at Uther in the eyes as he burned, and Balinor hoped it haunted the nightmares of Camelot’s King for many years to come.
Before Uther met Ygraine, and before Uther was King of Camelot, and an entire lifetime ago, Balinor had just been a rather bureaucratic figurehead. He was the son of a dragonlord and had all too much money and free time as a young lord, and as it were, the first time he met Prince Uther had been on the field of a tourney during the Decennial Tournament. At the time, Uther was barely old enough to be a knight, but Balinor’s father had warned him not to injure the young prince’s pride, and Balinor was prideful but also inspired to respect his father’s wishes, so.
He let Uther win. It was the first of many Decennial Tournaments he would win, as the unchallenged, undefeated champion of Camelot.
Uther met his eyes through the slats of his helmet and something akin to recognition, then fury had flickered there. He wondered if Uther realized what slight Balinor had unintentionally handed him. But Balinor never had any intentions of being a knight, for his lineage had already determined what role he would play in court. The first born heirs of dragonlords did not join the ranks of knights, for why would someone who could command dragons waste their talents on swords and chivalry?
Balinor thought, at times, it would have been much easier to have been a knight. If only he had been the second-born son, instead of the first. Then he would chastise himself for such thoughts. So many other men would kill for that power, for the inherited gift that a dragonlord’s bloodline offered.
When he bowed before Uther and thanked him for a well-fought match, the young prince had eyed his hand, but then shook it off and Balinor was greeted with a thin smile. The prince was tall — not as tall as his brother, but taller at least by a good mark. Though Balinor never thought himself to be exceptionally tall, either.
“You fight rather well,” the prince remarked. “For the son of a dragonlord.”
Balinor laughed, though he wasn’t sure if it was intended for insult or not. “Thank you. Though I am not quite sure what you mean by that, my lord.”
“I meant no offense, Lord Balinor.” He had never really spoken to the king’s younger brother so closely, or been addressed by such personal terms. For the first time he noted how light the prince’s eyes were, unlike his elder brother, who had piercingly dark eyes, deeper than rich oak. The prince’s eyes were two shades; one green, and the other split in half with a crescent shaped light chestnut.
Uther paused, seemingly choosing his words more carefully, now that their conversation had caught the attention of the other knights, and the king. “It is only…I have found magic users often struggle with fights that are…less reliant on sorcery.” Not an insult, then, at least not from his tone.
“We do tend to prefer sorcery,” Balinor agreed lightly. “But not that it is any easier to learn than how to swing a sword.”
Uther smiled again, warm and honest. “Perhaps we shall fight again.”
“I look forward to it,” Balinor said, and Uther nodded.
“As do I,” he said, like an oath.
Years later he would wonder if he had mistaken it all; for if not warmth, but the heat of ambition. The low-simmering madness behind his eyes that one day boiled over, and brought the kingdom down in flames with him.
At the time of the tourney, Uther’s elder brother Ambrosius held the crown of Camelot. It was a lovely, romanticized tale, one that the courts grew to love. Two brothers Pendragon, who had set their eyes on the middle-most land of Albion and conquered it together. At the time, Ambrosius, being the elder, had been the obvious choice for ruler.
In the end, Ambrosius would only be king for two summers. It ended in rather short, interrupted fashion; an abruptly ended reign of a young king who had only just earned the taste of power and might. Though other kings had ruled for less time, and Ambrosius’ name would never be known in infamy, unlike his brother. The announcement came with little warning, and no fanfare; one morning the city awoke to the tolling of bells. News travelled fast. King Ambrosius was dead. He had yet to take a wife, and he had not sired any children, and as contested as the new territory was, it was a most unlucky turn for the house of Pendragon.
With no heirs besides his brother, Uther was crowned king. The throne and crown were his.
Balinor’s father died some years later, around the time Uther was in want of a wife. Balinor heard the rumors of his affairs with other court women — until he set his eyes on Ygraine. The beautiful duchess from Tintagel from the house of de Bois who was engaged to be wed with Sir Gorlois.
