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The King approaches Balinor while he is packing up the last of his possessions. Balinor thinks he should be terrified, should run while he still can, but –
Crying, screaming, family torn apart from family, blood on the ground from people who resisted and were executed on the spot, his kin dying under the orders of a traitor, how dare he do this, oh Goddess those are children –
Balinor can’t spare any emotion for Uther the King.
Uther is no longer my friend, Uther died the moment Ygraine did, Uther knew of the consequences, knew of the fragility of the balance between life and death, Uther wouldn’t betray me because of it, the King isn’t Uther –
(Traitor)
Balinor’s hand tightens on the handkerchief. It’s soft in his grip, too well-made to belong to someone with his income. A memory comes to the forefront of his mind.
*
“Shut up, Uther,” Balinor grumbles as he eyes the mess he made of the floor.
His friend cackles harder. He is bent at the waist and holding his stomach, gasping for breath. The fact that he is taller than Balinor even despite this just increases his ire.
“You – you – “ Uther cuts off. He can’t seem to stop laughing long enough to speak properly.
Balinor finds himself, once again, sincerely wishing he could curse the Crown Prince without being thrown into the dungeons. “I told you I don’t handle alcohol well.”
“This isn’t – hah – this is more than just an intolerance for alcohol.” Uther ceases his mirth marginally, though he hides his mouth behind his hand in an unsuccessful attempt to hide his snickers. He is purposefully averting his eyes from the sight in front of them to keep from setting himself off again.
Balinor feels his ears burn. “My home village is situated near a stream. I only drank fresh water when I was little.”
“You threw up after only a jug of ale,” Uther says smugly. Now that he has had his fun, he appears to have returned to being a snobbish royal. “Not even a full jug. It was half empty.”
“Shut up. Help me figure out what to do with this.” Balinor gestures to the floor.
They simultaneously stare at it.
Uther scrunches his nose in disgust. “Aren’t you the peasant? You should know better than me about things like this.” He reaches for his pouch and pulls out a square piece of cloth. “Here, use this.”
Balinor squints. “Is that silk?” he asks incredulously.
“No.” Uther tosses it.
Balinor catches it and runs it over his fingers. The material is smooth against his palm. “It is, you liar.”
Uther sniffs. “Just because you’re a poor peasant – “
“I am a Dragonlord,” Balinor enunciates. “I am not a peasant. In the eyes of the Old Religion, I am part of the nobility.”
“In Camelot, you are not,” Uther points out. As if that is something to be proud of.
“Camelot is so old-fashioned I’m surprised it hasn’t collapsed from disrepair.”
Balinor bolts before Uther can process the statement and rages at him for the insult against his beloved kingdom. Running out of the tavern and into the marketplace, Balinor makes a game of dodging the stalls and the people, all the while laughing as he hears Uther yell after him.
Balinor never did give back the handkerchief, just as Uther never requested for its return.
*
For a moment, Balinor feels a tug of what seems to be yearning. It’s gone when he checks again, but something else grips at his heart and causes tears to spring in his eyes. He distantly identifies it as grief.
How did my friend become this, could I have prevented it, why hadn’t I seen the signs –
“Balinor,” the King says in a familiar voice.
How dare he sound the same, he’s not Uther, stop sounding like Uther, Uther was my friend, he wouldn’t –
Balinor grits his teeth and shoves the handkerchief into his pack. He is tempted to ignore the other man entirely, but Balinor is already in a dangerous position without being impertinent.
“Yes?” he utters in a clipped tone. It isn’t the politest, but he can’t muster the energy to do more.
The King doesn’t respond immediately. “Can you not bear to look at me?” he asks with something like sadness.
The King asks that as if he hadn’t ordered mass genocide on his people – on Balinor’s people. As if he is innocent and free from the blood on his hands. As if he isn’t betraying his closest friends and breaking their hearts in one fell swoop.
Balinor feels a surge of anger. “What do you want?” he spits. “Have you come to execute me, too?”
In the corner of his eye, Balinor sees the King give a satisfying flinch.
The King announces, “I have just visited Gaius.”
The satisfaction is swept away as Balinor goes cold. He suddenly feels fear. Coming from the shadows of his mind, one thought whispers: has he fallen so far?
The King is talking, but Balinor only catches the tail end of it. “ – made an offer.”
“What offer?” he snaps because Gaius may be dead and it was at Uther’s hand.
“I was getting to that,” the King retorts with annoyance, and it’s almost like he’s Uther again.
But then Balinor remembers the pyre, the cries as sorcerer after sorcerer is led into the flames. Forcefully, he reminds himself: the King is not your friend.
Carefully, the King says, “I promised to protect Gaius from execution if he agrees never to practice magic again. He said yes.”
Balinor only feels the relief for a quick second before shock stills his body. At the same time, a part of his mind figures out the reason why Uther is here in the first place. He addresses the revelation that doesn’t stir the betrayal in his heart.
“I suppose you’re here to ask me the same thing?” His voice trembles in barely contained rage.
How dare he attempt to do good, after all he’s done how dare he, what makes us different, why didn't he ask this of anybody else, they didn’t deserve to die either, how dare he –
“Yes,” the King says.
Balinor’s leash on his emotions snaps.
He doesn’t remember much. He thinks he said something about Nimueh, Ygraine, cruelty, and many other sensitive topics that he is surprised he is still alive. He comes back to himself with a sore throat from shouting, and he has turned to face the King, whose expression is pained and who has a bandage on his cheek where a sorcerer managed to burn him before being slapped with the magic suppression cuffs.
The bandage helps Balinor further the differences between Uther and the King.
“The answer is no,” he says with finality, in case the King didn’t get the point.
If this was a less severe situation and the King was still Uther, Uther would have responded with a humourless laugh and a sarcastic quip, thereby lightening the atmosphere. However, neither of those factors was present, so neither did the King react as predicted.
The King stares at him for a while. When he next speaks, it is so quiet that Balinor almost misses it. “Is what I’m doing so wrong?”
Suspicion rises even as hope flickers in his chest. “Uther,” he acknowledges for the first time. The King – Uther? – widens his eyes. “Ygraine didn’t die because of magic. Both of you knew there was going to be an exchange. She was smart. She had to have known things wouldn’t turn out as cleanly as you hoped.”
“But…” Uther looks heart-wrenchingly vulnerable.
Balinor treads closer to him. “I am truly sorry for your loss,” he says gently. He realises he hadn’t allowed himself to mourn amid the confusion. Ygraine was his friend too. “But blaming others for her death is not right.”
“Are you saying it was my fault!?” Uther shouts, anger twisting his features. Balinor hesitates as the image of the King, face blank and eyes blazing, overlaps.
“It was nobody’s fault, Uther. As much as I hate to say it, her death was an accident. The Old Religion does not discriminate against who it takes. A random villager had as much of a chance of being exchanged as her.”
“But it was her who ended up taken!” There is less heat in his voice now.
“Uther, do you think magic is evil?” Balinor urges. “I have had it since we met. Nimueh was Ygraine’s friend, and Gaius has been loyal since the start. Please, Uther. Genocide is not the answer.”
Uther opens his mouth to reply before pausing. Balinor braces himself.
Please Uther, if you’re in there please come back, I’ve already lost a friend I can’t lose you too, please don’t force me to leave, I feel like I don’t know you anymore, please –
“What have I done?” Uther says, almost faint.
Thank the Triple Goddess.
“Uther,” Balinor calls urgently. If this is Uther breaking down from guilt, he has to calm him down before rushing off to find Gaius.
“I can’t – Balinor,“ Uther gasps. “How can I repent for the horrors I forced upon my kingdom?”
“This is the first step,” Balinor says desperately. “Your people may not forgive you for the lives that have been lost, but you can start by repealing the law against magic.”
“I must win back the people’s trust.” Uther’s eyes are wild. “I shall call Nimueh back, and she will support me in this endeavour.”
Balinor doesn’t have the heart to tell him Nimueh may not return. Balinor had been the one who found her after Ygraine’s death, muttering angrily about ‘thick-headed kings’ and ‘unfair exchanges’ with tears running down her cheeks. Not that Balinor could argue about the former, but the possibility is that Nimueh will feel too betrayed to ever consider being loyal to Uther again. Especially as a High Priestess of the Old Religion, the war Uther declared against magic is a personal slight. Not to mention Nimueh was more friends with Ygraine than Uther.
Technically, as a Dragonlord, Balinor should feel slighted too. However, unlike Nimueh, his friend is still alive, and although the fact that Uther was the one to order the executions causes him inner turmoil, Balinor still wants his friend back.
“You should rest first,” Balinor advises. “Call a stop to the executions, and you can figure things out tomorrow.”
“The dragon!” Uther shouts suddenly, clasping his arm and pulling at it.
Balinor tries not to flinch. The memory of the guards and the knights doing the same thing to soon-to-be-dead sorcerers is seared in his mind. “The dragon?” he repeats.
“Yes, they are powerful symbols of magic. If I can earn the forgiveness of one, it will ease the transition. Use your magic as a Dragonlord to call one to me.”
Automatically, Balinor replies, “Kilgharrah is a cryptic old dragon who has nothing better to do than confuse me with his riddles of the creeping darkness and the birth of the coin. How can you give birth to a coin?”
Even so, he wonders about the condescending tone of Uther’s demand. Uther only does that when he is unsure of how to ask for something – or when he feels guilty and does not want to prolong the process by waiting for an answer. An uncomfortable feeling settles in Balinor’s stomach.
