In the dim hours of morning, Shadoath strode through the tunnel under the palace gate. The stone walls were charred and darkened. The bodies of those who had been too close when the flameweaver had immolated himself were stretched out on the ground, their clothing incinerated, flesh charred and burned beyond recognition. Twenty-seven people had died there at the heart of the flames.
Some had been soldiers, others prisoners. But judging from the skeletal remains, none were children.
Fallion and Jaz had escaped and taken Valya with them.
Shadoath seethed.
She had hundreds of endowments of stamina to her credit, but even those had barely kept her alive. Gone were fingers and an ear, her right eye and most of her vision. Gone was the better part of her nose.
Her face was a mass of scars. Every inch of her was a searing pain. She would live, but never again would she be beautiful.
Her son Abravael came up behind her, the sea ape knuckling along at his back.
“Captain Stalker will go to Landesfallen,” Shadoath said. “We’ll find him there.”
“How do you know?” Abravael asked.
“He has a wife there, and a son. He knows that I know where they live. He has no choice but to rescue them.”
“He’ll have a good lead on us.”
“Ships will come soon enough. Stalker will be wallowing his way to Landesfallen with a hold full of cargo. He’s at least six weeks out. We’ll lighten our load. With any luck, we’ll meet him at the docks.”
Rhianna listened through Oohtooroo’s ears, and her heart ached. She longed to warn her friends. But the sea ape’s body would not respond to even her most urgent needs. Rhianna was a prisoner.
Shadoath turned to Oohtooroo and smiled. She must have realized Rhianna’s distress. She reached up and scratched the sea ape’s head. “Good girl, Oohtooroo. Good sea ape. You’ll help us catch those nasty people, won’t you? And when you do, we’ll have fresh meat for you-the tasty flesh of a young boy.”
At the words “fresh meat,” Oohtooroo grew excited and began grunting. She leapt in the air repeatedly and banged the earth with her mighty fist.
Shadoath smiled cruelly, peering not into the ape’s eyes, but through them, as if into Rhianna’s mind, and through Shadoath’s scarred visage, Rhianna saw the torture that she had in mind.
She would feed Fallion to the sea ape, and Rhianna would be able to do nothing as the ape ripped the flesh from his body, tearing away strips of muscle in her teeth, while Fallion screamed in pain.
That night, as Myrrima and Borenson lay abed with the children sleeping all about, Borenson took stock of the situation.
Fallion had taken the news of Rhianna’s death hard.
“I was sworn to protect her,” Fallion said.
Borenson had been a guard. He knew how much it hurt to lose a charge.
“We can’t always protect the ones that we love,” Borenson said. “Sometimes, even after all that we can do, we lose them.”
“I was able to save her from the strengi-saats once before,” Fallion objected. “Maybe she’s still out there. Maybe she needs our help.”
“Myrrima searched everywhere,” Berenson said. “She’s just…gone.” Fallion had insisted on blade practice before bed, despite his worn and weakened condition.
With muscles wasted from fatigue, with mouth swollen from thirst, Fallion reeled across the ship’s deck in the lantern light, his eyes glowing unnaturally, fighting like a crazed animal.
Afterward, he had cried himself to sleep.
Borenson worried about him. One by one, it seemed that Fallion was losing everyone he loved. What would happen when he lost them all?
Would there be room left in his heart for anything but hate?
“We got Fallion and Jaz back,” he told Myrrima as he lay spooned against her, whispering into her ear. “But if Shadoath is still alive
…? You’re sure that she’s alive?”
“I saw her and heard her cries,” Myrrima said.
“Then what have we won?”
Myrrima wasn’t sure. “We have Valya. We could pretend to hold her hostage if Shadoath comes for us.”
“Do you have the heart for such games? Neither one of us would ever put the girl’s feet to the flames or cut off an ear.”
“Shadoath doesn’t know that,” Myrrima said.
“At least we have a head start,” Borenson said.
