Sons of the Oak

That evening after dinner as the children slept, Myrrima took her husband up on deck for a late-night stroll. The winds were light, the evening cool; stars burned down like living coals.

“I caught Fallion talking to that flameweaver today,” she said when they were alone. “I think he suspects what Fallion is.”

“Have you caught Fallion trying to shape flames, set fires?”

“No,” Myrrima said. “But we will soon enough. You saw how he burned away the clouds when we fought Asgaroth, summoning the light?”

“I saw,” Borenson said with an air of resignation. “We knew that this day would come.” He said the words, but he did not feel them. It seemed an irony that Fallion’s father had fought a bitter war against Raj Ahten and his flameweavers, only to have sired a flameweaver of his own.

“It’s a seductive power,” Myrrima said. “Those who use it learn to crave destruction. They yearn to consume.”

“Fallion is a good boy,” Borenson said. “He’ll fight those urges.”

Myrrima’s voice came ragged, “He’ll lose that fight. You know it, and his father knew it.”

Borenson gritted his teeth in determination. Unbidden, he thought of the curse that Asgaroth had laid on Fallion, predicting a future of war and bloodshed. Is that why Fallion was waking to his powers now?

Or was this part of Asgaroth’s plan, to push the boy, force those powers to waken before he was mature enough to handle them?

Borenson had never really known a flameweaver. Oh, he’d fought them in Raj Ahten’s army, and he’d seen a couple of folks demonstrate some small skill at bending flames at summer festivals, but he’d never known one intimately. He’d never tried to raise one.

Gaborn had warned him that this would happen, of course. He’d warned him long ago when he begged Borenson to become Fallion’s protector.

“Give him something to hold on to,” Gaborn had warned. “He won’t always need your sword to protect him. But he’ll need your love and your friendship to protect him from what he can become. He’ll need a father, someone to keep him connected to his humanity, and I won’t be there.”

Borenson stopped and rubbed his temples. Why did I let Gaborn talk me into this?

But he knew the answer. There were some jobs that were just impossible for common men, jobs that would cause them to falter or break. And some combination of stupidity, audacity, and the need to protect others forced Borenson to accept those jobs.

Wearily, he led Myrrima to their bed.

In her dream, Rhianna lay draped over the limb of an elm, the cold moss and bark pressing into her naked flesh. Her clothes were wet and clung to her like damp rags, and her crotch ached from where the strengi-saat had laid its eggs, the big female pressing her ovipositor between Rhianna’s legs, unmindful of the pain or the tearing or the blood or of Rhianna’s screams.

The rape was recent, and Rhianna still hoped for escape. She peered about in the predawn, the light just beginning to wash the stars from heaven, and her breath came in ragged bursts.

She could hear cries in the woods. The cries of other children, the snarling and growls of strengi-saats, like distant thunder.

As she listened, the cries rose all around. North, south, east, and west. She dared not move. Even if she tried to creep away, she knew that they would catch her.

Yet she had to try.

Trembling, almost too frightened to move, she swiveled her head and looked down. The ground was twenty feet below, and she could discern no easy path down, no way to go but to jump.

Better a fast death from a fall, she thought, than a slow one freezing.

With the barest of nudges, she leaned to one side, letting her body slide over the limb. As she began to fall, she twisted in the air, grasping the limb. For a moment she clung, her feet swinging in the air, until she let herself drop.

Wet leaves and detritus cushioned her fall, accompanied by the sound of twigs snapping under her weight, like the bones of mice.

Her legs couldn’t hold the weight, and she fell on her butt, then on her back. The jarring left her hurt, muscles strained to near the snapping point, and she wasn’t sure how fast she would be able to limp away.

Nothing is broken, she told herself hopefully. Nothing is broken.

She climbed to a sitting position, peered through the gloom. There were shadows under the trees. Not the kind of shadows that she was used to, but deeper shadows, ones that moved of their own accord.

The strengi-saats were drawing the light from the air, wrapping themselves in gloom, the way that darkling glories did in the netherworld.

Do they see me? she wondered.

She waited for a brief second, then leapt to her feet and raced to keep up with the rhythm of her skipping heart.

