Sons of the Oak

Aboard the Leviathan the mainmast and mizzenmast were now firmly ensconced, and all of the rigging had been repaired. New sails replaced those that had been lost.

The Leviathan was ready to sail. Only one thing remained…

A man named Felandar stood guard at the gates to the outer wall of Castle Shadoath. Thick fog had gathered for the night, and even the brightest torches did not let him see a dozen feet.

It didn’t matter. The island was dead on nights like these. Even the golaths went into hiding. The strengi-saats were supposed to confine themselves to the jungles, but when a fog came thick, the monsters often prowled the edge of camp. Indeed, on such nights, a score of golaths might well be dragged from their beds, kicking and screaming.

So in the dead of night Felandar relaxed, a pair of torches at his back to keep the monsters at bay.

He almost didn’t see the woman. He had glanced to his left, along the castle wall, and caught a movement from the corner of his eye.

Suddenly she came striding toward him as if she’d coalesced from the mist, a beautiful woman with silky black hair, eyes like dark pools, a stunning figure, and a gait that made her seem to flow rather than walk.

Instinctively he smiled, eager to make her acquaintance. She smiled apologetically, and with blinding speed struck him under the chin.

At first, he thought that she had slapped him, until he realized that cold metal had lodged in his throat.

She twisted the blade, and he heard gristle crackling along his vertebrae.

As Felandar gasped for breath, he grabbed the wrist of her knife hand, trying to stop her.

Myrrima twisted the blade again, and Felandar was no more.

Amid a cloud of thickening fog, Myrrima stalked onto the grounds of Castle Shadoath. Smoker came pacing behind, the coals in his pipe burning brightly.

The locals would not be able to see through her fog, yet Myrrima’s eyes pierced it easily enough. She was surprised at what she saw. It was well past midnight, and the grounds were dead. No guards patrolled. A single strengisaat crouched atop the west tower, seemingly lost in the fog.

Apparently, Shadoath felt that her monsters were guard enough. Certainly Myrrima would not have felt safe walking along those walls at night all alone.

There were three main buildings in the compound. Ahead, Myrrima knew from her previous visit, was the palace itself. She doubted that the dungeons would be there. To the left there appeared to be barracks for the palace retainers, though Myrrima could not be certain. To the right was another building, monolithic and low to the ground, lacking windows. It would be dank inside, and dark. Several guards huddled outside the front door, beside a small fire.

She raced to the guards and found as she neared that two of them were dead asleep. The others were playing dice.

These were Bright Ones that Myrrima was attacking, men whose skills and strength were the stuff of legend.

But they’d never done battle with a Runelord that had four endowments of metabolism. She had the advantage of superhuman speed.

She nailed the first one before he was even aware of her, her blade plunging into the back of his neck.

The other guard grunted and tried rising to his feet. He grabbed for his blade. His speed surprised her, and she recognized that he had endowments to match her own. A bright blade sprung from the scabbard at his back. It glowed like living fire and struck fear in the pit of Myrrima’s stomach.

Nice sword, she thought.

He took a wicked swing, and Myrrima dodged beneath it, felt the blade swish perilously close to her scalp.

Her dagger drove into his groin.

He leapt back, blood gushing from his leg, and tried to shout for help, but Myrrima lunged and plunged her blade up under his ribs, into his heart.

I really like your armor, too, she thought. But it didn’t do you much good, did it?

One sleeping guard startled awake as the dying man fell on him. Myrrima ended his life without a cry.

The last guard died in his sleep, blissfully unaware of the attack.

Myrrima sheathed the glowing sword, hiding its light. She tried the heavy door, found it locked. She stooped over the dead guards, searching for a key. Smoker came up and found it, turned the outside lock.

Myrrima went in, carefully, watching for more guards. But inside she found none.

Myrrima felt a thrill of surprise. She had expected more resistance. But then, they were on a small island in the middle of nowhere, and with an army outside. The dungeon was as secure as it needed to be.

She hurried down the hall, into the dark. The dungeon smelled of carrion and human filth. The coals in Smoker’s pipe suddenly blazed, giving Myrrima the only light that she needed. Myrrima still had endowments of sight, and her eyes were as keen as a cat’s.

