Sons of the Oak (33 page)

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Authors: David Farland

BOOK: Sons of the Oak
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Myrrima found that Fallion was too weak to hold on, so she set him in the saddle with Shadoath's daughter. And since Jaz still fought her and cried for Shadoath, Myrrima did not trust him to ride alone. She put him on a mount in front of her, and clung to him, hoping that in time he would regain his senses.
Now she saw that there were two spare rangits. A pregnant girl of perhaps fifteen came and mounted one. Myrrima took the other to use as a palfrey, so that the mounts could take turns getting a rest, and off they went, the rangits bouncing down the dirt road, then floating up again.
Behind them, Shadoath could be heard shrieking in mortal agony, and the sky was ablaze. Smoker's elemental seemed intent on igniting the world.
THE FURY
Our rage may give us power, even as it diminishes us.
 
—Erden Geboren
 
 
 
Fallion rode in a hot fury. Thick fog hid everything, the road ahead and the inferno behind, but Fallion could feel the flames licking the night sky behind him, and it took little to reach out with his powers and summon the heat, use the energy to renew his own depleted strength.
Numb with pain and fatigue, Fallion wasn't even sure how he'd gotten here, riding a rangit with Valya's arms holding him tightly, but for a moment he resented the pain. Each time the rangit hit the ground, the jarring threatened to dislocate his bones.
His eyes itched and his head ached, and at that moment, he wanted nothing more but to fall back into unconsciousness.
On the road ahead, he saw men rushing up out of the fog, or something like men. Golaths, their warty gray skin sagging around their breasts and bellies.
“Clear the way!” Myrrima shouted to them. “Clear the way! The prisoners have escaped.”
The golaths leapt out of her way, fearing that some dire soldier would ride them down. And after the prisoners passed, the golaths stood beside the road peering at their backs in wonder.
Let them try to stop us, Fallion thought, summoning heat from Smoker's inferno. Let them try.
“Stop that,” Myrrima said from the rangit that raced beside them.
“What?”
“Don't give in,” Myrrima whispered. “Don't give in to your rage.”
Fallion tried clinging to the saddle as the rangit bounced ahead, and his mind seemed to spin.
He'd asked Shadoath what she wanted, and she had not answered. Only now was he really certain.
She'd wanted the sleeper to awaken. She'd wanted him to summon the fire, to lose himself.
But why? What would the loci hope to gain from him?
Did they want him to join them? Or did they need something else from him?
Behind them, Smoker's inferno was raging, roaring in intensity. The fire crackled the bones of his enemies and sent clouds of smoke spewing into the heavens.
Smoker had given himself to the flames so that Fallion would not have to.
I'm a fool, Fallion thought in dismay, and he tried to let go of his rage. He sagged against the rangit, struggling for the moment to remain a child.
 
 
 
When the riders reached the mountain pass, they came up out of the fog and the rangits found themselves on a clear road, hopping by starlight.
In the valley behind them, the palace was aflame and Smoker's elemental was dutifully attacking the barracks, blasting row upon row of tents, sending out fingers of flames that seemed to have an intelligence all their own, pure malevolence bent on destruction.
The whole valley seethed like a hornet's nest.
Myrrima could hardly believe that a single wizard could cause so much annihilation.
At the edge of the woods, she got off her mount and drew a rune in the dirt, one that would lock the valley below in fog for a week.
Then she lit a torch and they were off again. She worried about patrols in the woods, even though she and Smoker had done their best to take care of that.
So they raced for hours under the starlight. They picked up some strengi-saats as they rode. The great beasts snarled in the woods, and floated behind them like shadows, leaping from tree to tree.
Myrrima shivered and kept the children close. Jaz quit fighting her after a while, and seemed to realize who she was, and that she was taking him to safety. He clung to her and wept.
“I'm sorry,” Jaz said over and over again.
“You've no need to be sorry,” Myrrima said.
“I got Smoker killed. Shadoath was so beautiful. I wanted to be with her.”
“Don't feel bad,” Valya told Jaz in a soothing tone. “I've seen grown men give themselves to her that way, thanking her even as she twisted a blade into their hearts. Beauty was just another of her weapons.”
Myrrima worried at that, wondering what kinds of things Valya might have seen.
After two hours, a half-moon rose, adding a wan tone of silver to the night.
With a clear road, the rangits picked up speed, and the faster they hopped, the less jarring the ride became.
They neared town just an hour before dawn.
Fallion seemed to sleep most of the way, until they reached the docks, where Captain Stalker and some of his men were waiting with a ship's boat.
They transferred the children into the boat, and Stalker peered up the road.
“Smoker comin'?” he asked, his voice tinged with worry.
“I'm afraid not,” Myrrima said. “His elemental burnt down the palace and set flames to at least half the camp.”
“Ah, he always was one of the good ones,” Stalker said. “Don't know how I'll ever replace him.”
A good flameweaver, Myrrima thought. She'd never met one that she would have called
good
before, but now, sadly, she realized that Stalker's assessment was right.
I'll never meet his equal again, she told herself.
They rowed out to the
Leviathan,
and carried the children aboard. Myrrima held Fallion on the deck, while one of Stalker's men ran to fetch some water. Fallion's forehead was burning up.
Some of the crew began pulling anchor, while others rushed about unfurling masts, ready to make way.
Stalker peered at the other ships in the harbor darkly. Four ships. Shadoath's ships. He dared not leave them, lest they give chase.
“Fire when ready,” Stalker said, and his men went to the catapults, put torches to iron shot wrapped in pitch, and sent the balls arcing out into the night. The nearest two ships each took a ball, and soon Myrrima could see crewmen racing to put out small fires.
The ships were only manned by a skeleton crew, two or three men aboard each.
“That ought to keep 'em busy,” Stalker said, grinning.
The crewman brought Fallion a ladle filled with fresh water, and he raised his head to drink. For a moment he peered at the ships out on the wine-dark water, with their little flames.
Myrrima felt the heat in him, a fever that suddenly felt explosive. Then it raced out in an invisible ball that could be felt but not seen, and struck out over the water.
The fires surged, went twisting up the mastheads and washing over the decks. A ball of flame leapt from ship to ship; in seconds all four pirate ships had become an inferno. Their crewmen shouted in fear and leapt into the sea.
Stalker peered at the conflagration in astonishment.
Fallion smiled. He could hear the flames sputtering, the voice of his master, gleefully hissing in appreciation.
He had used his powers, and given glory to Fire.
Not until Fallion was sure that his fires would do their job did he take a drink.
A MOTHER'S VENGEANCE
Even a wolf bitch loves her pups.
 
—a saying from Internook
 
 
 
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.”

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