Sons of the Oak

In the mornings Fallion got up and walked the decks. He climbed the rigging for exercise, and enjoined the other children to follow him. His muscles grew strong, but not large. Instead they felt thin and ropy, as if in the prison he had starved enough so that even now his body fed upon his own flesh, and he wondered if he would ever regain his bulk again.

By day he’d practice harder with his weapons now, his mind returning again and again to Rhianna, to thoughts of how it had been when she died upon the beach. Perhaps she’d been killed and eaten by a strengi-saat, but Fallion feared that she’d been taken instead-carried into the trees and filled with strengi-saat babies, the way that she had been when he first found her.

He tried to act normal, to force smiles when he saw his friends or to laugh when he heard a joke. But the laughter always came too late, sounding hollow; and though his lips might turn upward, there was no smile in his eyes.

Borenson and Myrrima worried about him, as did Captain Stalker. But the one who could perhaps have offered the best comfort was Smoker, and he was gone.

“He’ll get over it in time,” Borenson said. “He was starved. One doesn’t heal from that easily.”

And it was true. The welts around Fallion’s wrists tried to heal, but they scabbed over and became infected. Myrrima washed the festering wounds, but they just seemed to swell the more. Often they would bleed, and four weeks later, when it seemed that the infection had finally subsided, Myrrima had to satisfy herself with the knowledge that the wounds would leave deep and everlasting scars.

But though the scars on Fallion’s wrists had begun to heal, the darkness still called to him, and he found himself longing for oblivion.

It was a few weeks after they left that Myrrima was awakened one night in the hold of the ship.

“Nooooo!” Borenson cried, his voice keening like some animal. He began to thrash about, as if enemies attacked and he was holding them at bay. “Noooo!”

Sage woke at the sound, whimpering, and Myrrima shook Borenson awake, carefully.

He’d been troubled by bad dreams for years, and she’d learned long ago that it was best to leave him asleep, let him thrash and weep until the dreams abated. But with Sage crying and other guests on the ship, she dared not let him sleep.

She shook him and called to him, dragging him from his slumber, and when he woke, he sat at the edge of the bed, trembling. His heart pounded so hard that she could hear its every beat.

“Was it the dream again?” she asked. She leaned up and kissed him on the forehead, then secretly drew a rune with her spittle.

“Yes,” he said, still sobbing, but suddenly seeming to regain control. “Only this time, I dreamed that Valya and Fallion were there.”

He had dreamed of Castle Sylvarresta, long ago. It seemed like a lifetime ago, though the dream was as vivid as ever.

Raj Ahten had taken the castle, and then abandoned it on a ruse, leaving his Dedicates behind. Upon the orders of King Mendellas Orden, Borenson was sent inside to butcher Raj Ahten’s Dedicates. All of them, any of them, including the king’s own son Gaborn, if need be.

Borenson had known that he would have to kill some folk that he had counted as friends, and it was with a heavy heart that he did his duty.

But after slaying the guards and walking into the inner courtyard, he had gone first to the kitchens and bolted the door.

There, staring up at his naked blade in terror were two deaf girls, Dedicates who had given their hearing to Raj Ahten.

It was considered a crime against nature for a lord to take endowments from a child. An adult with enough glamour and voice could beguile a child so easily. For Raj Ahten to have done it was monstrous.

But from Raj Ahten’s point of view it had to have been a seductive choice. What true man would slay a child, any child? An assassin who somehow broke into the deepest sanctuaries of a castle with the intent of slaying Dedicates would find it hard indeed to kill children.

No, a decent man would let the children live, and thus give Raj Ahten a better chance to fight back.

Thus, beyond the walls of stone and the heavy guard, Borenson found one last barrier to his assassin’s blade: his own decency.

He had managed to fight it to a standstill, but he had never conquered it. Indeed, he hoped that he never would.

“The dream was different this time,” Borenson said, his voice ragged. “The girls were there, as in life, but I saw Fallion there, and Rhianna, and Talon and Jaz…” He fell apart, sobbing helplessly. She’d seen the way he had been slashing in his dream, murdering his own children.

“I killed them,” Borenson said. “I killed them all. Just like I did in life- thousands of Dedicates, some that I called friends, some that had feasted with me at their tables. King Sylvarresta was there, grinning like an idiot, as innocent as a child, the scar from his endowments ceremony fresh upon him, and I killed him again. How many times must I kill him before he leaves me in peace?”

He broke down then and sobbed, his voice loud and troubled. He turned and buried his face in a blanket so that other guests of the inn would not hear.

Sage had already gone back to sleep.

A single candle was sputtering beside the bed, giving light to the whole room, and by it, Myrrima looked over the children, to see if they were all asleep.

She saw a pair of bright eyes peering at her, reflecting the light of the candle. It was Fallion, his eyes seeming to glow of their own accord.

Well, Myrrima realized, now he knows the truth: the man who is raising him, who has been all but a father to him, is the man who executed his grandfather.

The man whom all call a hero sobs himself to sleep at night.

I wonder what Fallion thinks of us?

She whispered to Fallion, “Don’t make the mistakes that we have made.”

Then she turned over and held Borenson. But as she did, she worried for Fallion. This was but another scar for the boy to bear.

Fallion sat on the balcony at the back of the ship, between the barrels where he and Rhianna used to hide, just hoping for a bit of peace. Valya sat beside him.

They were peering out the back of the ship, watching the sun descend toward the sea in a molten ball of pink, the clouds overhead looking like blue ashes falling from the skies.

They had not spoken for a long hour, and finally Valya put an arm around Fallion’s shoulders and just hugged him, holding him for long minutes.

“Don’t give in to it,” she begged. “Don’t give in. That’s what my mother wants you to do.”

“What?” Fallion asked.

“She told me not to give you anything-” Valya answered. “No food. No water. No comfort. She said, ‘All that I want is his despair.’”

Fallion had felt despair in the prison, wave upon wave of it. But he’d always held on to some thin hope that he would be released.

Yet suddenly, here on the ship under the bright light of day, it was as if the despair thickened, and he could not escape it.

His mind flashed back to Asgaroth’s prophecy. What had he said? “All of your noblest hopes shall become fuel to fire despair among mankind.”

It was almost as if Asgaroth wanted Fallion to become one of them.

But why despair? he wondered. Do loci feed on despair?

Fallion recalled something that Borenson had once told him. The purpose of every war was to cause despair. “We don’t fight wars for the love of battle,” he’d said. “We fight to cause despair, to force surrender, so that we can enforce our will.”

He’d gone on to explain that most conflicts seldom reached the point where one side took up arms. The costs of marshaling troops, feeding them, sending them off to foreign lands-or worse, defending your own borders and lands-was too prohibitive.

And so other means had been devised. First, diplomacy took place. Grievances were made, petitions filed.

If the problems were not rectified, then the complainant might wage economic warfare, raiding supply trains going into and out of the country, seizing merchant ships, or convincing other nations to suspend trade.

Only as a last resort, after many warnings, did one invade.

Fallion sat in the sunlight, his mind dulled from abuse, and realized that for reasons that he did not understand, Shadoath was waging war upon him.

That alone seemed to spark his rage.

I will not surrender, he told himself. She will surrender to me.

“What will I have to do to cause your mother despair?” Fallion wondered.

Valya laughed. “Just keep on doing what you’re doing?”

“What’s that?”

“Smiling.”

Fallion suddenly realized that he was smiling. Not a happy smile, but a cruel smile, the kind of smile that Borenson carried with him when he went into battle.

He’d found a reason to live: revenge.