She passed two cells, found that they were empty, but discovered an old man in the third. She studied him for a long moment before she realized that he was not old at all; he was a young man, mummified and rotting.

She almost dared not look into any other cell until she reached Fallion’s. What she found there horrified her.

Fallion hung from the wall, blood running from his wrists, unconscious, possibly dead.

They unlocked the door to his cell, and Myrrima lifted Fallion in order to take the weight off of his swollen wrists. As Smoker fumbled with the keys, Myrrima studied the boy to see if he was still breathing.

He was alive, barely. He smelled of stale urine, feces, blood, and sour sweat. His cheek, resting on her shoulder, burned with fever.

Smoker got the manacles unlocked, and Myrrima was about to carry Fallion outside when he moaned.

“Can’t go,” he said. “Not yet. Must free Jaz. In the palace.”

Myrrima had expected to find Jaz in a cell.

“He’s in the palace?” Myrrima asked.

Fallion nodded. “Shadoath took him.”

Myrrima trembled. She wasn’t strong enough to face Shadoath. But if Jaz was inside the palace, she’d have to go for him.

“Okay,” she whispered. “I’ll get him. I want you and Smoker to leave. We have rangits tied up outside the gates. You’ll need to get as far away as you can, as fast as you can.”

Fallion opened his eyes, peered at her through dark slits. His lips were swollen and crusted with blood. “What about the others?”

“What others?” Myrrima asked. Fallion nodded down the hallway.

He wanted her to free the other prisoners.

To what end? she wondered. The night was dark; they’d have to sneak past an army. Once they managed that, the woods were full of strengi-saats. What would she be giving these people?

Hope, she realized. A slim chance. But it was better than none.

Smoker rushed out and began checking cells. Myrrima heard the rattle of keys, the snick of locks, the sound of people groaning and weeping in relief.

Myrrima lay Fallion down; he sprawled on the floor, too weak even to crawl.

Her heart was racing. Shadoath was a powerful Runelord, with endowments of hearing and sight and smell. It would be almost impossible to enter her home in the middle of the night without being detected.

And she would most certainly be awake. Her endowments of brawn and stamina would make it so that she needed no sleep.

Dare I risk this, Myrrima wondered, even for Jaz? He was not the heir apparent, and as far as children went, he didn’t show the maturity, insight, or even the strength of Fallion. In short, she expected little from him in this life. And if she had to choose to sacrifice one of the boys, she’d certainly have chosen to sacrifice Jaz.

But she couldn’t just leave him.

Myrrima still had endowments of her own. She’d taken endowments of hearing and sight years ago, and she had those. And she had four endowments of metabolism, and still had the brawn of two strong men.

Compared to a commoner, she was a ferocious warrior.

But Shadoath would be far more powerful.

Gathering her resolve, she wiped her blade, went out into the night, and headed for the palace.

She found the main gate barred from the inside.

She walked around the eastern wall to the back and found some stairs that led toward some upper apartments. Large apartments, she decided, too large for servants. One apartment was grand, and stood on columns that formed a portico. This would be Shadoath’s apartment. But there were smaller rooms on the other side-children’s apartments.

Myrrima had seen Shadoath’s son and daughter. They’d be sleeping up there. Would Jaz be sleeping with them?

Myrrima crept up the steps, knowing that a Runelord of Shadoath’s powers would hear the tiniest scuff of a shoe or rustle of cloth.

She gingerly pulled at the door. It too was barred from the inside.

Softly, she made her way back downstairs.

The servant’s quarters. That would be the only way that she might get in.

Sneaking along the outer wall, she came to a tiny room outside the kitchens, and found a window open, where some cook or maid sought to get a little fresh air. The window was in an apartment above the bakery, a room that would be hot here in this clime. Shadoath would have been outraged to see such a breach in security.

It was fourteen feet up to the window. Too far to jump.

Myrrima took off her boots and began to climb, her fingers and toes seeking purchase in the tiny cracks between the stone blocks of the building.

She controlled her breathing so that she did not pant, held her mouth so that she did not grunt. Even when she slid back a bit, breaking nails, she did not cry out.

In a few moments, she reached up over the windowsill and pulled herself inside.

A smelly baker lay on a dirty mattress with his wife and three kids. He snored so loudly that he wouldn’t have heard Myrrima if she’d started to dance.

She made her way across the room, carefully stepping over the little ones as if they were her own.

She thought about the guards that she had killed.

They may have wives and families, like my own, she told herself. I’ll have to be careful with them.

But she knew her duty.

When she opened the apartment door and found a corridor outside, with another guard-a powerful man, strong and handsome-she didn’t hesitate to rush in and stab him hard in the throat.

The man struggled fiercely as he died, reaching for his own blade, kicking at her. She wrestled him-until she stuck her blade in his throat once again, breaking his neck, and then laid him gently on the floor.

She waited for long moments, afraid that the sound of the struggle would have alerted Shadoath.

When she was certain that no one had heard, she followed the corridor upstairs to the royal apartments.

She moved as silently through the hallways as an apparition.

Just outside the queen’s quarters, she heard another guard pacing the floor. She ducked into an alcove as he walked downstairs, peering this way and that.

If he turned to his right, he’d stumble over the body of his dead comrade.

Myrrima’s heart hammered, and she silently prayed that he would turn to the left.

She studied the layout. There were only three doors-the queen’s apartment to her left, and the children’s rooms.

Myrrima went to the nearest of the children’s doors, tried the lock. It came open, the door creaking slightly. She stood for a long moment, fearing that Shadoath would have heard, that she’d come rushing out from her own room.

She stepped inside.

The apartment was large, with more than one room. A privy took up one small room, and down a short hallway, Myrrima found a bed.

The canopy above the bed was covered in golden samite, which glittered like gems in the wan light of the moon, which shone through a tiny window.

Lying in the bed was Shadoath’s daughter, the dark-haired girl that Myrrima had seen two days earlier, when she’d come to ransom the princes.

A third room beckoned around a corner. Myrrima quietly walked toward it, a loose board creaking under her weight, and peered in. It was only a wardrobe, filled with clothing and mirrors.

Myrrima heard a startled gasp, the rustling of clothing, and turned to see the girl peering at her, face pale from terror.

Myrrima flung herself across the room, dagger drawn, prepared to kill the girl. She threw one hand over the girl’s mouth, grabbed at her throat with the other, thinking to snap her neck.

But the girl didn’t squirm, didn’t fight. She just held her finger up, as if warning Myrrima to be quiet.

Taking the girl’s cue, Myrrima cautiously pulled her hand away. She could see the track of tears on the girl’s cheeks.

“Are you here for Fallion and Jaz?” she whispered so softly that she could almost not be heard.

Myrrima nodded.

“Take me with you?” she asked, even softer.

Myrrima was puzzled.

The girl hesitated. “Fallion said that he could save me. Will you save me?”

Save her from what? Myrrima wondered. But instinctively she knew: Shadoath. Even a dull child knows when her mother is evil.

Again, Myrrima nodded.

“Follow me,” the girl whispered.

Quietly, she crawled out of bed, wearing only her night clothes. She did not stop to grab a cloak or shoes. She went straight to the door and opened it, peered into the hallway, and led Myrrima back down two flights of stairs toward the kitchens.

At the bottom of the stairs, a single candle gave light.

Valya hesitated a moment, peering about as if searching for the guard, then headed down a hallway.

They neared the buttery, and Myrrima heard a big man sniffing and moving about, apparently raiding the leftovers from dinner. It was the missing guard. They crept past the buttery, went down two doors, and the girl stepped into a poorly lit room.

It was the kitchen. There, lying before the hearth where the only light came from dying coals, Jaz lay curled up in a large basket.

He’s sleeping on the kitchen floor like a dog, Myrrima realized to her dismay.

She rushed to him, peered down. He had not been taken from the prison long ago, she decided by the smell. He hadn’t even been bathed. He smelled of his own sweat and urine and feces.

But it seemed that he’d been fed. He was fast asleep, and a salve had been put on the wounds at his wrists, where the manacles had cut him.

“This way,” the girl whispered, and headed out a back door, quietly lifting the iron bar that locked it.

Myrrima gently picked up Jaz and carried him out in the back, where the moonlight shone down into a small herb garden.

The girl led Myrrima down a cobblestone path, under an archway, and Myrrima found herself on the west side of the palace.

She’d made it out alive!

Across the green, Myrrima saw Smoker leading two dozen souls out of the prison, many of them maimed. There was a woman with no hands, only bloody bandages. An old man scarred by hot tongs. A golath that limped about on one foot.

All of the women had bloated wombs, as if they were pregnant, and many of them looked pale and wounded; with mounting horror Myrrima realized that they carried strengi-saat young in them.

Smoker had Fallion in his arms, and he was leading his band of refugees out toward the front gate.

“This way,” the girl whispered at Myrrima’s back, and went racing for the front gates.

Myrrima followed in the dark, bearing Jaz.

Smoker and the others came after. As the prisoners exited, some could not stifle their sobs of relief or tears of joy.

Myrrima had to turn and beg them, “Quiet!”

But fifty feet scuffling over cobblestones were not quiet. One prisoner, wounded and weak, fell with a splat; someone gave a tiny shriek.

Myrrima peered about, growing more worried by the moment. No alarm had sounded.

It couldn’t last.

They raced down to the city gates. The city wall was set atop an earthen mound; a tunnel ran beneath the mound, through the wall. There stood the iron gates.

Jaz stirred in Myrrima’s arms, moaning just a bit, and he nuzzled against her shoulder, lovingly.

“Quiet, sweet one,” Myrrima whispered. “We’re almost free.”

In the fog and wan moonlight, he suddenly came awake. He peered up at Myrrima, as if he’d expected someone else, and his whole body went taut as he woke from a sweet dream into a nightmare. He peered over Myrrima’s back at the cripples and maimed prisoners.

“It’s all right,” Myrrima whispered as she saw his agitation. “We’re almost free.”

But Jaz peered at her as if she had slapped him, and screamed in his loudest voice, “Help! Shadoath, help me!”

Myrrima drew a hand over his mouth, but it was too late. The cry was out.

In shock, she realized that Jaz wanted to stay with Shadoath.

From somewhere on the palace grounds, Myrrima heard an echoing report, “Murder! Murder in the palace!”

She heard the clank of steel boots, the ringing sounds of chain mail, the palace doors being thrown open.

Cries and screams rose from the prisoners, and they began to stampede. One front-runner was the golath with the amputated foot. It hopped about painfully. Someone pushed it from behind, and half a dozen people fell.

Myrrima urged Shadoath’s daughter to hurry. “We’ve got to get out of here. We’ve got rangits tied to a tree just down the road. Only a little ways.”

But a warhorn sounded up by the palace, deep and brutish, like the grunt of some great beast. In a moment the whole camp would rise up, hundreds of thousands of soldiers.

And now they had a fifth rider to slow them, Shadoath’s daughter. Myrrima hadn’t planned on that. She hadn’t stolen enough rangits.

“Hurry!” Myrrima said, even as Jaz began to fight, trying to get out of her arms, get back to the palace.

The palace doors flew open, and Shadoath stood there on the porch, peering out into the fog, limned by the light. She held a wicked sword with a wavy blade.

A pair of guards rushed out behind her.

The old flameweaver peered at Myrrima, eyes glowing ominously, as if embers had lodged in them, and said softly, “You go. I guard your back.”

Smoker saw the danger. He knew that the prisoners would never get free unless he bought them some time.

“Are you sure?” Myrrima said, backing away. She’d seen flameweavers in battle, and she did not want to get too close.

Smoker nodded.

He had been carrying Fallion, but now he carefully handed the boy to one of the prisoners, leaving his charge with another, and stood at the mouth of the tunnel with his pipe glowing in his hand. He raised it overhead and the contents of the bowl burst into flame. He whirled the pipe in a circle, creating a glowing afterimage, a circle of light, and as he did, the prisoners raced past him, pushing, bumping.

Shadoath heard the sounds of scuffing feet and came rushing toward them, running at perhaps six times the speed of a normal mortal, guards sprinting at her back.

Myrrima carried Jaz in her arms, still struggling, and raced down through the tunnel. At the far end, she turned and glanced back.

Smoker stood in the tunnel, waving his pipe in the air, as Shadoath charged toward him.

He raised a dagger and lunged forward a step to do battle.

