Balorin Dawnbringer

An elven priest of Luna's cathedral, a high priest (he knows "a ward taught only to high priests"), Haelun Lightwind's partner, and the man who takes in the orphan Eamon. Born 464 BL

Appearance and manner

Book 1 (*The Outcast Knight*)

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See also: Haelun Lightwind, High Elvish.

Appearance

Balorin is an ageing elf with long, blueish-grey hair that falls past his shoulders and chest, a short, neatly trimmed grey beard and pointed ears that sweep backwards. Wrinkles cross his forehead, and he has piercing blue eyes. He wears two black earrings in his left ear and an opulent dark purple robe trimmed with luminarite gold over a white undershirt.

In The Outcast Knight

Balorin Dawnbringer, addressed as Father Balorin, is a senior priest of Luna's cathedral and a master of High Elvish rites. He first appeared when Fi and Usso were fighting the monster that had been Eamon's father, calling down a blessing that turned their weapons to star-fire and burned the creature. Afterwards he regarded the two outcasts with mingled gratitude and revulsion, telling them they had turned from the Light yet stood in its place, and pressed ten gold coins on Fi with an invitation to the cathedral.

When a ship's captain brought the unconscious Eamon to the cathedral, Balorin took him in, named him Eamon the Orphan and offered him a home. Balorin shares his life with his partner Haelun Lightwind, and the boy stirred in him the ache of a fatherhood he believed was denied to them. Eamon then killed the priestess Lira, and Balorin held her as she died. When the boy escaped his cell by blood magic, Balorin and Haelun warned the King, who refused to protect the slums and said to let the dark have them.

Balorin tracked Eamon's corrupted trail through the cathedral, faced the boy's smoke form behind a High Elvish ward, and followed the trail to Usso's tavern to warn Fi and her allies. Woken by a nightmare, he found that the forbidden tome Perdition had vanished from the crypt. During the tournament he reached the cathedral too late to stop Eamon carving a binding sigil into Haelun's chest. At Haelun's plea, and with Haelun guiding his hand, Balorin drove a sanctified dagger into his heart before the corruption could take him. He held the body until dawn, and later vowed at Haelun's bier to stand for him, for the boy and for all of them.

Grief-stricken, he joined the council at Fi's bedside and offered a defensive rite he had been shaping. The King refused to hear him and had him put out of the throne room. In the cathedral library he found a sealing ritual that could rip the demons from Eamon, but only at the cost of a willing soul. He agonised over it, refused to force it on anyone, and told Usso and Fi the truth; Fi chose to give herself. In the Lightspire, Balorin performed the chant, Charon's Gift, hovering in holy light before the Eye of Luna. When the chains burst, Eamon struck him across the chamber and broke his bones, and he could only watch as Fi was thrown into the Eye.

He survived, and ended the book propped against a column beneath the bruised sky, warning that the ritual had not landed where it was meant to and that something older than the Creed had woken when the Eye was struck.

Family

After the books

After the Scorched Sky, he keeps the cathedral standing, bearing witness to what it saw, what it failed to stop, and the price of calling truth by its name.