As Gorlois’ friend, Uther evidently watched on with envy. There were rumors about what exactly occurred between the three, but then by Beltane, Ygraine’s engagement was broken off and rearranged with Uther. For her family, it came with great joy and pride. For now their young duchess was to be a queen, and not just any noble lady.
Gorlois married. He was a good man. Balinor had visited his keep more often in his youth, and he was an honorable, gentle knight. When he was sent to fight in the Northern Plains, Balinor stopped by his keep to wish him well, before he was sent the opposite direction to assist the outbreak of floods in the south.
When he returned to court he caught word of the king’s absence; he had been away to visit the keep of Le Fay, to visit Gorlois’ wife, Lady Vivienne. Balinor only heard news of Gorlois’ death too late, and the court shook with it, and the whispers about Ygraine’s infertility, paired with the king’s long absences…
When Uther finally returned, Balinor asked him if he enjoyed his trip. Uther raised his brow. “Is that meant to imply something, Lord Balinor?”
“Not at all,” Balinor answered earnestly. Whatever Uther chose to do…or not to do…ultimately it was of little matter to himself. Though if there were even a grain of truth, he pitied Uther’s wife, and Gorlois. “Is it a crime to welcome back an old friend?” Uther’s scrutiny softened.
“In that case,” Uther said. “I am thankful for your warm reception.”
Balinor inclined his head. “It is good to have you back in Camelot.” The feast that night was…notably stilted, particularly between the air at the head of the feast table. Ygraine sipped her wine and glanced sideways at the king, and she spoke little. Uther laughed on and toasted his goblet, merry and grand, and seemingly unaware of the scrupulous looks his wife sent his way.
Well. Balinor might not have been the most observant, but he could put those pieces together. In both cases, it was Gorlois who paid the price.
Yet in spite of all the vicious hurricanes of rumors, Balinor couldn’t help but like Uther, in a way. The King of Camelot had given him a respected seat on the council, and his family prospered as Camelot flowered. He was often invited to dine with the king and queen in their private chambers. Uther asked him questions about his upbringing; about his life, and about his magic.
Later, Balinor would wonder if that was just the first in a series of gentle tests. To probe at his loyal court of sorcerers and priestesses, to determine who Uther thought most powerful, and most likely to succeed with his plans.
The rest of the tragic story proceeded: Ygraine could not conceive. Uther was denied his prized heir. At court, Balinor looked back and wanted to imagine he felt the rumblings there, but in truth, he was either too foolish or not observant enough to have noticed the first quakes in the foundation of the kingdom. The cracks had been there all along, it seemed. But they had all just been full of hope and too selfish, he supposed, to have seen what had been right in front of their noses.
Though later it would seem as though time moved all too quickly when it began, the Purge didn’t start overnight. Balinor returned to Camelot to find the city in mourning, white banners aloft. He stood outside the chamber doors of the great hall, waiting for King Uther to emerge, red-eyed and stricken.
Balinor caught his eye, though there was no greeting exchanged between them. He only caught a glimpse of the queen’s body on the altar over Uther’s shoulder; her deep red gown sweeping down the stone onto the floor. Her stomach was still swollen with child. For a moment Balinor wondered in a terrible, grieving way, if Uther had not only lost his wife, but his unborn child, and his stomach clenched.
“My lord,” Balinor said roughly. Uther shook his head. Balinor closed his mouth with a click. It was foolish to open his mouth at all — what was one to say to a man who had lost the woman he loved so dearly? The king’s face was lined, and though he was not much older from Balinor, he looked…drawn, as though his youth had drained from him. Age had claimed his face in the short time that Balinor was away.
The king searched the hall. He appeared lost, Balinor thought, for his eyes drifted over the walls and gazes of the blank-faced guards that lined the corridor. He shook himself, straightened, and visibly collected himself. “I must see to my son,” Uther announced quietly. Balinor blinked in surprise.
“A son,” he repeated. Uther ignored his echo and started down the hall in a brisk walk. It wasn’t an invitation to follow, but Balinor did. The nursery chambers were bright and airy, which was all too welcoming compared to the oppressive, dark clouds of grief that shrouded the rest of the castle. Uther stooped over the cradle, while Balinor hovered at his shoulder. The young prince was chubby-cheeked and rosy, his hair was merely a wisp atop his head.
