Sons of the Oak r-5

by David Farland

  Olmarg grinned. In his own lands, friends often exchanged insults as a form of jest, and Iome was relieved to see that he took her cut in the proper spirit. Olmarg shot back, “Harsh words-from a hag. To think, I once dreamed of bedding you.”

  “Eunuchs can have such dreams?” Iome asked.

  Olmarg chortled, and Iome felt that she had won. She got to the point. “So, you want my sons?”

  “Give them to us and we’ll raise them like our own: good food, ale in their bellies, women in their beds. And a promise: your boy Fallion, he can have the run of Heredon when he’s fifteen.”

  Iome grinned, a smile that was half wince, amused that Olmarg would think that she’d want women in her son’s bed. “Royal hostages?” Iome asked. “And if I say no?”

  “Then we’ll take them,” Olmarg said, “dead, if need be.”

  Fifty men didn’t represent much of a threat. But these weren’t commoners. They were Runelords, and would put up a fierce battle. More than that, they represented half a dozen nations, and might well have powerful allies back home.

  And then there was the shadow man. Iome couldn’t even guess what powers he might bring to bear.

  “I see,” Iome said. “You want to make it easier for the assassin’s knife to find them?”

  “We’re coming as friends,” Olmarg said. “We want Fallion to know us as friends, and allies. That’s all.” He smiled as persuasively as possible, the scars on his face rearranging into a mockery of friendliness, and his voice became sweet. “Come now, think on it. You’re wasting away. You’ll be dead in no time, and who will raise the boys then?”

  Iome gave Olmarg a dark look. Olmarg was a pig, she knew. A murderer and worse. She could dismiss his request without a thought. But she gazed down upon the shadow man. “And what of you? Do you wish to raise my sons as your own?”

  The shadow man rode forward, stopped next to Olmarg. He did not look up, and Iome could not see his face. Thus he kept his identity hidden, causing Iome some lingering doubt.

  It’s not Anders after all. If it were, he’d show me his face.

  “You have my word,” the shadow man said, his voice as resonant as a lute. “I will raise the boys as my own.”

  His tone drove a spike of fear into Iome’s heart. There was something wrong with it, something dangerous, as if he had taken hundreds of endowments of Voice. Iome could not tell if it was Anders who spoke or some other being. He sounded too pure and lofty to ride with these men.

  And Iome knew that he would be handsome, that he had taken endowments of glamour. If so, the luster of his appearance and the persuasiveness of voice would combine to seduce the boys, bend them to his will. He’d have them eating from his hand in no time.

  In Rofehavan it was said, “When you look upon the face of pure evil, it will be beautiful.” Suddenly Iome wished that the shadow creature would pull back his hood, reveal his beauty.

  “I know you,” Iome said, and she spoke the name of the locus that had crossed from the netherworld, “Asgaroth.”

  The stranger did not deny it. “If you know me,” he said, “then you know that you must submit.”

  He glanced back at his men, gave them a nod.

  Half a dozen men dismounted and rushed to the lance wagons, then removed their wooden lids. What they pulled out were not lances.

  Instead, they pulled out three large stakes, like thickened spears with dull points, and even in the shadows Iome could see that each was elegantly carved and painted, like some gift that a foreign dignitary might offer a neighboring lord.

  Yet impaled upon each of these stakes was a human form. The bodies were not just thrust through. Instead, the victim’s hands and legs had been tied, and the stakes had been driven up through their nether regions with great care and threaded upward until the lances’ points broke through their mouths, like trout upon a skewer.

  The soldiers rushed forward and shoved the stakes into the ground so that the bodies were raised up high. Then they stood beneath, waving their torches so that Iome could see the identities of their victims.

  What she saw shook her to the core of her soul. Among the impaled were Jaz’s personal guard Daymorra. Next came Iome’s childhood friend, Chemoise. And last of all was Gaborn’s uncle, Duke Paldane, the man that she had planned to place in charge of her kingdom as regent.