Shadoath raced toward the tunnel. An old man with skin as white as a sheet barred her way. He had a long-stemmed pipe in his hand, and he swung it slowly in a great arc as he peered into the fog and darkness. He held a long knife in his off-hand. From his stance, she could see that he was no warrior.

She lunged out of the darkness with six times the speed of a normal human, swinging her sword so fast that it blurred. She felt the blade catch slightly as it slid through his guts and met his backbone, but with her great strength, Shadoath merely forced the blade on past.

For half an instant she slowed, wanting to savor the terror in his expression as he realized that he was going to die.

But instead, he merely grabbed for her with one hand, clutching her cloak for all that he was worth, and instead of fear or horror or surprise, she looked in his face and saw… a victorious smile.

She expected to be washed in his blood. Instead, a shower of flames roiled out of the wound, scorching her, boiling her flesh instantly, sending a scent of charred flesh and cooking meat into the air, searing her eyes and face.

Shadoath wailed and threw up her hands for protection as burning flames washed over her. She whirled, trying to run, but the old man grabbed at her, as if to hold her in death’s embrace.

She pulled away, hot pain embroiling her, as a powerful elemental of flame began to rise from the old man’s corpse. It sent fingers of fire rippling through the air; one slammed into her back.

Her robes were aflame!

The guards that had been racing toward her stopped, recognizing the danger. They turned to run, even as fiery arms seared them, boiling their guts instantly.

Groaning in agony, Shadoath lunged away, weaving this way and that in an attempt to elude the elemental’s attacks. Lances of fire whipped past her shoulder.

She made the palace doors and raced inside, screaming in pain, and hurried out the back door, placing the palace between her and her attacker.

Her right eye was blind. Her left eye seemed cloudy. She could barely see. She ran to her private garden where a reflecting pool lay, and threw herself in.

Myrrima had seen fiery elementals escape from flameweavers like Smoker before. She knew enough to run.

The inferno came. A rush of hot air roared through the tunnel. Some of the slower prisoners were caught in the wash, screaming in pain and terror as they died.

The heat was so great that it smote the tunnel walls, melting the stone, fusing it into molten glass.

The heat of it blasted Myrrima, singed her hair, scalded the back of her legs.

Myrrima could hear Shadoath wailing in pain, her powerful voice, amplified by the reason of many endowments, keening through the night.

Shadoath’s daughter led Jaz, and now she turned and peered toward the inferno, her eyes wide with terror.

Myrrima saw the elemental reflected in her eyes. It rose up on the far side of the wall, forty feet tall. For half a second it still held the form of Smoker, but then it morphed into something more hideous, more brutal, and went stalking toward Shadoath’s palace, slaughtering guards and palace workers with every stride.

No one would be safe, Myrrima knew. The elemental was almost mindless now. It would no longer be guided by Smoker’s intellect. It existed only to consume.

Reeling from pain, Shadoath threw herself into the reflecting pool and rolled, extinguishing the flames.

She had never imagined such torment.

She raised her searing right hand to survey the damage. Her two smallest fingers had burned off completely. Much of her palm was blackened. She hoped that it would heal, but even as she watched, a ragged scab of flesh dropped away, exposing bones.

Her whole torso ached where the fire had ripped into it. She reached down to her right breast, touching it experimentally, and felt nothing at all.

Burned. The flesh was destroyed.

The elemental on the far side of the palace was doing its damage. It lit up the night sky, and by that light, Shadoath knelt on all fours in the reflecting pool and peered at her ruined face.

Her right eye was a milky white orb, nestled in a swollen socket of bloody meat. Her left eye was cloudy at the center. Her right ear was burned away, along with most of her hair.

The flesh of both of her hands was cooked.

But none of that mattered.

For at the moment she was mindless with agony. Gone were all thoughts of revenge or escape or of rescuing her daughter.

Shadoath wished for the release offered by death, but with hundreds of endowments of stamina, death would not come.

Myrrima rushed toward the rangits. One escaped prisoner, a man whose back was lashed and shredded, had found their rangits tied to a tree, and now he struggled to untie one.

“Sir,” Myrrima said, “those are for the children.”

The fellow leapt up at the sound of her voice, terrified, and for a moment Myrrima feared that she would have to fight him for a mount, but he looked at her, at the children, and nodded his head stupidly, then ran toward the woods.

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.