“Please, Balinor,” Uther almost pleads, and Balinor’s suspicions are dashed away in an instant.
Please, Uther said to him for the first time. Balinor can’t not help when his friend is in trouble.
“Of course, Uther,” he agrees. “Call off the executions then go to bed. I’ll call for Kilgharrah tomorrow.”
Uther goes to bed without informing his people of the change. Balinor suspects the emotionally charged conversation they had made him forget, so he approaches the Head Knight, Sir Galath, himself. Sir Galath is understandably wary of heeding orders from a peasant, especially one who is a known sorcerer, but Balinor has been seen being friendly with King Uther, and the knights are all too relieved to have an excuse to stop the executions.
The next day, Uther at his side, Balinor calls for Kilgharrah in a large cave underneath the castle. The sound of flapping wings echoes around them soon enough, and the accompanying body comes into their line of sight not long after.
Balinor spares a glance at Uther, who is watching Kilgharrah’s descent with wide eyes. Balinor can’t help but smile giddily.
Uther’s back, he’s making amends, he’s accepting the Old Religion back to Camelot, the executions will stop, thank the Goddess.
“You look as if you’re going to wet your pants, sire,” Balinor teases.
Uther fixes on him with cold eyes, and Balinor freezes.
“Uther? What’s wrong?” he asks.
The clinking sound of metal reaches his ears, and Kilgharrah falls to the ground. Balinor spins to see what happened and –
Chains, those are chains, why are chains holding Kilgharrah down, Uther what –
“I will send knights after you on tomorrow’s morn,” the other man says in a familiar, chilling voice.
The King.
“How could you?” Balinor shouts, and he hates that he sounds like he is nearly crying. “We were friends! Gaius was your friend! Magic was your friend!”
“Magic is no friend of mine,” Uther the King says dismissively.
Tears gather in Balinor’s eyes because –
*
“What does a Dragonlord do?" Uther asks a few minutes into their hunt. “You don’t have lands to rule over and no subjects. I guess the dragons count, but it can’t be that hard to keep them in line if they can’t disobey your orders.”
Balinor combs the mane of his horse thoughtfully. “I haven’t gone over the technicalities that much,” he admits. “Being a Dragonlord isn’t an obligation. It is something intrinsic to my very identity. It just is. It’s similar to you being a Prince in the way that it is something you are born into and that it gives you a certain responsibility for something from the moment you’re born.”
Uther looks as if he is trying hard to make sense of his words. “So what’s the difference between a Dragonlord and a Prince?”
“The magic,” Balinor states.
Uther gives him a look that says yes that’s obvious.
“No, really.” Balinor attempts to explain, “Dragonlords have a certain authority in the Old Religion only matched by that of the High Priestesses. Unlike Camelot, the Old Religion is tied to no specific kingdom, so there isn’t a specific set of rules one has to follow.”
Uther groans exasperatedly. “You still haven’t answered my question. Get to the point.”
Balinor complies, “Dragons are…dragons are pure creatures of magic. To have control over them is to have some control over magic. However, with that power comes a responsibility to protect, guide, and serve magic and those who practice it. Magic belongs to everyone. It’s a part of me as much as it belongs to the very ground we stand on.” He chuckles in realisation. “In a way, I guess I have a responsibility to the earth.”
There is a silence before Uther speaks. “I don’t understand.”
Balinor rolls his eyes. “That’s not a surprise.”
“Hey!”
As they bicker, Balinor ponders over the explanation he gave.
Magic is a part of me as much as it belongs to the very ground we stand on.
That sentence strikes a chord within him.
Magic is a part of me.
*
Balinor stares at Kilgharrah struggling against the chains and raises a hand to free him.
My kin, Uther how could he –
Immediately, guards pin his arms to his back. There is a click as the magic suppression cuffs encircle his wrists. Balinor knows they are not normal cuffs because he can’t feel the warm glow of his magic anymore. Soon, that emptiness will become an ache, and it will wear him down little by little until he dies. That is the cost of being a Dragonlord – to be so tied to magic that he can’t survive long without it.
“Take him to the forest and release him there,” the King orders, cold and so unlike his friend.
Is the Uther I know really gone?
The fight drains out of him, and only the sound of the chains pinning Kilgharrah down is audible. The guards start to lead him out of the cave.
“Your son,” Balinor says, and the guards stop their progression. “What is his name?”
“Arthur,” the man who used to be his friend answers. “Arthur Pendragon.”
Arthur. Uther. Balinor laughs bitterly. “Vain royal until the end, aren’t you?”
Uther doesn’t reply.
Balinor didn’t expect him to.
The guards continue to march him away, and Balinor knows this is the last he’ll see of his best friend turned traitor.