The Duke's Ballad

The Duke's Ballad (2005) is a Fantasy novel in the Witch World Chronicles series, following Ciara's Song. In the previous volume, Aisling escaped Lord Ruart with the help of Temon and fled across the mountains to Escore. On the way, she was wounded by a walking boulder and needs the healing mud of the Green Valley. In this novel, Aisling has visionary dreams of returning to Karsten to protect the duchy from her brother Kirion. She has learned as much as she can from the adept Hilarion and is ready to return. Even Wind Dancer is homesick for his mother Shosho. Hilarion declares that she has a geas to remove the magical influence of the blood-sorcerer Kirion. He sends word to his agents in Karsten to bring horses for her journey. Aisling packs and departs the Green Valley with Hilarion and other escorts. On the way to Karsten, they purge a new outbreak of the Dark Powers and then ride for the border. After leaving her escorts, Aisling walks onward until she finds two men waiting for her. When they give the wrong countersign, she attacks them and binds them securely. Then she searches for the true agents. When she finds the thoroughly bound Hadrann in a half-cave, she tries the password again and gets the correct response. He tells her that the other two had ambushed him and his companion. Hit with a slung stone, he had lost consciousness. When he regained his senses, his enemies were torturing his companion, who told almost all except the correct countersign. Aisling interrogates the two enemy agents and learns that they are working for Kirion. Since they know too much, Rann slits their throats and digs a grave. Placing them into the grave, Aisling and Rann cover them in bedding and pile rocks and soil over them. While Wind Dancer had detected a "here I am" spell on one of them, Kirion will see only darkness through his eyes. Aisling and Rann travel cautiously to Aiskeep, disguising their horses and themselves. Even Wind Dancer looks like a common cat. As they approach the keep from the backside, Aisling is seized by a man and held fiercely. Rann prepares for battle as he moves toward them, but is dissuaded by Aisling's declaration that this is her brother Keelan. This novel tells of Aisling's efforts to undermine the influence of her brother Kirion and his puppet Duke. Disguised as Hadrann's cousin Murna, Aisling moves into the Duke's palace and becomes a member of his court. Although plain looking and a better rider that the Duke, he comes to like her for the common sense manner that she displays in thought and speech. Meanwhile, Kirion is having troubles of various sorts. For one thing, he is running out of people with magical talents to drain for his own use. Another problem is the activities of the coastal clans; they are upset with the magical conversion of their women into Duke Shastro's ardent lovers as well as the deadly coincidences that are killing off their leaders. Highly recommended for Norton fans and

This was a good book, not great but worth the money. It has gotten obvious over the last few books that Ms. Norton is not the primary writer, This is unfortunate, but at least it keeps the books coming.

I can say without hesitation that my all-time favorite Andre Norton title is "Ciara's Song". Given that I have 105 Norton books on my shelves, I've read nearly everything she's done. I've lost count of the number of times I've read "Ciara's Song" over the years since it came out in 1998. I fell in love with the warm, believable characters: Ciara and Trovagh, his father Lord Tarnoor, also Aisling and Keelan, the grandchildren of Ciara and Trovagh. And, of course, a big, 35-pound telepathic cat named Wind Dancer, the product of a union between a house cat and something mysterious she encountered up in the hills. I have a very vivid mental picture of Aiskeep and the valley it guards, along with its people. In fact, I had only one complaint about "Ciara's Song": it ended too abruptly. Aisling, being of the Old Blood, had inherited certain powers which she didn't know how to control. Her, and Keelan's, older brother Kirion wanted the power for himself, but there was one catch: whereas it tends to manifest itself readily in girls and women to one degree or another, it rarely manifests itself in boys and men. So, after combing through many books of nearly forgotten lore, Kirion devised an evil way to steal power from those who had it, usually to their destruction. Aisling would be a particularly tempting victim, if only he could catch her. So, the book ended with her fleeing into the neighboring land of Escore, with Wind Dancer to protect her along the way. There she would find people to help her control her gift. Kirion, frustrated by a mountain blizzard, had no choice but to turn back. And there it remained for seven years. I'd read and reread the book, always wondering when Norton would finish the tale. Now, it's quite rare for me to buy a book in hardcover, but "The Duke's Ballad" was definitely worth the price. Waiting another year or two for the paperback would have been unbearable. I don't consider it a sequel so much as the long-delayed conclusion to a single story. They could easily form a single volume. "The Duke's Ballad" picks up three years after the end of "Ciara's Song". Aisling has learned, from the Adept Hilarion, just about everything she reasonably can without benefit of practice. She and Wind Dancer are both homesick. Then there's the problem of her evil brother Kirion and his puppet, the Duke Shastro of Karsten. Someone has to stop them before they completely ruin the country, plunging it into yet another disastrous war with its northern neighbor Estcarp. As we learned in "Ciara's Song", Karsten is a land plagued with instability, with clans warring against each other in blood feuds, endlessly wrestling to put one of their own onto the ducal throne. And then there's the problem of those people who keep disappearing -- to feed Kirion's power lust, or Duke Shastro's more conventional, but perverted, appetites. With a geas laid upon her, a sort of magical compulsion, Aisling returns to her homeland and mee

Kirion as sorcerer to the ruling Duke Shastro insures that his liege gets what he wants. When he "pimped" girls from the old city using his ability to make his victims believe they love and in turn are loved by the Duke, no one in power cared, but when Shastro turned to the young at court trouble is brewing. Meanwhile Kirion's sister Aisling comes home after a three year self imposed exile to elude her sibling while learning under the tutelage of an Adept to use her talent. Besides dreams that insist she must return to Kars, she feels she must do what is right to rid her homeland of her brother and his unfit ruler. Before she and her companion, the telepathic steed Wind Dancer, arrives at her home, Kirion takes their kingdom to war against their neighbor. As a stark winter makes matters worse, Aisling and another brother manage to gain entry into the court. As Kirion abuses his power and position leaving the people in dire straits, Aisling realizes she needs an ally, but no one except perhaps the perverted Shastro is in a position to help. THE DUKE'S BALLAD is a typical Andre Norton fantasy thriller that is fun, exciting yet paints a good vs. evil canvas in which Aisling is pure heroic angel while Kirion is malevolent incarnate. The support cast adds interest to the tale especially Wind Dancer and Shastro as two unique characters. The story line is fast-paced and filled with adventure so that Ms. Norton's Witch World fans will enjoy this collaboration with Lyn McConchie that returns fans to this mystical plane for the first time in several years. Harriet Klausner