“Arthur,” Uther said softly. The prince’s name, then. Arthur. The king’s new born son slept on in his cradle, twitching with sleep. “I am sorry your mother was taken from you. I will make sure her death was not in vain.”
At the time, Balinor had only just returned, and did not know the full details of the messy affair between Camelot’s rulers or Nimueh, the High Priestess. He did not know that Ygraine’s death would only be the start of a much larger, vicious war of vengeance. Or that the price of her death would be paid with so much innocent blood.
Balinor awoke once more in the dark. In his mind he reached out to Kilgharrah. It seems you were right again, old friend, he murmured. I am sorry it has come to this. Kilgharrah ignored him. The guards outside of his cell made for poor conversationalists. For days — nights, weeks — no words were exchanged, except for when he cleared his throat and spoke quietly to himself. The cells were all too quiet and dark. He would go mad otherwise, and it brought him little comfort to hear his own voice, for it only reminded himself of his sentence of solitude.
He tried to reach Kilgharrah again, but the old dragon rebuffed him. Balinor gave up. Dragons were prideful creatures at heart. Kilgharrah would only speak to him when it suited him. Unlike Balinor, he imagined dragons wouldn’t go completely mad in a dark damp prison, though perhaps he would be proven wrong.
When he woke next, Balinor opened his eyes slowly. His hair stood on end. Between the time when he last fallen asleep and woke, something had changed.
There was extra torch light shining in through his bars. Balinor lifted his head and squinted as his eyes adjusted to the change.
In the little light offered, it took a moment for him to capture the full scene. He saw the gleaming boots first, and then the shine of steel. Hovering beyond his cage, King Uther glared back at him. When Balinor recognized his visitor he launched himself to his feet and threw himself at the door of his prison. Uther didn’t flinch. His eyes burned with mirrored pools of hate.
Balinor refused to look away first. Eventually, Uther stepped away, and vanished behind the torches until he could no longer make out his distinction from the shadows or the walls beyond. It was the first of a series of visits, though Uther never said a word.
On the fourth visit, Uther brought guards with him. He was chained by the collar of cold iron and dragged deeper into the citadel, down to the catacombs. The guard shoved him between his shoulder blades. Balinor let out a groan as his knees hit the stone.
The guards left. Uther picked up the end of the cold iron leash and tugged it forward, while Balinor grimaced and bit his lip, withholding any sounds of pain that might give him away.
Staying quiet only incited the king’s ire. He yanked again on the chain with brutal force. Balinor couldn’t hold back his gasp, then. “Does that hurt?” Uther snarled. “Does it hurt you, sorcerer?
“You know my name,” Balinor said dryly. “And you know the answer. You know what cold iron does to those with magic.” Though the longer he wore the chains and the more time he spent in the cell, the less they burned. It was thought that overexposure to cold iron could force magic from the body, though up until the Purge, nobody had thought to test that theory.
As Balinor panted and regained his own composure, Uther stared him down, as though willing Balinor’s will to break from look alone. Not that he would ever succeed; Balinor knew he was unlikely to ever escape, and he and Kilgharrah would be the king’s prized prisoners until the king’s death, or more likely, Balinor’s death. At least Balinor would have his pride. Uther could never take that from him.
He lifted his head and locked his eyes onto Uther. He would not look away — not this time, not ever. He understood where Uther had brought him, the significance of it all. The carved stone tomb was new, not even a layer of dust had settled. He gazed up in defiance. “Is this what Ygraine would have wanted?”
His words echoed. At his back, he knew Ygraine’s tomb sat, undisturbed. Uther had brought Balinor down to — gloat, perhaps. Or maybe to drag a confession of accursed sorcery from his lips, or perhaps to demand Balinor beg for forgiveness at the grace of the queen who was once his friend.
Uther’s grip slackened. Balinor expected the blow, and he didn’t duck away from it. The pain was bright and clarifying, like that beat of a moment when one jumped in a freezing river. It cleared his head of all else and refocused the scattered remnants of himself. It reminded him of his purpose. He spat his blood at the king’s feet.