  Iome gaped in amazement. Of all the dark deeds she had ever witnessed, none struck her with as much force. It wasn’t that she couldn’t imagine such evil having been done. It was that she couldn’t imagine how it had been done so quickly.

  All three of these people had been under Gaborn’s protection, and he had been dead for only a few hours. Chemoise had been in Heredon, hundreds of miles away, in the Dedicates’ Keep. Paldane had been in his own castle. For both of them to have been abducted and put to torture-it could only mean that Asgaroth had known for weeks that Gaborn would die this day.

  How can I fight such foreknowledge? Iome wondered.

  “So,” Iome said, looking at the grotesque forms on their splendid skewers and trying to remain calm. “I see that you have made an art of murder.”

  “Oh, not just of murder-” Asgaroth said, “of viciousness. ”

  There was a soft moan from Daymorra. Paldane moved an elbow. Iome realized to her dismay that both had survived the impalement. The stakes had been threaded past vital organs-heart, lungs, liver-in the most ghastly manner.

  Through the haze of shock, Iome registered a movement at her side. She glanced down, becoming aware that her sons had come up to the parapet despite the fact that she had ordered them to stay in her rooms. Iome felt angry and alarmed, but she understood how hard it was for the boys to restrain themselves. Now the boys leaned over the merlons to get a better look.

  Fallion seemed to stare calmly at the impaled, as if he would refuse to be intimidated, while Jaz gaped in shock, his face leeched of blood.

  Iome feared how such a sight might scar the boys.

  The shadow man shifted his gaze slightly, stared hard at Fallion, and Iome suddenly realized that this demonstration had not been for her benefit as much as it had been for Fallion’s.

  For his part, Fallion could almost feel Asgaroth’s eyes boring into him. It was as if Asgaroth looked into Fallion’s chest, into his soul, and everything was stripped bare to see, all of his childhood fears, all of his weaknesses. Fallion felt that he had been weighed and found wanting, and now Asgaroth scorned him.

  Fallion’s knees trembled no matter how hard he tried to stand still.

  That’s what he wants, Fallion realized. My fear. That’s why he did this. That’s why he brought the strengi-saats.

  And with the realization, Fallion suddenly felt a sullen rage blossom, one that left him in a numbing trance.

  There is an end to pain, he realized. There is only so much that he could do to me.

  Fallion said steadily, and not too loudly, “I’m not afraid of you.”

  The shadow man made no move. But as if at some hidden signal, Asgaroth’s soldiers went to the impaled victims and clubbed their shins with the torches so that Fallion heard the snapping of bones, and then held the torches to the victims’ feet. Both Daymorra and Paldane cringed and writhed, and Fallion could hear them choking back sobs, but neither gave in. Neither of them cried out.

  Fallion saw Asgaroth’s game. He would try to enlarge his realm through intimidation.

  Fallion reached down to his sheath and pulled his own dagger, then held it up for Asgaroth to see.

  “Is that the worst that you can do?” Fallion asked. He stabbed himself in the hand, drew the dagger across his palm, opening a shallow wound. He raised his palm in the air so that the blood flowed freely. “I don’t fear pain,” he said, then added calmly, “Is that why you fear me?”

  Asgaroth trembled with rage. He sat upon his destrier, clenching the reins, and Fallion looked over to his mother’s soldiers on the wall, many of whom were staring at him in open amazement. Fallion curled his bleeding hand
into a fist, and drew it down quickly, as if striking a blow, and against all of the rules of parlay, he shouted, “Fire.”

  Fallion had never ordered a soldier to kill. But in an instant, every archer upon the wall let fly an arrow, and the marksmen fired their ballistae. It was as if they had been aching for permission.

  Arrows swept down in a dark hail. A dozen cruel Runelords were slaughtered in an instant, and many others took wounds. Horses screamed and fell, bloody rents in their flesh. Fallion saw dozens of men, arrows lodged in them, turn their horses and beat a hasty retreat.

  But Asgaroth went unharmed. Before the command to fire had even left Fallion’s mouth, the shadow man reached over with his left hand and grabbed the fat old Olmarg, lifting him easily from the saddle, and threw him upon his pommel, using the warlord as a human shield.