Some of Shadoath’s ships had burned, but others still patrolled the ocean. Captain Stalker had assured them that Shadoath would hunt them with a vengeance in short order.
He’d had his men go down to the hold and begin dumping his cargo, throwing overboard anything that they couldn’t eat. It would ruin him financially, but he was worried only for his life. Captain Stalker intended to get to Landesfallen as soon as possible. There, he’d get his wife, the last surviving member of his family, and take the northern route to some unnamed port.
As Myrrima lay in bed, she whispered to herself as much as her husband, “I wish I could have beaten her. She has too many endowments.”
“If Shadoath has endowments, then she has Dedicates,” Borenson said in a dangerous tone. “Did you see any sign of them?”
“No,” Myrrima said. She glanced pointedly toward Valya, who lay asleep on the floor. The child didn’t know where to find her mother’s Dedicates. Borenson had already asked her. But she had been able to provide a clue. Her mother’s Dedicates had always been taken east, perhaps to some hidden port in Landesfallen or to another island, in a ship called the Mercy.
In time, Myrrima hoped that the girl might provide more clues to the whereabouts of Shadoath’s Dedicates.
Borenson held Myrrima tightly. She could tell that he was worried. He had played the assassin once in his life, and now it seemed that fate was casting him in that role again. Myrrima knew that he could not bear it.
She couldn’t ask Borenson to hunt down Shadoath’s Dedicates. Nor did she believe that she could do it herself. Besides, Gaborn had not told them to fight. He must have known the dangers that they would face better than they did.
There was only one other hope.
“Do you really think that we’ll be safe once we reach Landesfallen?” Myrrima asked.
Borenson hesitated. “ ‘The ends of the Earth are not far enough,’ Gaborn said. Once we reach Landesfallen, we’ll have to go past them, far past. Deep into the inlands.”
Only the coasts of Landesfallen were well inhabited. Here and there, where the roots of the stonewood forests touched the sea, cities had been built in the trees.
Shadoath would have a hard time searching even the coast. But the inland desert? That was huge, big enough for a man to get lost in and never be found.
“We’ll be safe,” Borenson said hopefully. “We’ll be safe.”
41
THE BROKEN CHILD
Children have legendary healing abilities. I have seen a newborn babe lose a finger to a dog, and grow it back again. No matter what wound is inflicted, one can always hope for healing with a child.
— The Wizard Binnesman
In the mornings Fallion got up and walked the decks. He climbed the rigging for exercise, and enjoined the other children to follow him. His muscles grew strong, but not large. Instead they felt thin and ropy, as if in the prison he had starved enough so that even now his body fed upon his own flesh, and he wondered if he would ever regain his bulk again.
By day he’d practice harder with his weapons now, his mind returning again and again to Rhianna, to thoughts of how it had been when she died upon the beach. Perhaps she’d been killed and eaten by a strengi-saat, but Fallion feared that she’d been taken instead-carried into the trees and filled with strengi-saat babies, the way that she had been when he first found her.
He tried to act normal, to force smiles when he saw his friends or to laugh when he heard a joke. But the laughter always came too late, sounding hollow; and though his lips might turn upward, there was no smile in h
is eyes.
Borenson and Myrrima worried about him, as did Captain Stalker. But the one who could perhaps have offered the best comfort was Smoker, and he was gone.
“He’ll get over it in time,” Borenson said. “He was starved. One doesn’t heal from that easily.”
And it was true. The welts around Fallion’s wrists tried to heal, but they scabbed over and became infected. Myrrima washed the festering wounds, but they just seemed to swell the more. Often they would bleed, and four weeks later, when it seemed that the infection had finally subsided, Myrrima had to satisfy herself with the knowledge that the wounds would leave deep and everlasting scars.
But though the scars on Fallion’s wrists had begun to heal, the darkness still called to him, and he found himself longing for oblivion.
It was a few weeks after they left that Myrrima was awakened one night in the hold of the ship.
“Nooooo!” Borenson cried, his voice keening like some animal. He began to thrash about, as if enemies attacked and he was holding them at bay. “Noooo!”
Sage woke at the sound, whimpering, and Myrrima shook Borenson awake, carefully.
He’d been troubled by bad dreams for years, and she’d learned long ago that it was best to leave him asleep, let him thrash and weep until the dreams abated. But with Sage crying and other guests on the ship, she dared not let him sleep.
She shook him and called to him, dragging him from his slumber, and when he woke, he sat at the edge of the bed, trembling. His heart pounded so hard that she could hear its every beat.
“Was it the dream again?” she asked. She leaned up and kissed him on the forehead, then secretly drew a rune with her spittle.
“Yes,” he said, still sobbing, but suddenly seeming to regain control. “Only this time, I dreamed that Valya and Fallion were there.”
He had dreamed of Castle Sylvarresta, long ago. It seemed like a lifetime ago, though the dream was as vivid as ever.
Raj Ahten had taken the castle, and then abandoned it on a ruse, leaving his Dedicates behind. Upon the orders of King Mendellas Orden, Borenson was sent inside to butcher Raj Ahten’s Dedicates. All of them, any of them, including the king’s own son Gaborn, if need be.
Borenson had known that he would have to kill some folk that he had counted as friends, and it was with a heavy heart that he did his duty.
But after slaying the guards and walking into the inner courtyard, he had gone first to the kitchens and bolted the door.
There, staring up at his naked blade in terror were two deaf girls, Dedicates who had given their hearing to Raj Ahten.
It was considered a crime against nature for a lord to take endowments from a child. An adult with enough glamour and voice could beguile a child so easily. For Raj Ahten to have done it was monstrous.
But from Raj Ahten’s point of view it had to have been a seductive choice. What true man would slay a child, any child? An assassin who somehow broke into the deepest sanctuaries of a castle with the intent of slaying Dedicates would find it hard indeed to kill children.
No, a decent man would let the children live, and thus give Raj Ahten a better chance to fight back.
Thus, beyond the walls of stone and the heavy guard, Borenson found one last barrier to his assassin’s blade: his own decency.
He had managed to fight it to a standstill, but he had never conquered it. Indeed, he hoped that he never would.
“The dream was different this time,” Borenson said, his voice ragged. “The girls were there, as in life, but I saw Fallion there, and Rhianna, and Talon and Jaz…” He fell apart, sobbing helplessly. She’d seen the way he had been slashing in his dream, murdering his own children.
“I killed them,” Borenson said. “I killed them all. Just like I did in life- thousands of Dedicates, some that I called friends, some that had feasted with me at their tables. King Sylvarresta was there, grinning like an idiot, as innocent as a child, the scar from his endowments ceremony fresh upon him, and I killed him again. How many times must I kill him before he leaves me in peace?”
He broke down then and sobbed, his voice loud and troubled. He turned and buried his face in a blanket so that other guests of the inn would not hear.
Sage had already gone back to sleep.
A single candle was sputtering beside the bed, giving light to the whole room, and by it, Myrrima looked over the children, to see if they were all asleep.
She saw a pair of bright eyes peering at her, reflecting the light of the candle. It was Fallion, his eyes seeming to glow of their own accord.
Well, Myrrima realized, now he knows the truth: the man who is raising him, who has been all but a father to him, is the man who executed his grandfather.
The man whom all call a hero sobs himself to sleep at night.
I wonder what Fallion thinks of us?
She whispered to Fallion, “Don’t make the mistakes that we have made.”
Then she turned over and held Borenson. But as she did, she worried for Fallion. This was but another scar for the boy to bear.
Fallion sat on the balcony at the back of the ship, between the barrels where he and Rhianna used to hide, just hoping for a bit of peace. Valya sat beside him.
They were peering out the back of the ship, watching the sun descend toward the sea in a molten ball of pink, the clouds overhead looking like blue ashes falling from the skies.