“You dishonor her memory to speak her name,” Uther said, though his voice shook with fury. “From the mouth of a bloody sorcerer. You disgust me.”
“And you dishonor her by killing in her name,” Balinor replied. “I knew Ygraine. You dishonor her everyday you allow your self-righteous desire for bloodshed cloud your judgement. And you have the nerve to call it justice.”
He was breathing heavily as he hurled out the last word. Uther raised his arm again as though to strike him. Balinor didn’t flinch then, either.
“How dare you,” Uther said, but his voice betrayed him again. His hand trembled. Balinor allowed himself the edge of a smile. Uther bellowed for his guards. Balinor smiled wider, grimly through his bloody teeth. The moment the guards had him in hand, Uther spun around and marched from the catacombs. Balinor watched the line of his shoulders and his smile fell. It was a victory, though nothing could really feel like a win with how things were. Innocent people were still slaughtered above the stones of Balinor’s head.
Uther returned to his prison often. Though “often” was a relative term. It was certainly more times than Balinor expected. He was surprised Uther deserved him worthy of a visit after their exchange beside Ygraine’s tomb. After Uther left, Balinor was left to wonder whether that would be the last. And then he was continuously surprised as the visits continued.
Most times there weren’t any words at all. Balinor ignored him, mostly, unless he was feeling particularly bold. The time he dared to ask, “How is Arthur?” and he registered the mask slip from Uther’s face. Balinor knew he would pay for his insolence, though he had meant it genuinely, not that it mattered, not anymore, because —
There was too much blood between them already, a river of it. That river had become a lake, and that lake had become a sea.
— Uther had him sent to the headsman for a flogging. The king’s instructions were clear. Balinor was to suffer, left debilitated, but he was not to be killed. That was the true weight of punishment, to be denied the release that death offered. For those days and nights after, Balinor slept fitfully, feverish and sure the king had overestimated Balinor’s strength, and he was certain that his death was at hand.
There was no physician to carefully tend to his wounds or fix the modest bandages the guards offered him. There was nobody to pour honey into his inflamed open scars. Gaius was dead. He wondered if Uther had convinced anyone else to take up the post, for a kingdom couldn’t be without a physician. After what happened to Gaius, it would be a difficult role to fill. Or perhaps Uther resorted to blackmail and stuffed someone unwilling into the post, though Balinor thought that unwise at best. It was always in a king’s best interests not to lose the loyalty of their own court physician. One might find themselves awoken in the middle of the night and seized with a sudden fit, from the onslaught of slow-acting poison their “trusted” physician had slipped into their goblet of wine.
So be it. If Uther died, they would all be better off for it.
The visits didn’t stop. Balinor continued ignoring Uther. When Uther finally left him he spent the rest of his flagging energy attempting to reach Kilgharrah, who ignored him as studiously as he ignored King Uther’s presence outside his cell.
On one occasion he woke to find the king sitting on the ground, mirroring the slumped, poor-posture of his prisoner. When Balinor crawled closer to the door, the king lifted his head.
“I regret,” he began, but then he shook his head and sighed. He pushed himself to his feet and turned. That visit unsettled Balinor more than anything else, and he sensed it did the same to Uther, for there were no new visits after that for some time. The longest stretch of time that Balinor had gone without the king’s unexpected visits. The guards were never present during his visits but once the king had departed they always slunk back in from their shadowy posts and came to rest outside the door of his cell. He never saw their faces, and he wasn’t sure if they ever saw his, for he stuck to the shadows in the corner.
His beard grew out, itchy and stiff. Balinor wondered if he would even recognize himself in the reflection of a mirror, or on the surface of the water. It was always too dark to look into his own bowl of the little water he was offered, so he could never be sure.
I must look an awful state, Balinor mused. I haven’t bathed in ages. I must stink so bad even your fine senses would wrinkle up if you caught whiff of me. The last thought was aimed with a bit more direction towards the dragon, not that he expected a response, for Kilgharrah still wouldn’t answer him.
“Stand up, sorcerer.”
