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Authors: David Farland

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BOOK: Sons of the Oak
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Rhianna felt torn and powerless, even as the ape watched for openings in Fallion's defenses.
The sea ape Oohtooroo growled and thumped her chest with her left fist—once, twice, a third time.
“You go!” the ape cried. “Go now or die.”
Fallion's mouth fell open; he stood, unsure what to do or say.
Oohtooroo watched intently as Abravael stepped out from the shadows and crept up behind Fallion.
For his part, Fallion merely studied Oohtooroo, blade in hand, and spoke softly. “There is no need for this. I wish you no harm.”
Fallion heard the scuff of a footfall and whirled.
A man lunged toward him, scimitar in hand. He was fast, and even as Fallion stepped aside, the man twisted his blade, nearly slipping beneath Fallion's guard.
He has endowments of metabolism, Fallion realized.
Years of training took control of Fallion's blade. He struck with his long knife, pulling the blade up quickly and reversing its edge, in order to strike the young man's wrist.
Fallion slashed a deep wound, drawing blood. The wound jarred the man's wrist, striking ganglia, causing the attacker to drop his sword.
Fallion pushed the attack, slamming his fist into the man's face, then laying his blade to the man's throat. Fallion called, “Surrender!”
The huge ape roared and charged, bounding toward Fallion, and he had no choice.
He shoved his captive forward and the ape clumsily tried to step aside, hoping to avoid hitting her master.
As she did, Fallion stepped forward and slashed her across the belly. Red blood flowed over white fur, and the ape roared in pain. She whirled toward him, now standing between Fallion and the wounded man.
Fallion stared. The young man was handsome by any standard, with dark hair and a face like his mother's. He pressed his badly bleeding wrist against his chest, peering at Fallion maliciously.
“Truce!” the young man called. “I surrender!”
The huge ape began wheezing, and Fallion cringed to see the damage that he'd done. Her rib cage had opened up, and he could see the pale purple of intestines and the pink tip of one lung. The ape panted, stood in shock, still keeping itself between Fallion and its beloved master.
The young man was holding his wrist as if Fallion had chopped off his arm. He was worried about a minor wound while his faithful servant died.
“Go,” Fallion whispered. “Get out of here.” He stepped aside, giving the huge ape leeway. It just peered at him, breathing heavily, unsure what to do.
“Come, my pet,” Abravael whispered. “We're outmatched. Mother will be so unhappy.”
The way that he said it, Fallion almost imagined that the young man wanted his mother's Dedicates to die.
No, Fallion realized, he
does
want them to die. It's not my imagination. How he must hate her.
Taking the sea ape by one hand, Abravael led the beast along the path. It glared back at Fallion, hurt and bewildered, dying, but it did not attack.
Fallion had an uncanny sense that the battle was not over, that Abravael still had some trap for him.
But the young man merely retreated to the shadow of a rock, then sat down, his huge sea ape beside him. Abravael smiled and nodded at Fallion, as if daring him to enter the Dedicates' Keep.
There are more guards inside, Fallion realized, suddenly worried. Perhaps these guards are even powerful Runelords.
He licked his lips. His legs suddenly felt too weak to carry him farther into battle.
My body is a tool, Fallion told himself, repeating an old mantra of the Gwardeen. It must obey.
He stalked into the Dedicates' Keep.
 
 
 