They had not spoken for a long hour, and finally Valya put an arm around Fallion’s shoulders and just hugged him, holding him for long minutes.
“Don’t give in to it,” she begged. “Don’t give in. That’s what my mother wants you to do.”
“What?” Fallion asked.
“She told me not to give you anything-” Valya answered. “No food. No water. No comfort. She said, ‘All that I want is his despair.’”
Fallion had felt despair in the prison, wave upon wave of it. But he’d always held on to some thin hope that he would be released.
Yet suddenly, here on the ship under the bright light of day, it was as if the despair thickened, and he could not escape it.
His mind flashed back to Asgaroth’s prophecy. What had he said? “All of your noblest hopes shall become fuel to fire despair among mankind.”
It was almost as if Asgaroth wanted Fallion to become one of them.
But why despair? he wondered. Do loci feed on despair?
Fallion recalled something that Borenson had once told him. The purpose of every war was to cause despair. “We don’t fight wars for the love of battle,” he’d said. “We fight to cause despair, to force surrender, so that we can enforce our will.”
He’d gone on to explain that most conflicts seldom reached the point where one side took up arms. The costs of marshaling troops, feeding them, sending them off to foreign lands-or worse, defending your own borders and lands-was too prohibitive.
And so other means had been devised. First, diplomacy took place. Grievances were made, petitions filed.
If the problems were not rectified, then the complainant might wage economic warfare, raiding supply trains going into and out of the country, seizing merchant ships, or convincing other nations to suspend trade.
Only as a last resort, after many warnings, did one invade.
Fallion sat in the sunlight, his mind dulled from abuse, and realized that for reasons that he did not understand, Shadoath was waging war upon him.
That alone seemed to spark his rage.
I will not surrender, he told himself. She will surrender to me.
“What will I have to do to cause your mother despair?” Fallion wondered.
Valya laughed. “Just keep on doing what you’re doing?”
“What’s that?”
“Smiling.”
Fallion suddenly realized that he was smiling. Not a happy smile, but a cruel smile, the kind of smile that Borenson carried with him when he went into battle.
He’d found a reason to live: revenge.
42
GAR
ION’S PORT
Home is whatever place you feel safest.
— a saying of Rhofehavan
The Leviathan sailed near Garion’s Port on a cool spring evening almost four months to the day from when it had left the Courts of Tide. The night was cool, marbled with gauzy clouds that shaded the moon, and the brisk wind snapped the sails and lashed the water to whitecaps.
Fallion was stunned at his first sight of stonewood trees. The ship had neared Landesfallen three days ago, but remained well out to sea as it inched north, and so though he saw the gray trees from the distance, rising like menacing cliffs, he had not been able to see them closely.
They grew thick at the base of two cliffs of stark sandstone: the Ends of the Earth, and as the ship eased near the port, Fallion peered up in wonder.
The stonewoods were aptly named. Their massive roots stretched out from gray trunks into the sea, gripping the sand and stone beneath. The roots were large enough so that a fair-sized cottage could rest comfortably in a crook between them. Then they joined in a massive trunk that rose from the water, soaring perhaps two hundred feet in the air.
“There are taller trees in the world,” Borenson told the children much in the same tone that Waggit used to lecture in, “but there are none so impressively wide.”
The roots of the trees soaked up seawater, he explained, which was rich in minerals. Eventually, the minerals clogged the waterways within the trunk of the tree, and over the years, the heart of the tree became petrified, even as it continued to grow. The starving tree then broadened at the base, in an attempt to get nutrients to the upper branches. The tree could even put down new taproots when the old ones became clogged, thus becoming ever wider, and becoming ever stronger, its heart turning to stone.
The result was a tree that went beyond being hoary. Each stonewood was tormented, like something from a child’s fearful dream of trees, magnificent, its limbs twisted as if in torture, draped with gray-green beards of lichen that hung in tattered glory.
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