Balinor blinked away the dark edges of his vision. He glanced upwards to the king and his lips curled into a scowl. “You’re no king of mine,” Balinor said, his voice raw with disuse. “I don’t take orders from you.” He couldn’t remember the last time he had spoken aloud. His throat was dry, so the guards were late with bringing him his daily scraps that constituted a prisoner’s meal.
Uther stared him down. From his side, notched on the loop of his belt beside his chain, he withdrew the ring of keys with his sword hand. Balinor’s breath caught.
The king unlocked the gate of cold iron. He opened the door and stared at Balinor for a long moment, and then said; “In the name of Ygraine,” and his voice was so worn and rough, like a stone that had sat below a waterfall and succumbed to the rushing of water, “And the memory of the friendship we once shared. I will free you. But you may never return to Camelot, upon pain of death. If I see you again, I will run you through myself.”
The king left as swiftly as he came, his blood-red cape and robes swinging behind him as he disappeared into the dark. Balinor stared at the door, then towards the shadowy low-hanging corridor the king vanished into.
As desperately as he wanted to chase after Uther and settle things once and for all, he had a more important task. He pushed himself onto trembling legs and took one step, then another, and once free of the cell his strength returned to him in one great burst. He was free.
There was an open corridor that would lead him to the lower catacombs and somewhere there were little-known tunnels that would take him to freedom. He dodged past that corridor and jogged up the first flight of stairs towards the barracks, and then ducked behind a column to avoid the guards. Then he ducked into the darkest corridor of all, and with a quiet word he unlocked the clasp on the chained gate that lead deep below the castle. Balinor raced down the sloping steps of the deep cavern. “Kilgharrah!” he bellowed. “I am here!”
He was greeted with a rush of warm air as the great dragon dropped from the upper caves. Balinor lifted his hand over his eyes to block out the dirt and dust that flew up into his face as Kilgharrah’s wings beat up a storm. “Young lord,” Kilgharrah said. It was the first time Kilgharrah had willingly spoken to him since Balinor unwittingly ordered him trapped below Camelot.
“King Uther has freed me,” Balinor said, and swallowed.
Kilgharrah looked down at him through his ancient golden eyes. “He has not agreed the same for me, I assume.”
“No,” Balinor breathed out in apology. “But I came to set you free. I owe you to try.”
“You will not have time to free me,” Kilgharrah reminded him. “The cold iron that traps me here cannot be broken with regular magic.” Balinor opened his mouth to protest but the dragon cut him off with a vicious shake his head. “No, young lord. You must go on without me. Do not let the legacy of all the dragonlords before you die for nothing.”
“Ah, Kilgharrah,” Balinor said, as his throat closed up around the apology on his tongue. “You have high hopes that I will make it out of this city in one piece.” You know better than I how fickle the king can be. I half expect he will meet me at the gate and put a sword through my heart.
“That is why you must leave,” the dragon snorted. “Now. Do not waste time you do not have. I am a dragon — I am older than this castle, and I will outlive King Uther by many years yet.”
He felt Kilgharrah’s heavy heart settle with acceptance as though it were his own. Balinor’s throat burned. It was not right. The thought of leaving Kilgharrah here, while he walked free — oh, the injustice of it all. If Balinor thought he were strong enough he would kill Uther himself, even if it was a quest destined to end in his own death. But if he thought himself likely to succeed, he would certainly give it his best effort. As it was, he doubted he would make it anywhere close enough to Uther to ensure the king would die with him.
There was one last thing, though, that Balinor could do. “If you are ever freed,” Balinor told him. “Do this for me. Make Camelot pay for all the blood it has shed. And if Uther still breathes, I want you to raze his city to the ground.”
“You would have me destroy Camelot?” For once, the old dragon sounded hesitant, though Balinor had ordered him to destroy much greater castles without second thoughts. “As much as I would love to watch King Uther suffer and beg on his knees, Camelot is destined to be the beginning of a great kingdom. Albion will never see the dawn of a single day without Camelot.”
Ah, yes. The prophecy. Kilgharrah often spoke in riddles, particularly about some revered prophecy that Balinor usually tuned out.
“King Uther can’t be allowed to rule Camelot,” Balinor said.