  It happened so swiftly, Fallion barely saw the movement, attesting that Asgaroth had many endowments of both metabolism and brawn.

  Then, as Olmarg filled up with so many arrows that he looked like a practice target, Asgaroth raised his left hand and a powerful wind screamed from it. In seconds every arrow that flew toward him veered from its path.

  Fallion could hear the twang of bows, could see the dark missiles blurring in their speed, but Asgaroth tossed Olmarg to the ground and then sat calmly upon his horse, taking no hurt.

  Many an arrow landed nearby, and soon Asgaroth’s victims, impaled upon their stakes, had each been struck a dozen times, putting an end to their torment.

  And though the archers kept firing, Asgaroth gazed hard at Fallion and shouted, “If viciousness be art, then of you I shall make a masterpiece.”

  Asgaroth calmly turned his blood mount and let it prance away, its hooves rising and falling rhythmically as if in dance, until it rode off into the darkness. The shadows seemed to coalesce around the rider, and in moments he became one with the night.

  He’s coming back, Fallion thought. In fact, his men are probably surrounding the castle now as they wait for reinforcements.

  Fallion looked up at his mother. Her jaw was clenched in rage, and she looked at the blood dripping from his palm. He thought that she would scold him, but she merely put a hand on his shoulder and whispered, pride catching in her voice, “Well done. Well done.”

  Iome strode from the castle wall, hurrying down the steps. At her back, she heard an old veteran soldier telling Fallion, “You ever need to go into battle, milord, I’d be proud to ride at your side.”

  It was a sentiment that Iome suspected more than one man shared at this moment.

  A healer in a dark blue robe, smelling of dried herbs, brushed past Iome on his way to bandage Fallion.

  Sir Borenson met Iome in the courtyard, rushing up as if to ask orders.

  Iome said swiftly, “How soon can we leave?”

  “I need only to get the children,” he said.

  Iome had not packed a bag, but it was not a hundred miles to the Courts of Tide, and the heavy cloak and boots that she wore would suffice until then. She carried a sword beneath her robe, and a pair of dueling daggers strapped to her boots, so she would not lack for weapons.

  “Get your family then,” Iome said, “and I will meet you in the tunnels.”

  Borenson turned, racing toward his quarters, a small home beside the barracks, and Iome hesitated.

  After what she had just seen, she felt certain that Fallion was almost ready to receive endowments.

  It isn’t age that qualifies a man to lead, she thought. It’s an amalgam of traits-honor, decency, courage, wisdom, decisiveness, resolve. And Fallion has shown me all of those tonight.

  But dare I take his childhood from him?

  Not yet, she told herself. But soon. Too soon, it must come.

  Which meant that she needed to take only one thing on this trip: Fallion’s legacy.

  She raced up to her treasury above the throne room, where she kept hundreds of forcibles under lock and key.

  6

  THE FLIGHT

  No man ever truly leaves home. The places we have lived, the people that we know, all become a part of us. And like a hermit crab, in spirit at least, we take our homes with us.

  — The Wizard Binnesman

  Sir Borenson was loath to tell Myrrima that they would have to leave Castle Coorm. It is no small feat to uproot a family and take your children to a far land. Even under the best of circumstances it can be hard, and to do it under this pall of danger…what would she say?

  Borenson’s mother had been a shrewish woman, one who drove her husband half mad. Privately, Borenson held the belief that nagging was more than a privilege for a woman, it was her right and her duty. She was, after all, the one who ruled the house when the man was out.

  Sheepishly, he had to admit that his wife ruled the house even when he was home.

  Myrrima had become entrenched at Coorm. She was a favorite among the ladies and spent hours a day among her friends-knitting, washing, cooking, and gossiping. Her friendships were many and deep, and it would be easier for Borenson to cut off his own arm than to cut her off from her friends.

  So when he went to their little house outside the main keep, he was surprised to find the children already packing.

  “We’re leaving, Dad!” little five-year-old Draken shouted when he came in. The boy displayed a pillowcase full of clothing as proof. The other children were bustling in their room.

