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Authors: David Farland

BOOK: Sons of the Oak
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THE NIGHTMARE RETURNS
We cannot always run away from our problems, for too often they follow.
 
—Hearthmaster Vanyard, from the Room of Dreams
 
 
 
Five years passed before Shadoath heard the words “We have found him.”
The spring that Fallion had gone missing, she'd sent her agents through every port in Landesfallen, searching for the boy. Bribes were offered, threats were made. After a few months without any progress, innkeepers went missing and wound up in her torture chambers.
The Borenson family had disappeared, and apparently never made it to any port.
Yet Captain Stalker had found his way home, Shadoath knew. His wife, in the village of Seven Trees Standing, disappeared, and six months later Shadoath got word that the remains of the
Leviathan
were crashed upon some rocks on the shores of Toom. The captain and all hands were reported dead.
Shadoath had changed the focus of her search then, sending men to the north countries of Rofehavan. She imagined that the Borensons had decided to flee back home to safety.
He might be in Mystarria, she reasoned, or even off in his mother's old haunts in Heredon.
Thus, the trail grew cold, and in time Shadoath turned her thoughts to other things. Her armies began making raids into the southlands of Inkarra, slaughtering villages and bringing back gold and blood metal. Her assassins struck down powerful leaders in far places.
She took endowments of stamina, sight, and glamour. In time, she smoothed the scars from her body. Though her right eye remained forever blind, with enough endowments of stamina and sight, she regained vision in her left.
She sent out an army of minstrels to sing new songs, powerful songs that called for change, songs that reviled decent lords, accusing them of tyranny, while true tyrants were praised within their own borders as men of great strength and vision.
And the peasants responded.
Chaos washed across the world, and in a dozen countries revolutions arose. In Orwynne, good men refused to serve as Dedicates to their young king, suspecting that he was a tyrant. He responded by outlawing all minstrels—a group that by ancient law could not be silenced—and thus in the minds of many proved that he was a tyrant indeed. When the Knights Equitable slaughtered his Dedicates, and then put him to the gallows, only his wife and children protested.
In the northlands of Internook, folk who had always been too poor to afford forcibles heard songs that decried the “tyranny of the Runelords,” and were taught to long for a day when none existed. It was no surprise when the peasants revolted, slaughtering the few Dedicates that lived within Internook's borders.
The folk of Alnick soon tried to follow in their footsteps, marching upon the castle. There Queen Rand threw herself from the battlements, ending her life so that she might free her Dedicates, sparing them from murder.
The call for revolution spread, even as the blood-metal mines in Kartish gave out.
The world grew ripe for destruction, and as it did, Shadoath prepared. Her army of strengi-saats had multiplied and grown fat on the carrion left in the wake of her small wars in Inkarra.
Shadoath had almost forgotten Fallion. But last fall she had been visiting a small port in the north of Mystarria, and as she walked down the busy streets, studying the work of local weapon-smiths, she spotted a sailor that she recognized.
She'd only seen him once, for a few seconds, yet with a dozen endowments of wit, Shadoath remembered his face vividly. He had been just another sailor in the crowd on the night when Shadoath had fought Myrrima. He was supposed to have been dead, washed up on the rocks of Toom.
She took him then, and a few days under the hot tongs loosened his tongue.
Fallion had gone ashore near Garion's Port.
She sent her agents out again, had them search up the Hacker River with its many tributaries, and told them what to look for.
She knew Fallion better than he knew himself. She'd fought him time and again, over many lifetimes.
“Look for a lad well versed with a blade, one who has made a reputation for himself. He will be quiet and unassuming, driven and as sharp as a knife, but well liked by others.”
And so now one of her scouts had returned, a minstrel in green-and-yellow-striped pants with a shirt of purple and a red vest. He looked like a fool but sang like a sweet lark, plucking his lute as he danced around.
“I found him. I found him. And for a fortune I'll tell you whe-ere,” the minstrel sang, doing a jig around the throne, glee shining in his eyes.
Shadoath grinned. “Fallion?”
The minstrel nodded secretively.
She reached down to her belt, threw her whole purse full of gold onto the floor. “Where?”
“He's a captain among the Gwardeen, and goes by the last name of Humble. For three years he has led graak riders at the Citadel of the Infernal Wastes, and only recently has he been transferred to the Gwardeen Wood, just north of Garion's Port.”
“A captain—so young?” she wondered. Instinctively she knew that it was true. Young, ambitious, well liked.
The name “Fallion” was common in Landesfallen, and the boy had apparently kept it, changing only his last name.
The Gwardeen were notoriously closed and secretive, and their graak outposts were often difficult to reach. The Citadel of the Infernal Wastes was a fortress only eighty miles east of Garion's Port. But it was high in the mountains, some said “impossible” to reach by foot.
Shadoath tried to imagine the life that he had been living. Fallion would have spent years flying missions over the inland deserts on his graak, making certain that the toth had not returned. He might even have spent the midsummer and winter months down in their ancient tunnels.
No wonder she had not found him.
The minstrel plucked his lute, as if begging attention, and then continued. “He has a brother serving under him: a boy named Draken. And there is an older woman that he visits in Garion's Port—petite and beautiful,
with raven hair.” The minstrel strummed a few notes to an ancient love ballad.
Valya.
Shadoath smiled.
The minstrel strummed and sang, “How will we catch this bird? How will we clip its wings? For with only a word, other larks will warning bring.”
Obviously he had been thinking. The Gwardeen kept watch at all times, and Fallion would be ready to fly away at a moment's notice.
“I don't have to find him,” Shadoath said with a smile. “He is a Gwardeen, sworn to protect Landesfallen. I shall make him come to me.”
HEIR OF THE OAK
In times of trouble, the world always looks for a hero to save it. Be careful that you don't heed their call.
 
—Sir Borenson, advice given to Fallion
 
 
 
On a lazy summer afternoon at a tiny inn called the Sea Perch, built high among the branches of the stonewoods, Fallion sat listening to a minstrel sing.
“Where, oh, where is the Heir to the Oak,
Strong of heart and fair of face?
His people mourn, and their hearts are broke,
They say he dwells in some far-off place.
 
In Heredon's wood, on Mystarria's seas,
one can hear the ravens cry.
Their calls disrupt the dreams of peace
That in tender hearts of children lie.
 
Where, oh, where is the Heir to the Oak?
Exiled to some fairer realm?
Does he follow his father's roads?
Calling a field his fort, the forest home?
 
Where, oh, where is the Heir to the Oak?
‘Lost,' some say, to light and life.
But faithful hearts still hold this hope:
His return will herald an end to strife.”
The song struck Fallion to the marrow. It wasn't just the quality of the singer's voice. Borenson had warned Fallion that the people would cry for his return.
Not yet, Fallion thought. I'm not ready yet. Do they really want me to come so soon?
Fallion had hoped to wait until he was sixteen. On his sixteenth birthday, it was customary to crown a prince as king.
But Fallion doubted that there would be anyone to crown him by the time he returned home. By all accounts, Chancellor Westhaven had tried his best to hold Mystarria together. But the Brat of Beldinook had torn it from his hands, and then had begun a reign of horror over its people, “punishing” them for the death of her father at Gaborn's hands, persecuting any who dared admit that the Earth King may have been right in executing him.
There were tales of starvation in Mystarria, of forlorn crowds rioting at the Courts of Tide.
In Fallion's mind, such “nobles” were waging wars that only weakened themselves and destroyed the very people they hoped to govern.
The song brought a little applause. Few people were in the inn at this time of the day. Fallion tossed a small coin to the minstrel.
“Thank you, sirrah,” the minstrel said.
The man was fresh off a ship from Rofehavan, and Fallion hoped for more news from him.
“Are all the songs that you sing so forlorn?” Fallion asked.
“It has been a rough winter,” the minstrel said. “The folks in Heredon liked it well enough.”
“How fares Heredon?” Fallion asked, for it was a place close to his heart.
“Not well,” the minstrel said. He was a small man, well proportioned, with a gruff voice. “The Warlords of Internook seized it two years back, you know, and the peasants there all remember a time when they were ruled by a less-cruel hand. Many a tongue was singing that song last summer at the fair, and so in retribution, the lords at Castle Sylvarresta set fire to wheat fields. They say that the sky was so full of smoke, that in Crowthen it became as dark as night.”
“It seems to me that any lord who made war against his own peasants would only weaken himself.”
“Aye,” the minstrel said. “Still the people croon for the return of their
king. It's that Earth Warden Binnesman that put them up to it. He told them that ‘the stones' woke him at night, troubling him, calling for the new king. Lord Hagarth would have sent the old wizard swinging from the gallows, but the Earth Warden ran off into the Dunnwood, where it is said that he lives among the great boars, gnawing wild acorns.”
Fallion wondered at that. Binnesman had anointed his father to be the Earth King. Fallion had never met the man, at least not since he was very small, but he knew that Binnesman was a wizard of great power.
“Do those beyond the borders of Heredon share the hope for a new king?” Fallion asked.
The minstrel smiled. “About half and half, I'd say. Some hope that the Earth King will return from the dead, or that his son will reign in his stead. But there's a good many that never want to see a Runelord sit a throne again. ‘Death to all Dedicates' is the call of the day.”
“What would we do without Runelords?” Fallion asked. “What if the reavers were to attack again, or the toth?”
“Our people have more to fear from evil leaders than they ever have from outside forces,” the minstrel said. “There's some that whisper that it should not be so. It's said that long ago, the Wizard Sendavian and Daylan of the Black Hammer stole the knowledge of rune-making from the Bright Ones of the netherworld. They took it, but such knowledge was not meant for man. Only the truest, the noblest among the Bright Ones, were permitted to bear such runes, and no man is
that
good.”
Fallion had heard this rumor before, too, not six months back. Yet Shadoath had come from the netherworld, and she bore such runes.
The door to the inn opened, and outside stood a young girl, nine years of age, with skin as pale as milk. Her silver hair fell to her shoulders. She wore the gray robe of a graak rider, and held under her arms a pair of baskets of fruit and bread that she had bought at the local vendors. She was one of Fallion's troops. It was time to head home.
Fallion nodded at a young maiden with raven hair who was scrubbing tables, getting ready for the nightly crowd. Valya had been living in town now for nearly three months.
She smiled back, went to the hearth, and began to set the fire. Fallion felt uncomfortable. He had seldom practiced his skills as a flameweaver through the years, yet month by month, the call of the flames grew stronger.
Valya was a sister to him now, but a sister that he hardly knew. Soon after they landed, Borenson and Myrrima moved to some hovel up on Jackal Creek, an area so sparsely inhabited that it was easy for the family to get lost, but hard to make a living. The farm was too poor to support much of a family, so Fallion had volunteered to join the Gwardeen. Draken joined a few months later.
Shortly afterward, Jaz had gone to work for Beastmaster Thorin, an elderly gentleman who raised exotic animals.
Now Valya had moved here, coming to the coast, waiting for a ship that would carry her far, far away.
Fallion had seen his family rarely in the past few years, only on winter holidays.
So Fallion went outside where three other children had gathered with today's purchases, and stretched his arms, enjoying the sweet cinnamon scent of stonewood trees. The evening light was turning golden as the sun plunged into the sea.
The boles of the stonewood were gray, streaked with brown, like petrified rock. Only the upper branches really seemed to be alive. The elegant limbs were more of a dark cherry in color, hung with mosses and lichens and flowering vines. Epiphytes grew on their bark and put out brilliant crimson blossoms that smelled faintly like ripe peaches. As the evening sea wind stirred the leaves, the air filled with pollen, and then in the slanted sunlight that broke through the boughs the vibrant-colored day-bats flitted from flower to flower.
It was a scene that was as eerie to Fallion as it was beautiful.
“Come,” he said. So they trundled across a catwalk that spanned through old stonewood trees. The bridge was made of gold-colored planks that seemed to be hundreds of years old. In places it was rickety and worn, and the handrails looked as if they'd fall off. But always the bridge was in at least a usable state of repair.
Fallion walked slowly, bearing the children's stores of food from time to time so that they could rest.
He was the oldest and largest of the graak riders, and bore the title of Captain. But he was more than a captain to these children, he knew. Many of them were orphans, and they looked up to him as something of a father.
Below them they could hear choruses of peeping frogs and the squeals of wild boars.
Fallion was deep in thought, wondering about the plight of his people—not just the children of the Gwardeen, but the people that he should rightfully be leading, the people of Heredon and Mystarria.
They walked for half a mile before they could glimpse the Gwardeen Wood, which could be seen ahead as a knot of stonewood trees on a peninsula that jutted out into the sea.
There, among the trees, stood an ancient fortress, a high tower used as a graakerie.
These were all sea graaks, white in color, the kind with the widest wingspan. They could fly from island to island out here in the Mariners, and if a storm came, they would sometimes ride its front for hundreds of miles inland.
The group was rounding the bay, still a mile from the Gwardeen Wood, when trouble struck.
Fallion heard a buzzing noise just overhead, almost a loud clacking, and a giant dragonfly, as long as a child's arm, flew past. In the shadows it had been invisible, but then it lunged into a slant of sunlight, and Fallion saw it—a vibrant green with mottled yellow on the carapace, the color of forest leaves in the sun.
It buzzed into the air and grabbed a cinnamon-colored day-bat that was no larger than a sparrow; the day-bat screeched in terror.
As Fallion's eyes followed the creature, he became aware of the dim clanging of bells. A deep-pitched warhorn sounded, as if the very earth groaned in pain.
The call was almost too distant for him to discern. He barely picked it up, buffered as it was by the trees and the sounds of the sea.
But instantly he knew: Garion's Port was under attack.
When he held his breath, he could discern distant cries. Not all of the cries were human. Some were the deep tones of golaths.
Fallion had passed the last house trees nearly half a mile back. From here forward, there was nothing but the catwalk.
“Run,” Fallion told the children. “Run to the outpost and don't look back.”
The children all peered up at him with wide eyes. “What's wrong?” the youngest girl asked.
“Shadoath is coming,” Fallion hazarded.
So the children ran.
Fallion followed at the rear, where a young boy named Hador tried in vain to keep up with the older children.
For several minutes, no one pursued.
Fallion heard footsteps slapping behind and turned to see Valya racing toward them for all that she was worth.
Fallion sent the little ones ahead. They were only half a mile from the fort when he caught sight of the first of the golaths. The gray-skinned creatures came rushing from the city on their knuckles, thumping along the catwalk, curved reaping hooks and strange clubs in their hands.
The children heard their grunts, so they screamed and redoubled their pace. A pair of young Gwardeen skyriders came flying along on graaks, their course bringing them near the catwalk. Fallion could see fear on their faces.
“Pirates!” one of them shouted needlessly. “Pirates are coming. There's a worldship just off the coast!”
A worldship? Fallion wondered. Eight hundred years past, Fallion the Bold had created huge rafts to bear his army across the oceans to fight the toth. Those strange rafts had been dubbed worldships. But none of their kind had been seen in centuries.
Now he recalled the denuded forests on Syndyllian, and he realized what Shadoath had been up to. She had been building vessels to carry armies to Mystarria.
Valya reached him, and with her longer legs could well have raced ahead. Instead she pulled even with him.
He could hear the golaths coming, glanced back to see a dozen of them only a couple hundred yards back.
The Ends of the Earth are not far enough.
“Go,” Fallion told her. “Get on a graak and head inland to safety. The Gwardeen can protect you.”
“What about you?” Valya asked.
“I'll hold them back.”
Valya stood there a moment, obviously fighting her desire. She didn't want him to stand alone.
“You go,” Valya said. “You're the one Shadoath is after. If she gets you now, all of our efforts will have been wasted!”
Fallion knew that she was right, but he wasn't prepared to let Valya die in his place.
 
 
 
Fallion peered up the catwalk the last quarter of a mile. Ahead he could see the graakerie, huge white graaks nesting in trees devoid of leaves. Here, even the trees were white, stained by guano.
A high stone wall surrounded the Gwardeen Wood itself. The only easy way into the fort was over the catwalk.
As the children raced ahead, Fallion saw a young man run out from a small wooden gate, Denorra. He was watching them, waiting. He had a hatchet in hand and looked as if he'd cut the rope that held the last little span of bridge.

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