“Run!” Jaz shouted, warning the children in the cave. “Shadoath is coming.”
The children clamored to escape. Some grabbed weapons or sought to pick up coats, but most just rushed toward the graakerie, some of the bigger ones knocking the little ones aside.
Jaz had no time to help.
Grabbing Fallion's forcibles, he raced to the rookery and freed a graak, a
big male. It was tied with a rope, and Jaz fumbled as he tried to undo the knots. Finally, in a fit of panic, he drew his knife and slit the rope.
Then, realizing that he had time to help some of the younger children out, he raced to a second reptile and cut it free, and another and another.
The older children were quickly preparing their mounts, heaving huge saddles upon their backs, tying them down, fitting bridles.
Jaz raced to a corner where his own tack had been laid, then bridled and saddled the nearest great reptile. After he did, he helped a young girl onto the graak, then slapped its rump. The huge reptile lunged toward the ledge and soared into the air.
Jaz felt sick with fear and hunger, as if he would topple at any moment.
He stood on the ledge, gasping for breath.
Jaz looked down into the valley. Shadoath's mount came up behind Nix's. The girl wasn't even aware of the danger.
Suddenly Shadoath hurled a dagger. Bright steel flashed as it blurred toward its mark. Nix got struck full in the back and went hurtling headlong from her graak.
The mount veered away and roared in fear, heading down into the forest.
Shadoath kept flying toward the hideout.
Two minutes, Jaz told himself. She can't be more than two minutes away.
For half a second he wondered. Could Fallion have found Shadoath's Dedicates by now? If so, had he killed them yet? And if he had, what did that mean?
Shadoath could be as weak as any commoner. Jaz wasn't half the warrior that Fallion had become, but Jaz had been practicing with the blade for years.
Dare I fight her? he wondered. If she is a commoner, she might underestimate me. I might be able to strike a killing blow.
But Jaz was no warrior. He never had been.
A young boy was struggling to throw a heavy saddle over a huge graak, using all of his strength.
It gave out and the boy collapsed.
He'll never make it, Jaz realized with horror. He'll never be strong enough to saddle it.
He peered at the young children at work, their faces all whiter than ash, as was common among the Gwardeen, and the full horror of what was about to happen struck him.
They were all struggling to escape, but the process of bridling and saddling a graak took too long.
The forcibles, he told himself. I have to save them. They're more important than the children.
Valya had just helped a child with a saddle, and now she helped the child mount a graak, and slapped the beast's rump, sending it over the cliff.
She whirled and went to help another, a broad smile on her handsome face.
Jaz wasn't sure if he'd even be able to save himself. Riding a graak wasn't easy. How would he carry both the forcibles and himself?
He didn't have time to answer as he raced outside.
Another child had managed to pick up a bridle for a graak, and was trying to throw it over the head of her mount, but she was too small. Jaz finished the job as she carefully climbed onto the reptile's neck, without a saddle, and perched there, clinging with fright.
Jaz peered up at her. “Get out of here. Fly inland and find the fortress at Stillwater.”
The girl nodded, and Jaz slapped the graak's rump, yelling, “Up! Up!”
His heart skipped a beat as the reptile hopped forward. In that moment, when the beast lunged, if the child was going to fall, this would be the time.
The graak dropped from the sky a dozen yards, its wings unfolding gracefully, and then it caught the wind and was gone, flying away. The girl cried out in fright, but managed to hold on.
Jaz peered down below. Shadoath was close now. No more than a minute away. Jaz didn't have time to harness more graaks.
Expert riders could command a graak even if it wasn't harnessed, Jaz knew, but he wasn't an expert rider. Such riders usually had years of experience to help them.
Jaz had none of that.
Weary to the core of his soul, he scrabbled up the side of the nearest graak, somehow climbing from knee, to hip, to back, and to neck by sheer will.
Shadoath was drawing near, less than a quarter of a mile away.
Maybe she won't hurt me, Jaz thought. She'd treated him gently when she took him from the prison. He'd seen her then as a vision of mercy, a savior, someone to be adored.
But she was the one who put me in irons in the first place, he told himself,
and he knew that it was true. She could show kindness, but it didn't come from the heart.
He had only one chance. He was taking a rested mount. Shadoath's would be tired. He could hope to outfly her.
He looked to the side. Valya was throwing the bridle on another graak, sending off another child. She wouldn't have time to get away herself.
“Valya,” Jaz shouted, “come with me.” It would be dangerous for his graak to try to carry them both, he knew, but it was their only chance.
Valya raced toward him as if she would climb on, but then she slapped his graak on the rump and shouted, “Up!”
The graak surged, stretched its neck out, and with a little warning cry took flight. The warm evening air smote Jaz in the face and whistled through his hair, and he felt the great reptile take flight beneath him.
Valya is staying behind, he realized. She's giving her life for mine.
Shadoath was racing toward him, her graak twenty yards above his. Her face shone with an ethereal beauty, despite the scars from her burns, and she sat astride her graak with the easy grace of one who had hundreds of endowments.
I was fool to think I might be able to fight her, Jaz realized. She's a powerful Runelord still, and there is no way that I could win.
Jaz worried that she'd dive, have her mount claw his, knocking Jaz from his seat.
But Valya shouted, “Mother, I'm here.”
Shadoath turned her face up to the cave and urged her mount toward it, willing to let Jaz go.
Jaz felt miserable inside as his graak dove toward freedom.
There were still several children up in the cave. They were screaming now, abandoning their mounts, racing into the depths of the cave in the hopes of escaping.
Jaz was buying his own life with theirs.
THE TORCH-BEARER
In a reign of darkness, the fallen saw a great light.
 
—from “An Ode to Fallion”
 
 
 
Warily, Fallion made his way into the Dedicates' Keep, convinced that at any moment a dozen guards would ambush him.
But as he passed the small guardroom where Abravael and the ape had slept, he found it empty of all but a cot.
Fallion marched forward, past the bakery with its open hearth, beyond a hallway that led to some more guards' quarters, then to the buttery and the kitchens. A pair of matronly women worked inside. They huddled away in a corner, terrified, as he passed.
At the end of the hall, he opened a door to a darkened chamber. There he found the Dedicates.
The room was lit by a few candles, enough so that Fallion could see everything well enough.
The room was full of children, dozens and dozens of them. Some were toddlers, not more than a year or two. Others were Fallion's age or older.
Many laid upon cots, invalids. Some cried out or moaned in pain. They'd given brawn and grace, given their sight or their beauty, and could only wonder why they hurt so badly.
Of course, Fallion realized. When Shadoath captured a city, she used the elderly, the infirm, as food for her strengi-saats. The strong ones she'd keep as workers. And their children served as Dedicates.
It looked more like a nursery than a Dedicates' Keep. Fallion had never seen an instance where a Runelord took endowments from children. Such a deed was horrific.
But he understood the cunning of it.
Fallion stood there numb, as if wounded. He dared not advance.
He remembered Borenson sobbing in the night, and Myrrima warning Fallion, “Do not repeat our mistakes.”
He'd heard Borenson cry out in his sleep many times over the years. Now Fallion began to understand why.
He looked at the faces of the children, some lying fast asleep, others peering at him in terror, and searched in vain for an adult target, someone evil, someone cruel, someone worthy of death.
He'd imagined that Shadoath's servants would be vile, like her. He'd dreamed that their cruelty would be written plain upon their faces, and that in slaying them, he would feel secure that he'd done the world a favor.
But there was no evil in this room. Only innocence.
And then he saw her, there across the room, not forty feet away. A young woman with pale skin and dark red hair, slumbering, perhaps lost in a dream. She had aged in the past five years. She now looked to be more than twenty. It was Rhianna.
Without thought he moved across the room and found himself peering down, trying to make sure that it really was her.
Over the years, a thousand times he'd dreamed of going back to Syndyllian to rescue her. Or he dreamed that she found her way to him somehow.
A rune of wit was branded on her forehead, the scar a cold white and puckering.
She's given Shadoath her wit, Fallion thought. I could kill her now, and she'd never even know what happened. I could slice her throat, and strike a blow against evil. If I am going to do this, if I am to defend my people, then I should take her first.
Fallion peered down at Rhianna, and a seemingly ancient oath suddenly rose from his throat, escaped his lips. “Sworn to serve.”
He let his blade clatter to the floor.
He sank to his knees and hugged her while fierce tears welled up in his eyes.
 
 
 
Shadoath's graak struggled for purchase in the air, its leather wings ripping the sky as it made its way up to the little bluff.
Half a dozen white graaks still waited in the shadows. They were hungry,
and their reptilian brains seemed to not be quite awake. They were going to sleep for the night. And so they stood, almost like statues, while Shadoath's own mount landed on the bluff, panting from exertion.
Shadoath leapt off of her graak onto the sandstone, her powerful muscles catching her weight as if she were as light as a windblown leaf.
She drew a long knife and stalked into the little cave.
The room was small and bare. It held the embers of a fire, but no water or other supplies. There was nowhere that anyone could hide.
Most of the children had raced down into the tunnel ahead. Only Valya stood her ground.
She had grown. She was lithe and beautiful. Her breasts had filled out.
“Mother, leave here,” Valya begged. Her lips trembled, and her hands were shaking.
“I've searched for you for years,” Shadoath said.
“I … didn't want to be found.”
Shadoath stepped up to her daughter and lovingly stroked the girl's cheek. Valya tried to recoil in fear, but then stood her ground, head bowed.
Shadoath kissed her forehead.
She betrayed me, Shadoath realized. She chose to go with Fallion.
“Come,” Shadoath said, using all the persuasive power of her Voice. The command slipped beneath the girl's defenses like a knife, and she lurched forward a pace.
“Come,” Shadoath said again.
Shadoath took Valya's hand and strode out of the cave, toward the ledge where her graak waited.
She stood by her mount for a moment, peering up into its eyes, and the reptile watched her.
Valya stood, trembling. She was no match for her mother. She didn't have the strength or speed to fight her. Any attempt to flee would have been futile.
Without a word, Shadoath took Valya's arm and hurled her over the ledge.
The young woman screamed once, then made soft thumping sounds as she dropped, bouncing off of rocks, a hundred yards, two hundred, then landed with a rip like a melon splitting as it hits the ground.
Shadoath stood for a second, then turned and stalked back into the
recesses of the cave to hunt for the rest of the children, hoping that Fallion would be among them.
 
