Enchanter's End Game

Rhodar snapped peevishly. "Have you got any better ideas?"
    "No," Varana replied. "I was just pointing it out, that's all."
    "Where is that signal?" Rhodar demanded again.
    On a quiet hillside some distance from the struggle taking place on the north bank, the simpleminded serf boy from the Arendish forest was playing his flute. His melody was mournful, but even in its sadness, it soared to the sky. The boy did not understand the fighting and he had wandered away unnoticed. Now he sat alone on the grassy hillside in the warm, midmorning sunlight with his entire soul pouring out of his flute.
    The Mallorean soldier who was creeping up behind him with drawn sword had no ear for music. He did not know - or care - that the song the boy played was the most beautiful song any man had ever heard.
    The song ended very suddenly, never to begin again.
    The stream of casualties being carried to Ariana's makeshift hospital grew heavier, and the overtaxed Mimbrate girl was soon forced into making some cruel decisions. Only those men with some chance of survival could be treated. The mortally hurt were quickly given a drink of a bitter-tasting potion of herbs that would ease their pain and then were left to die. Each such decision wrung Ariana's heart, and she worked with tears standing in her eyes.
    And then Brand, the Rivan Warder, entered the tent with a stricken face. The big Rivan's mail shirt was blood-spattered, and there were savage sword cuts along the edge of his broad, round shield. Behind him, three of his sons bore the limp, bleeding form of their younger brother, Olban.
    "Can you see to him?" Brand asked Ariana hoarsely.
    A single glance, however, told the blond girl that the wound in Olban's chest was mortal. "I can make him comfortable," she replied a bit evasively. She quickly knelt beside the bleeding young man, lifted his head, and held a cup to his lips.
    "Father," Olban said weakly after he had drunk, "I have something I have to tell you."
    "Time enough for that later," Brand told him gruffly, "after you're better."
    "I'm not going to get better, father," Olban said in a voice scarcely more than a whisper.
    "Nonsense," Brand told him, but there was no conviction in his voice.
    "There's not much time, father," Olban said, coughing weakly. "Please listen."
    "Very well, Olban," the Warder said, leaning forward to catch his son's words.
    "At Riva - after Belgarion came - I was humiliated because you had been deposed. I couldn't bear it, father." Olban coughed again, and a bloody froth came to his lips.
    "You should have known me better than that, Olban," Brand said gently.
    "I do - now." Olban sighed. "But I was young and proud, and Belgarion - a nobody from Sendaria - had pushed you from your rightful place."
    "It wasn't my place to begin with, Olban," Brand told him. "It was his. Belgarion's the Rivan King. That has nothing to do with position or place. It's a duty - and it's his, not mine."
    "I hated him," Olban whispered. "I began to follow him every place. Wherever he went, I wasn't far behind him."
    "What for?" Brand asked.
    "At first I didn't know. Then one day he came out of the throne room wearing his robe and crown. He seemed so puffed-up with his own importance - as if he really was a king instead of just a common Sendarian scullion. Then I knew what I had to do. I took my dagger and I threw it at his back."
    Brand's face suddenly froze.
    "For a long time after that, I tried to avoid him," Olban continued. "I knew that what I had done was wrong - even as the dagger left my fingers. I thought that if I stayed away from him, he'd never find out that I was the one who'd tried to kill him. But he has powers, father. He has ways of knowing things no man could possibly know. He sought me out one day and gave me back the dagger I'd thrown at him and he told me that I should never tell anyone what I'd done. He did that for you, father - to keep my disgrace from you."
    Grim-faced, Brand rose to his feet. "Come," he said to his other three sons. "We have fighting to do - and no time to waste on traitors." Quite deliberately he turned his back on his dying son.
    "I tried to repay his mercy, father," Olban pleaded. "I pledged my life to protecting his queen. Doesn't that count for anything?" Brand's face was stony, and he kept his back turned in grim silence. "Belgarion forgave me, father. Can't you find it in your heart to forgive me too?"
    "No," Brand said harshly, "I cannot."
    "Please, father," Olban begged.