With an endowment of metabolism, she hoped that she could outdistance the monsters.

But had not gone thirty paces when a shadow enveloped her and something hit her from behind, sent her sprawling.

A strengi-saat had her. It held her beneath an immense paw, its claws digging lightly into her back, as it growled deep in its throat.

She heard words in her mind. More than a dream or her imagination. She heard words. “You cannot escape.”

Rhianna bolted upright, found herself in the hold of the ship, felt it gently rocking beneath her.

It had been more than a dream. It was a memory from her time with the strengi-saats, a memory that she knew she would never get free of.

The only thing that hadn’t been real was the strengi-saat’s voice. The creatures had never talked to her, never spoken in her mind.

She had a sudden worry that the creatures still hunted for her. She had escaped, but she worried that it was only for a time.

She wondered even if it was more than a dream. Could it have been a message? Were the strengi-saats capable of Sendings? Could they force messages upon her in her sleep?

She had no idea what the answer might be. Until a week ago, she’d never seen a strengi-saat.

Yet they showed a certain kind of cruel intelligence. They hunted cooperatively, and watched one another’s charges. They attacked only when it was safe.

But there was something else that bothered Rhianna: the strengi-saats talked to one another, growling and grunting and snarling throughout the day-not like birds that rise in the morning to sing in their trees, warning others from their realm. No, this was more like human speech, a near constant banter, exchanges of information. They were teaching one another, Rhianna had felt sure, plotting their conquests, considering their options in ways that other animals could not match.

Rhianna got up, peered about by the light of a single candle. Everyone was asleep, even Myrrima, who hardly ever slept. The Borenson family was lucky. They had a cabin in the hold, the only one set aside for travelers. The other refugee families were forced to huddle among crates, camping on blankets.

Humfrey saw that Rhianna was awake, and the ferrin leapt on her feet, gave a soft whistle, and looked toward the door. He wanted out. Ferrins were nocturnal, and the ratlike creature was wide awake.

Rhianna didn’t think that she would be able to sleep anyway, so she crept from under her blanket, tiptoed to the door, and pushed. It swung silently on leather hinges. She lifted Humfrey and climbed up to the open hatch, under the starlight.

She set the ferrin down, and he scampered off over the deck, peering behind balls of shot, a tiny shadow that weaved in and out of the deeper shadows thrown by the railing, by barrels, and by lifeboats. Rhianna thought that she heard a rat squeak, and then the ferrin shot ahead, hot on its trail, a killer in the night.

She strolled along casually, letting Humfrey have his fun, just looking up at the stars and breathing. She rounded the corner at the back of the boat and heard the thud of a boot and the crackling of bones, followed by a horrible squeal.

“Got ya,” a deep voice snarled, and Rhianna’s heart sank as she realized that someone had hurt the ferrin, probably thinking that it was wild.

She raced a couple of steps, rounded the aftercastle, and saw a lanky young man standing on the deck in the starlight. He had the ferrin in his hands, struggling and squeaking, and as she watched, he gripped it hard, twisting it as if to wring water from a rag.

There was a crackling, and Humfrey struggled no more.

In shock, Rhianna looked up, realized that Streben loomed above her.

He grinned at the ferrin, teeth flashing white in the moonlight, and said, “ ‘Ere now. Cap’n says I’m not to hurt your friend, but he didn’t say nothin’ ’bout you.”

He dropped the ferrin to the deck, stood peering down.

Rhianna didn’t have time for reason. She knew how devastated Fallion would be at the loss of Humfrey. Fallion’s mother and father were both gone within a week, and now this?

And the worst of it was the fear that she felt of Streben. It was cold, unreasoning.

In her mind, he loomed like a great shadow.

Rhianna gave a strangled cry of horror, and Streben turned. He grinned at her, his white teeth suddenly flashing in the starlight.

“Oh, now,” he whispered dangerously. “You shouldn’t ’ave seen that.”

He reached out to grab Rhianna.

A white-hot rage took her. Rhianna did not think about what to do. She didn’t even realize that she had her dirk. It was tucked into the belt behind her back. Her hand found it there.

It was like an extension of her body, and the hard calluses inside her thumb and along her palms gave mute testimony that she was well practiced in its use.

As Streben roughly grabbed her shoulder and pulled her toward him, she lunged, the knife flashing up toward his ribs, piercing through a kidney, sinking so far that she heard the blade click against his backbone.

Streben opened his mouth in surprise. “What? What did you?”

He reached down and felt the blade in his side, and suddenly grappled for her shoulders, as if begging for support.

Rhianna stared in shock at what she’d done as his eyes bulged and his mouth worked soundlessly.

He’s got a locus in him, she thought. He might have killed me.

Her hand grabbed the dirk, again, and she twisted the blade. Hot blood spilled down the runnel over her fingers and onto the deck.

The tall man was losing his battle to stay alive. Rhianna could feel his weight beginning to sag as his legs gave way. With a fury that she didn’t know that she had, Rhianna shoved him. He tried to keep his feet, staggering backward, and hit the railing, then went tumbling over the side and splashed into the water.

Rhianna stood looking down in a daze, watching the V of the backwash behind the ship for signs of movement, but Streben didn’t thrash about or cry for help.

He was gone.

Rhianna had a sudden fear that she might be caught and punished, so she raced to the galley, where she spent more than an hour trying to wash the blood from her hand, and from her blade.

In her mind, she replayed the events, tried to understand what had happened.

She’d been afraid. She was used to fear. Her mother had been running for as long as Rhianna could remember, terrified that her husband might catch her. From the time that Rhianna was born, she’d been warned of Celinor Anders.

And then he had come and brought the strengi-saats. “My pets require a sacrifice,” her father had said. “And you’re it.”

She had never imagined that the heart of a man could be so dark, that his conscience could be so dead.

So he’d given her to his pets, left her for dead.

It was Fallion who had given Rhianna her life back, even as her father tried to take it once again.

Her flight from the castle, her days of hiding in the inn-both had left her sick with fear. And when Streben had grabbed her, she’d just wanted it to end. Not just for her sake, but for Fallion’s, too.

She was confused by what she was beginning to feel for him. Was it love? They were only children, and weren’t supposed to be able to fall in love yet. But she was turning into a woman now, and she felt something that she thought was love. Or was it just gratitude so fierce that it seemed to melt the very marrow of her bones?

Adults don’t believe that children can fall in love, Rhianna knew. They disapprove. But Rhianna knew that her own feelings were just as fierce as any that an adult might feel.

It’s love, she told herself. That’s why I killed Streben. And I’ll not be sorry for it, even if they hang me from the yardarms.

And it seemed to Rhianna that they certainly would hang her. Streben was the captain’s nephew. He had friends on the ship, and she was a stranger. From what she had seen, strangers tended to get little in the way of justice in an unfamiliar town.

But they’ll have to catch me first, Rhianna decided.

There was nowhere to run. If she’d been in a town, it would have been nothing to steal a fast horse and race miles away before dawn.

There in the galley she cleaned herself by candlelight, washed her hands in a bucket of salt water, washed drops of telltale blood from her pants and boots. In the light of a single wavering candle, it was hard to find them all, and she looked again and again. Each time that she thought that she was clean, she found a new dab somewhere.

And she had to hurry, fearful that someone would come in, catch her washing. Daylight was coming. The cooks would be here soon. Twice she heard footfalls as some sailor rushed to the poop deck to relieve himself.

Even getting back down to the hold unnoticed might be impossible. There were chickens down in the hold, and if it got any lighter, when she opened the hatch the roosters would begin to crow. Little Sage had been making a game of it for days, closing the hatch and then opening just to hear the roosters crow. Rhianna needed to leave now.

Worst of all she imagined that Myrrima would be awake when she got back to the cabin. Myrrima, with her endowments of stamina, rarely needed sleep. Not like Borenson, who kept folks awake with his loud snoring.

It was a long, long hour before she finally crept back down to her cabin, stealthily opening the hatch and sneaking to her room, only to find Myrrima sound asleep; it was many hours before Rhianna finally slept herself.