  Borenson went upstairs and found his wife, standing there, peering out the window. He came up behind and put his arm around her.

  “How did you know?” he asked.

  “Gaborn told me. It’s time that we take care of his boys. It was his final wish…”

  Myrrima peered out the window. Down in the streets, a group of peasants had gathered outside the Dedicates’ Keep. The facilitators were gathering those who would grant endowments to Mystarria’s warriors-attributes of brawn, grace, metabolism, and stamina.

  The peasants were excited. To give an endowment was dangerous. Many a man who gave brawn suddenly found that his heart was too weak to keep beating. Those who gave stamina could take sick and die.

  Yet this was their chance to be heroes, to give something of themselves for the good of the kingdom. To give an endowment made them instant heroes in the eyes of family and friends, and it seemed that the darker times became, the more willing folks were to give of themselves.

  Myrrima felt inside herself. She had not taken an endowment in nine years. In that time, several of the Dedicates who had granted her attributes had died, and with their passing, Myrrima had lost the blessing of their attributes. Her stamina was lower than it should be, as was her brawn and grace. She still had her endowments of scent, hearing, sight, and metabolism. But in many ways she was diminished.

  In the parlance of the day, she was becoming a “warrior of unfortunate proportion,” one who no longer had the right balance of brawn and grace, stamina and metabolism, to be called a true “force warrior.”

  Against a more-balanced opponent, she was at an extreme disadvantage.

  She caught sight of a light in the uppermost tower of the Dedicates’ Keep. A facilitator was up there singing, his voice piping in birdlike incantations. He waved a forcible in the air, and it left a glowing trail. He peered at the white light, which hung like a luminous worm in the air, and judged its heft and depth.

  Suddenly there was a scream as the attribute was sucked from a Dedicate, and the worm of light flashed away into the bosom of some force warrior.

  Myrrima felt a twinge of guilt. It was more than the act of voyeurism. She’d always been on the receiving end of the ceremony. They said that there is no pain on earth that compared with giving an endowment. Even childbirth paled beside it. But it was equally true that there was no greater ecstasy than receiving one. It wasn’t just the rush of strength or vigor or intelligence. There was something primal and satisfying about it.

  Borenson was watching, too, of course. “Are you tempted?” he asked. “We’re going into danger
, and we’ll have the king’s sons in our care. Iome would feel more confident if you were to take further endowments…”

  But Myrrima and Borenson had talked about this. He’d sworn off endowments nine years ago, when his Dedicates were slain at Carris. He’d had enough of gore. Dedicates were always targets for the merciless. It was far easier to kill a Dedicate who lent power to a lord than to kill a lord himself. And once a lord’s Dedicates were slain, and he was cut off from the source of his power, killing him was almost as easy as harvesting a cabbage.

  So a lord’s Dedicates became a prime target for assassins.

  No longer was Borenson willing to risk the lives of others by taking their endowments.

  He had children to care for, and he couldn’t count on Myrrima. She was aging faster than he.

  Myrrima’s endowments of glamour hid it, and her wizardly powers would probably extend her life, but the truth was, Myrrima suspected that even without taking more endowments, she would pass away years before him.

  And like her husband, Myrrima wanted to be a commoner.

  It should be our chance to grow old together, she told herself. It should be our time to fade…

  She didn’t want either of them to take endowments. But there were the children to worry about.

  “Are you sure we can protect them, even without endowments?” Myrrima asked.

  “No,” Borenson said candidly. “I’m not sure that we can protect them even if we take endowments. I only know…that I’m done. Many a peasant raises his family with nothing but his own strength. So will I.”

  Myrrima nodded. She still had some endowments, and she had a few wizardly powers to lean on, small as they were. They would have to be enough.

  In her room, Rhianna drifted through dreams of pain, a recurring dream in which a strengi-saat carried her in its teeth as it leapt through the woods, landing with a jostle, then leaping again, landing and leaping. Each time that she closed her eyes, the dream recurred, startling her awake, and she would lie abed and try to reassure herself, until her eyes succumbed to sleep once again.