“I do not mean Uther. It is his son, Arthur. If you destroy Camelot, it would risk the young prince, and destroy such a great destiny.” Then, in his mind, the dragon’s ancient voice asked, Do you understand the weight of what you ask of me? Do you understand what the consequences will be?
“Sod destiny,” Balinor said. “And screw the great bloody prophecy.”
Kilgharrah snarled, warningly, though Balinor knew as well as the dragon that Kilgharrah would not hurt him. “Do not ask this of me.”
“You will,” Balinor told him, his voice now weighted by the command of a dragonlord. “When you are finally free of this wretched cave: raze Camelot to ash and leave nothing behind.”
He thought of Uther’s cold green-blue-brown eyes. In the name of our old friendship, Balinor thought with a scoff. This time it was Uther who had been played for the fool; he had made a grave miscalculation in offering Balinor his freedom.
He would ensure Uther lived to regret it.
“Balinor!” Kilgharrah raged, but Balinor turned and fled.
The years passed by, and he caught only whispers of what occurred behind the walls of Camelot. Balinor lived out some semblance of normalcy in Ealdor, in that small village that Gaius had once promised him refuge. He fell in love, despite all assurances he would never feel such an emotion again, and then predictably, Uther’s men found him.
He spared a thought for Hunith, that young daughter of farmers, and buried the despair in his chest. She was young. She would find love again, and marry some gentle farmer, and Balinor would be nothing but a memory.
Or so he thought, until the day the Prince of Camelot — Arthur. All grown, blond, and blue-eyed. Balinor’s breath was knocked out of him as he took stock of the boy’s face, and he didn’t need Arthur to introduce himself. Ygraine’s bright grey-blue eyes — they were unmistakable. He hadn’t laid eyes on the prince since he was a babe, but he had all of Ygraine’s soft features, and maybe at one point even her nose, though it appeared to have been broken and healed crooked some times over.
There were several revelations had that day. Balinor’s stomach roiled with something akin to regret. Kilgharrah had freed himself after all, and as Balinor ordered him, he had rained down fire and fury in the names of all their fallen brethren that Balinor commanded. A stroke of righteous vengeance had finally befallen the great city, as Balinor wished all those years ago.
Though that satisfaction felt dull and weighed heavy in his stomach.
Still — part of him couldn’t deny his own curiosity. They were old men now. He had always wondered if he would see Uther again. Perhaps now…perhaps now he would.
The prince hadn’t come alone, either. He brought a young servant with him, and while Balinor tended to the prince’s wounds, the servant stuttered out their story of hopelessness. How the prince defied the king’s order and left in hopes of finding the dragonlord against all odds.
Still. Balinor would not be swayed. He would rather see Camelot burn. To stomach the thought of helping Uther…he could not do it. Kind words and flowery gestures of goodwill were just that. Even if Arthur was just a boy, and he seemed to genuinely care for his people, he was a Pendragon. He was his father’s son.
“You want everyone in Camelot to die?” the servant accused him. He tended to Arthur with such care.
Yes, Balinor thought, selfishly. It was a cruel thought. He couldn’t picture the faceless townspeople of Camelot burning under the might of a dragon’s fury — it was only Uther he saw there.
As he watched the servant something prickled in the back of his mind. A feeling he had not had since he last saw Kilgharrah, that innate sense that came around dragons. Like kin. He searched the boy’s face but there was nothing he saw familiar there, not his hair, not his eyes. Though his mouth…
He had not thought of Hunith in years, but the way his mouth moved to shape words, he found himself thinking of her. Then the boy confirmed so with his pointed questions about Ealdor and Hunith, and Balinor thought, ah, that was it. He was Hunith’s son. His heart ached then; not regret or jealousy, exactly, but something curious and queer.
The servant boy regarded him with something earnest and hopeful, which only shuttered as Balinor deflected him. “I heard dragonlords were supposed to be honorable and noble,” the boy said. Balinor nearly laughed. He had been many things in his life, and he had not been honorable or noble for many years. He was a failed dragonlord, exiled for magic, and his only kin he had been forced to leave behind in the caverns to rot. Let Kilgharrah burn the city; Balinor cared little for those people who stood by and watched his people dragged onto the pyre. Let them all burn.
