Sons of the Oak

51

Weeks later, long after the uproar at Garion’s Port died down, Borenson and Myrrima found the house that they had once promised to Rhianna and the children.

The new home lay on the edge of a town called Sweetgrass, fifty-seven miles upriver from the Ends of the Earth. So far inland, the stonewood trees were all but a memory. To each side of the valley, the land rose precipitously into red-rock canyons with their fantastic bluffs sculpted by wind, their hills of petrified sand dunes, and their majestic sandstone arches.

But there in Sweetgrass the hot hill country was still far away, as was the dense forest at the ocean’s edge. Instead a clear river ran down out of the canyons, through rolling hills, to form a rich alluvial plain, and there in the deep soil, grasses grew thick and tall.

Land like this wasn’t to be found anymore on Landesfallen, Borenson was told by a local farmer. There were places that you could homestead, desert hillsides so barren that goats could starve even with fifty acres to forage.

“I already own a piece of land like that,” Borenson had said with a laugh.

But this was rich country, grabbed up by settlers eight hundred years in the past. An old widow owned the homestead, the last in her line, and she could no longer maintain it. The farm had fallen into disrepair, all but her little square garden of flowers and vegetables out by the back porch.

So Borenson took his family to have a look. He had heard many a farmer curse the poor soil on their land back in Mystarria, and so he disregarded the shabby state of the cottage and barns, the fallen stones from the fences.

Instead, he gauged the farm by its soil alone. He took a shovel and went out into the fields and began to dig. The topsoil was rich and black, even to a depth of three feet. No hint of sand or clay or gravel or rock-just rich loam.

Land like this is a treasure greater than gold, he knew. Land like this will feed my children for generations to come.

As he dug, the kids raced along the river and chased up a pair of fat grouse and a herd of wild rangits. Little Erin thrilled to see turtles in the millpond and fat trout in the river.

It was paradise.

So Borenson bought the land with its thatch-roofed cottage; its stone fences and a pair of sway-backed old milk cows; its pond full of perch and pike and singing frogs with a quaint mill there at the river’s edge; its rope swings and rolling green meadows filled with daisies; its orchard with cherry trees and apples, pears and peaches, apricots and almonds, black walnuts and hazelnuts; its vineyard full of fat grapes and the wine press that hadn’t been used in twenty years; its dovecotes and doves; its horse corral where a tabby cat lived; and its old cattle barn where the owls nested.

It was, quite frankly, the kind of place that Borenson had only dreamed about, and though he knew little of farming, the land was fertile enough to be forgiving.

Even a fool like me couldn’t botch it, he thought as he opened the barn door and found a plow.

He looked at the rusty old thing and wondered how to sharpen it.

Much as I would a battle-ax, I guess.

There so far from the coast, the days were free of fog and rain. The sunlight filled the valley each morning like a bowl, so that it seemed to spill out everywhere.

And life grew easy. The children found their smiles and learned to be children once again. It didn’t happen in a day.

There were wars in Heredon and Mystarria, and in various far places.

Borenson heard about it that fall at Hostenfest.

Fallion’s kingdom is slipping away, he thought.

Heredon seemed so far away, it could have been on the moon. And Fallion had been a prince so long ago, it could have been never.

Fallion came home that Hostenfest, as did Draken. Both of them had quit the Gwardeen, giving up their graaks. Fallion’s hair had begun to grow back. It looked only as if it had been cropped short.

“I’m too heavy to ride anymore,” Fallion said, and he went out on the farm and helped bring in the harvest, picking buckets full of apples and laying up a store of winter wheat as if he had never been a Gwardeen.

Unknown to his foster parents, Fallion still kept watch, as he had while serving in the Gwardeen. Sometimes he would climb the hill out behind the house and peer down over the valley. From its height he could see all of the cottages in Sweetgrass, and many of them up and down the river. He’d light a small fire, and by its power he would peer about, into the souls of men.

He could see them, even down in their cottages, their soul-fires burning brightly, guttering like torches; if any of them had borne a shadow, he would have known.

But as the weeks and months dragged on, he realized that there would be nothing to see. The loci feared him. They would stay away.

He did not wonder at his destiny any longer. His father had been the Earth King, the greatest king that the world had known, and Fallion had no desire to try to walk in his father’s footsteps. He did not long to build armies or fight wars or squabble with barons over the price of their taxes or lie awake at night with his mind racing, trying to decide the fairest punishment for some criminal.

I am something different from my father. I am the torch-bearer.

Shadoath was still alive, he knew. He had been too far away from her to burn the locus when he released his light. But he had scarred her.

What his destiny might be, he did not yet know, but he did not fret about it. He left that to Borenson.

He does a good job of it, Fallion thought. The old guardsman was still protective of Fallion, and probably always would be.

Fallion practiced with his weapons for no fewer than three hours per day. He grew more and more skilled, showing blinding speed and more natural talent than any young man should have.

After all, he was still a Son of the Oak.

But he lost some of his drive, his consuming need to be better than his opponents.

I will not win this war with a sword, he knew.

And in time, even he seemed to find his smile. One autumn morning as Myrrima and Talon were busy in the warm kitchen baking apple tarts, he came from hunting for mallards alongside the river, and Myrrima saw him smiling broadly.

“What are you so happy about?” she asked.

“Oh, nothing,” he said.

She looked for a reason, and realized that it was true. He was just happy.

He deserves to be, she thought, wiping a tear from her eye with the corner of her apron.

Rhianna was another story. She didn’t smile for many long months, and often at night she would wake in terror, sweating furiously, so frightened that she could not cry out, or even move, but only lay abed, her teeth chattering.

On such nights, Myrrima would lie down beside her, a comforting arm wrapped around the young woman.

Over the course of the summer the dreams faded, but came back sharply in the fall and through much of the following winter. But by spring they were gone, and by early summer, she seemed to have forgotten the strengi-saats completely.

Myrrima would never have known, but little Erin, who was now seven, came into the house eating some particularly fine-looking cherries, deep crimson and plump. Sage claimed that they were hers, that she had hidden them in the barn in order to save them from the predations of her siblings, but Erin had found them hidden in the hayloft.

In a rage, Sage shouted, “I hope the strengi-saats take you!”

Myrrima had whirled to peer at Rhianna, to see her reaction to such a foul curse. But Rhianna, who was washing dishes, seemed not to have noticed.

As Borenson marshaled Sage out to the shed for punishment, Myrrima told her, “You apologize to your sister, and to Rhianna, too.”

She apologized, but Rhianna seemed baffled by the apology.

Myrrima added her own words of regret, saying, “I’m sorry for what Sage said. I’ve told her never to mention them here in the house again.”

Rhianna seemed distracted and only vaguely alarmed. She didn’t even look up from her work as she replied, “Oh, okay. What’s a strengi-saat?”

Myrrima peered hard at her, astonished. Rhianna still bore scars over her womb, and always would. But she seemed to have totally forgotten what had caused them.

“Maybe it’s better that she forget,” Borenson told Myrrima later that night as they lay in bed. “No one should have to remember that.”

And so Myrrima let it go as completely as Rhianna did. She watched the young woman revel in her beauty. She was the kind that the boys would flock to at festivals. Rhianna’s skin remained clear, and her red hair grew long and flaxen. The fierceness was gone from her eyes now, and only rarely did Myrrima ever see a flash of it. Instead, she seemed to have learned to love, had developed an astonishing ability to feel for others, to be considerate and watchful. And it was Fallion she loved the best.

Of all her features, it was Rhianna’s smile that was the most beautiful. It was broad, and infectious, as was her laugh, and when she smiled, the hearts of young men would skip a beat.

One chilly spring night eight months after they’d moved to Sweetgrass, Borenson had a dream.

He dreamed that he was shoving down the door to the old kitchens, inside the Dedicates’ Keep at Castle Sylvarresta.

He used his warhammer to bash through the locking mechanism.

Inside, two little girls stood with brooms in their hands, as if they had been sweeping the floor. They peered up at him, screaming in terror, but no sound came from their mouths.

Mutes, he realized. They’d given their voices to Raj Ahten.

In the dream, time seemed to slow, and he advanced on the children as if a great weight had descended upon him, horrified to the core of his soul, knowing what he had to do.

And there, at last, he dropped his weapon to the floor, and refused the deed.

He took the girls into his arms and hugged them, as he wished that he had done so long ago.

He woke with a sob, his heart pounding wildly.

In a panic, he threw himself out of bed, fearing that he would retch. It was no dream, after all. It was a memory, a false memory. The girls had been just the first of thousands. The blood of thousands was on his hands.

But in the dream he had refused to kill them.

He felt as if he had made some kind of breakthrough.

He groped through the darkness, moaning in horror at the memory, crawling on the floor, blinded by grief, yet hoping that somehow he had made a transition, hoping that he would not have to relive that slaughter for an eternity.

It had been the first time in days that he’d dreamed of them. Oh, how he wished that he could never dream again.

He reached the front door to the cottage, went out into the yard, and found himself gasping for air beside the well, sick to his stomach and fighting the urge to vomit.

Jaz’s dog, a mutt that had no name, came and peered up at him, perplexed and eager to give comfort.

“It’s okay, dog,” Borenson said.

And so he stood there, leaning against the well, peering out under the cold moonlight, listening to the river as it flowed beneath the hills, and waited for his heart to still.

All was safe on his little farm. All seemed well with the world. There were no assassins from Mystarria. No one knew where the Sons of the Oak might be, or if they did, they did not care.

But the loci still knew that Fallion was their enemy.

So where are they? Borenson worried. Why aren’t they fighting now? Are they really so afraid of him? Or are they plotting something worse?

And then a nagging worry hit him, one that he would chew on for years.

Or maybe they think that they’ve already won?

Borenson admired Fallion, admired and loved him like no other. But always in his memory he heard Asgaroth’s resounding curse: “War shall follow you all of your days, and though the world may applaud your slaughter, you will come to know that each of your victories is mine.”

Those who knew Fallion best considered him to be a quiet and unassuming hero.

But Borenson had seen the destruction after Fallion’s battle at the port of Syndyllian. He’d seen the fire-gutted ships. He knew what kind of damage the boy could wreak.

The loci were said to be cunning and subtle. Are they plotting something more? Borenson wondered. Or do they just leave him alone because they know that they have already won?

Borenson came into the house a few mornings later to see Fallion sitting in front of the hearth, peering into the fire, smiling as if at some secret, a faraway look in his eyes.

“What’s going on?” Borenson asked.

“Trouble,” he said. “There’s trouble ahead.”

“What kind of trouble?” Borenson looked about the house. Myrrima had gone outside to feed the sheep. Most of the little ones were still asleep.

“I remember why I came here,” Fallion said.

“To Landesfallen?”

“To this world.”

Borenson peered into Fallion’s eyes.

Fallion continued. “Once the world was perfect. Once it was whole and complete. But when the One True Master sought to take control, she tried to bind the world under her dominion, and it shattered into a million million worlds, all of them hurtling through space, all of them broken and incomplete, each of them a reflection to some degree of the One True World, shadows, each of them like shards of a broken mirror.”

Borenson knew the legends. He merely nodded.

“Now,” Fallion said, “the shadow worlds have turned. Now they’re coming together, a million million worlds all set to collide at a single point. Here.”

Borenson could not imagine any number so vast, and so he imagined a dozen balls of dirt, like little islands in the sky, all crashing together with explosive force, knocking down mountains, sending seas to hurl beyond their shore. “Everyone will be killed,” he said, unsure if he believed that it were even happening, unsure if it could happen.

“No,” Fallion said. “Not if it happens as it should. Not if the pieces fit together. The world won’t be destroyed. It will be healed. It can be perfect once again.”

“You really think this will happen?” Borenson asked.

Fallion turned his face upward. “I’m going to make it happen.”

Borenson drew back in astonishment, unsure whether to believe the boy. But something inside him knew that Fallion was serious. “When?” he asked.

“Soon. A year or two,” Fallion said. “I must return to Mystarria.” He turned and peered into the hearth, and his eyes seemed to fill with fire. “There’s a wizard at the heart of the world, one who seeks to heal it, a woman. I must find her, warn her of the dangers of what she is doing.”

“Averan?” Borenson asked. He’d never told Fallion about the girl, or anyone else for that matter. Gaborn had warned him not to. The work that she was doing was too dangerous, too important.

“So that’s her name,” Fallion said. “She’s the one that made me what Iam…”

The Heir of the Oak, Borenson realized. More perfect than children born in ages past. More like the Bright Ones of the netherworld.

At midwinter, Borenson learned the truth of what had happened at Shadoath’s Keep. A traveler came upriver, bearing news. The children in Shadoath’s Keep had been rescued, and were being given over to loving homes.

Did Borenson want one?

“No, thank you,” Borenson said. “I’ve got more than I can handle as it is.”

But Borenson dug the details from the stranger, and learned the truth of Fallion’s battle: Fallion had faced Shadoath at the height of her power, and had put her down.

Borenson had once wept for the boy’s lost innocence. Now he found himself weeping in gratitude to learn that the boy had retained it.

“He did not repeat my mistakes,” he told himself over and over.

That was something grand.

It was only three weeks later, in early spring, that Fallion solved the mystery of the death of his father.

From the time that they arrived in Sweetgrass, he’d heard rumors that the Earth King was seen in the area mere days before he died.

Back home in Mystarria, Fallion had dared imagine that his father had been murdered by Asgaroth, and that someday he would avenge him.

So Fallion collected rumors of his father’s whereabouts.

He was delivering eggs to the innkeeper in Sweetgrass, a lean man named Tobias Hobbs, when one of the guests at the inn said, “There’s an oak tree growing up on Bald Mountain, not two days’ walk from here.”

“An oak tree?” some stranger asked. “How would you know?”

And Fallion wondered how he would know indeed. There were stonewood trees down by the sea, and white gums along the river, and king’s pine in the mountains, and leatherwood and other types of trees that Fallion couldn’t even name. But there were no oaks in all of Landesfallen, and Fallion himself could barely remember what they looked like. His only real clue was a button that he kept in an old box, a gold button with the face of a man, his hair and beard made up of oak leaves.

“I’m sure. It’s the only one in all of Landesfallen,” the stranger was saying.

And so, on a hunch, two days later Fallion took a pack and followed the river upstream, past the towns of Mill Creek and Fossil, and then turned inland and climbed Bald Mountain.

He reached the top near sundown, and there discovered the oak tree, a young tree with golden bark, new leaves unfolding in green while only a few tattered brown remained from the previous fall, and boughs that spread wide over the ground, as if to shelter the world beneath.

Fallion circled the tree.

They called him a son of the oak, but he had not seen one in so long that he had almost forgotten how beautiful a tree could be.

My father planted this, he thought. He stood here once, just as I am now.

For Fallion, the tree was a thread that bound him to a father he had never really known.

He looked for a place to sit, so that he could just admire it. Nearby was a tall outcropping of red rock, and he thought that he could lean against it, soak in its sun-drenched warmth like a lizard. He walked toward it, saw a vertical slit of blackness that revealed the presence of a tiny cave.

Fallion peered inside and found a weathered pack on the ground, its leather surface blending into the dust. Mice had nibbled at it, tearing a hole.

Upon the back of it, a leather cord acted as a latch, and a single gold button held it closed. Fallion peered at the button. The image of the green man stared back.

My father’s pack.

He opened it, looked inside. There had been food inside once, grain and herbs, but the mice and bugs had gotten to it.

A leather pouch held a portrait with a silver backing and a glass cover. The picture was painted on ivory, and showed Fallion and Jaz as children with their mother and father, all of them painted side by side. The boys could not have been more than four. They all smiled, grinning so innocently at the future.

Fallion marveled at it, for he did not recall having sat for the painting. Hours of his life, wasted, forgotten.

Beneath the painting was a change of clothes, a razor and mirror, a few coins, and an old leather book.

Fallion opened the book, and saw that it was a journal, containing notes about his father’s travels, the people he had met, the things that he had learned, his hopes and dreams and fears. It was a window into the soul of the world’s greatest king.

There in the shadows, Fallion could not read it. He thought to take it outside, and reached out for support as he rose to his knees. By chance he touched a staff, an oaken walking stick with a brass base, nicely carved. Gems were set in the handle, and runes had been carved along its lengths.

The Wizard Binnesman’s work, Fallion realized.

He took the staff and the book out into the bright sunlight and squinted as he peered around.

Father wouldn’t have left these, Fallion told himself. His body will be nearby.

Behind him was all rock, a sheer rise of petrified sand dunes, the stone cascading down as if to make a stairway into the heavens.

Below was the hillside, covered with sparse grasses.

The only place that a body could be hidden was there beneath the tree.

Fallion took the staff and prodded the old leaves beneath the tree. They formed a mat, brown leaves splotched by dark lichens and mold. Many had gone skeletal, showing only the bones of leaves.

There Fallion struck something round and heavy, and a skull rolled out from the leaves, grayed by age, its walls thinning as it decalcified.

“There you are, Father,” Fallion whispered, picking up the skull.

He prodded some more and found a collection of bones, a few thin ribs, finger bones, and a hip. There was no sign of foul play, no dagger protruding from the back, no arrow in the heart. Just bones.

Finally Fallion understood.

Father had been a wizard, an aging wizard. Just as a flameweaver carried an elemental of flame within him, or one of the wind-driven would unleash a cyclone, something of the earth had to make its way out of his father upon his demise.

Fallion peered out over the valley, the land that he called home. From up here, he could see the river snaking through green and peaceful fields, cottages down below with red-and-white cattle or black sheep dotting the fields. There were orchards and hay fields stretching as far as Fallion could see.

Fallion’s father had not been murdered. He had been old and decrepit, dying.

So he sought out a fertile place, and had planted himself there.

He wanted me to be here, Fallion realized. He wanted me to be where he could watch over me.

Fallion had never really known his own father. At times he had wanted Waggit to be his father, or Borenson, or Stalker. And as such children do, he had learned from each of those men, had taken something of them into himself.

Squatting there in the shade of the oak, Fallion pulled open the book and began to read, determined to become intimate with a father he had never really known.