 
 
Fallion felt a strange sensation, an emptiness inside.
The world seemed a darker place, as if someone had blown out a candle in the corner of a room.
For years now, Fallion had been growing more sensitive to heat and light. He was aware of it on a hundred levels. He could feel the soul-fires of his friends.
Now he stretched out with his senses, questing, to discover what had changed.
And like the great flameweavers of legend, he recognized when one of his friend's soul-fires went out.
“Valya?” he cried, fearing the worst.
He climbed to his feet, sure that Shadoath had found his friends.
Shadoath's own Dedicates lay before him, easy prey, and he knew that if he did not act quickly, the guards could come. He might never have another chance.
Do I kill them? he wondered. Dare I?
Killing the children is evil, he knew. But so was letting them live.
He knew the arguments, had heard them all of his life.
He reached down to the floor, retrieved his blade, and peered around the room. He couldn't kill Rhianna, not first, so he moved to the bed next to her. A boy no more than three lay there so still that he might have been dead.
Fallion leaned close, smelled his breath, a baby's sweet breath. Metabolism, he decided. The little boy had given Shadoath metabolism.
He had a vision of Shadoath sitting with the child, her arm wrapped around the boy, whispering softly into his ear. “Do you have a present for me? Do you want to give me something nice?”
And the boy would have loved her. He'd have been mesmerized by Shadoath's beauty, beguiled by her liquid voice. He'd have ached to give Shadoath something, anything.
Kill him, Fallion thought. Do it now, before you have time to regret it.
More guards could come rushing back at any moment. Maybe Abravael has gone for reinforcements.
The world hangs on your decision.
That thought stopped him. It was true. Shadoath was raising an army from the netherworld. Fallion didn't know her plans, but it was obvious that she intended to invade.
And Fallion was the only person in the world who knew where her Dedicates lay hidden. With them intact, there was a very real possibility that she could take control. The world's supplies of blood metal were dwindling. No great Runelord would arise to fight her.
Fallion needed to play the part of a hero now.
I wish that Sir Borenson were here, Fallion told himself. Borenson the assassin. Borenson the Kingslayer.
But even Borenson would shirk from this task, Fallion knew. He had killed innocents once before, and it had wounded his conscience, crippled him.
Now it's my turn, he told himself.
 
 
 
Oohtooroo knew that she was dying. She clung to Abravael with one hand, and with the other tried to hold in her innards.
“Love you …” she told him. “Love oooo.”
She was gasping, trying to hold on, wanting to protect him with the very last of her strength.
But Abravael fought her, tried to shove her away.
“Let go!” he shouted desperately. “You're bleeding all over me.”
He struggled to escape, his strength boosted by endowments, but it was not enough. He swatted at her face, and Oohtooroo grasped him harder, as if by doing so, she were clinging to her own life.
“Love ooooo,” she said desperately, her heart pounding as fast as a hummingbird's wings. She needed him to understand. She had loved him fiercely for years, and always would.
She took him by the neck, her enormous hand encompassing it, and tried to cling to him for one last moment, one last loving moment.
Abravael frantically kicked and struggled as Oohtooroo's heart suddenly gave out, and her vision went gray.
 
 
Rhianna woke, her heart pounding in terror. “Abravael!” she shouted, her love for him seeming to swell as big as the universe.
She found herself peering up at Fallion, who stood nearby, both hands wrapped around the hilt of his blade, ready to strike down a sleeping boy. She did not know where she was.
Her last memory was of holding Abravael, trying to explain to him the depth of her love, trying to bore the knowledge into him with her eyes.
She had heard a snapping sound, the crunching of bones in his neck.
And now she was staring up at Fallion, and with the same ferocity, wanted to bore the knowledge of her love into him.
He turned at the sound of her startled voice.
She stared into his eyes, and memories came flooding back—her bargain with Shadoath, the torturous touch of the forcible, her time spent as Oohtooroo, loving her master with a fierceness beyond man's ability to understand.
She knew that she was in some Dedicates' Keep. Fallion stood nearby in the darkness, only the candlelight revealing his shape.
Sweat poured down his forehead and broke out upon his arm. He trembled, his whole body shaking, as if he had been standing for hours, or might stand thus forever.
“Do it, if you must,” Rhianna whispered.
Fallion gasped, as if to cry out, but managed to hold his pain inside.
Carefully, Rhianna climbed to her elbows and peered at the children still sleeping nearby, innocent children by the dozens, and she understood his predicament.
“And if you can't do it,” Rhianna whispered, “then I'll do it for you.”
Reaching up, she gently unclasped his fingers from the hilt of his knife, and took the blade into her own hand. There was a little girl nearby, a child with blond hair and a pinched face. Her skin was leathery and wrinkled, for she had granted an endowment of glamour.
Silently, Rhianna whispered to herself: By the Glories, let her feel no pain.
Rhianna raised the knife overhead.
This is how I will serve Fallion, she thought. This is how I will prove my love. She let the knife plunge.
“No!” Fallion screamed and pulled on her wrist, spoiling her aim. The blade buried itself in a straw mattress.
 
 
 
For what seemed an eternity, Fallion had stood above Rhianna, unable to strike either her or the boy beside her. Part of his mind knew that this was a trap.
BOOK: Sons of the Oak
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