Balinor replied, “You heard wrong.” The boy’s face dropped, flinching back as though struck.
Kin, his dragon’s heart repeated with a pang. He didn’t know his heart knew it then, but he did, just as well he knew his own name. As he had known the moment of his father’s passing and the spirit of the ancient dragonlords gift passed to him. He is kin.
Even after the prince left, with his servant in tow, Balinor sighed and looked up at the mouth of the cave. “Sod it,” he said aloud, furiously. If nothing else, maybe now he would get his chance to stick his sword through Uther’s ugly stone heart after all. He owed Uther as much. For Ygraine. For Gaius. For all the innocent people of magic that Uther’s genocide wiped out in his quest to point the finger of blame away from himself.
Damn you Uther, Balinor thought, as he rode with the prince and the young servant through the Darkling Woods, and the spires of Camelot came into view. Now it is time for a piece of vengeance of my own.
As promised, Balinor sent the dragon away with a commanding bellow. Kilgharrah’s voice was relieved in the back of his mind, but also angry: You nearly destroyed everything, the dragon snapped. Balinor ignored that bitter remark and marched on for the castle. The prince ordered the king’s guards to stand down, and demanded an audience.
The boy — the servant, now that Balinor realized was his son — his eyes were shining with thinly veiled pride. He would not look at Balinor with such affection had he known that Kilgharrah’s quest for vengeance upon Camelot had never been Kilgharrah’s; it had always been his own.
When he was brought before the king in the great hall, and the prince made grand gestures of offering peace, and informed the king of Balinor’s brave deeds, Balinor let the words wash over him. Uther’s gaze hadn’t left his face since Balinor entered the throne room. He was greying, far more grey than Balinor expected. By the glimpses he caught of his own reflection in the streams he knew his own hair had remained dark. Apparently he had aged far better than a king. Life of exile in the woods would do wonders for the skin, apparently.
There was a scar above Uther’s brow that Balinor didn’t recall from the days of their youth. Though the scar on his jaw was still there, the one Balinor had given him in a tourney after he knocked the then-prince’s helmet off his head. His eyes were the same, piercing and cold, as he sat white-knuckled on his throne. Balinor prostrated himself before that very throne, which he had not stood before since twenty years past, though his pride shivered at the act.
Uther rose from his throne and stood before him. “Camelot thanks you for your service,” he said, as though each word pained him to say. Good. He gritted his teeth and added, “We are…in your debt.”
He couldn’t deny that the look on Uther’s face was ultimately satisfying. It was almost as satisfying as the noise he made when Balinor unsheathed his blade and stabbed it through the king’s heart.
“For Ygraine,” Balinor snarled. Prince Arthur let out a betrayed cry behind him. Blood pooled around them, soaking into his trousers as he kneeled beside the king. So deep and red and rich – that royal color of the Pendragon house that suffused the hall. The king’s lifeblood seeped into the red carpet that lined the hall and the steps.
The sea had swallowed them both, in the end. Balinor swallowed around his regret, all the grief that haunted him, and he didn’t look away from the king’s face, even as the guards and the prince tried to wretch him away. “And in the memory of the king I once called my friend. Consider your debt paid.”
Uther clutched his hand where the blade plunged into his chest, already growing cold and stiff, smiling through his bloody teeth. It was the first time the king had touched him in all those years, and his hands were slippery and wet with blood as he wrapped his fingers around Balinor’s wrist. A sound passed through Uther’s lips like a wheeze, or a choked off laugh. “I always knew it would be you,” he said between choking breaths, “You always let me win, didn’t you? You did…always fight well with a sword.” And then he said nothing more.
Balinor was dragged to his feet while the prince dropped to his knees, calling his father’s name. His son – Merlin – stood at the prince’s shoulder, pale-faced and stricken. His face was etched in betrayal. Arthur called his father’s name though it was futile. The king was already dead. The knights carried him from the throne room and Balinor could hear those cells in the lower dungeons calling his name like an old friend.
“PROMETHEUS: 'Oh, it is easy for the one who stands outside the prison-wall of pain to exhort and teach the one who suffers.’”
― Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound