David Farland - Sons of the Oak

“Then I shall hurry on my way,” the Days said. Iome wondered at the use of the word hurry. Was it a subtle warning? The Days turned toward the tower door, looked over her shoulder, and said, “It has been a pleasure knowing you, milady. Your life has been richly lived, and the chronicles will bear witness to your kindness and courage. I wish you well on the roads ahead. May the Glories guard your way and the bright Ones watch your back.”

Fallion worked breathlessly to finish packing in his bedchamber while Jaz did the same. It wasn’t that Fallion had much to pack; it was that he felt excited. He only recalled ever having one real adventure in his life: when he was four, his mother had taken the boys to Heredon. He remembered almost nothing of the trip, but recalled how one morning they had ridden along a lake whose waters were so calm and clear that you could see the fat brook trout swimming far out from shore. The lake seemed to be brimful of mist, and with the way that it escaped in whorls and eddies, Fallion almost imagined that the lake was exhaling. The vapors stole up along the shore and had hung in the air among some stately beech and oaks, their tender leaves a new-budded green.

Their expert driver kept the carriage going slowly and steadily so that Fallion and Jaz could sleep. As the horses plodded silently on a road made quiet by recent rains, Fallion suddenly found himself gaping out the window through the morning mist at a huge boar-a legendary “great boar” of the Dunwood. The creature was enormous; the hump on its shoulders rose almost level with the top of the carriage, and the long dark hair at its chest swept to the ground. It grunted and plowed the fields with its enormous tusks, eating worms and soil and last season’s acorns.

The driver slowed, hoping to pass the creature quietly, for a startled great boar was as likely to charge as to flee. Fallion heard the driver mutter a curse, and suddenly Fallion looked off out the other window and saw more of the beasts coming out of the fog and realized that they had inadvertently driven right into a sounder of the monsters.

The driver pulled the carriage to a halt. For long tense minutes the boars rooted and grunted nearby, until at last one beast came so close that it brushed against a wheel. Its casual touch devastated the carriage; suddenly the axle cracked and the vehicle tilted.

Fallion’s mother had been sitting quietly, but now she acted. The royal carriage had a warhorn in it, for giving calls of distress. The bull’s horn, lacquered in black and gilt with silver, hung on the wall behind Fallion’s head.

Quietly, his mother took the horn down, and cracked the door just a bit. She blew loudly, five short blasts, a sound that hunters made when chasing game.

Suddenly the great boars squealed and thundered away, each lunging in a different direction.

But one huge boar charged straight out of the fog, its snout lowered, and slammed into the carriage. Fallion flew against the far door, which sprung open on impact, and hit the soggy ground. Bits of paneling rained around him, and for a long minute he feared for his life.

He sprawled on the ground, heart pumping, fear choking him.

But in moments all that he could hear was the sound of the great boars thundering over the hard ground, and his heart thumping, and he realized despite his fear that he had never been in real danger: his father had not used his Earth Powers to whisper a warning. If Fallion had been in real danger, his father would have told him.

Now, outside his window, Fallion heard a strange howl. It started like distant thunder, turned into a long catlike yowl, and ended like some bizarre animal cry.

Jaz looked up to the window, worried.

Now, Fallion knew that he was going into real danger, and he had much to prepare. He put his clothes into a bag: a pair of green tunics heavy enough for traveling, a warm woolen robe the color of dark wet wood, boots of supple leather, a cape with a half hood to keep off rain. And that was it.

But as he worked, he had to put up with Humfrey, his pet ferrin. Humfrey was only six months old, and not much larger than a rat. His back was the color of pine needles on the forest floor, his tummy a lighter tan. He had a snout with dark black eyes set forward, like a civet cat’s.

As Fallion and Jaz worked, Humfrey hopped around them, “helping.” The small creature understood that they were going somewhere, so he made a game of packing, too.

Peeping and whistling, he shoved the mummified corpse of a dead mouse into Fallion’s pack, along with a couple of chestnuts that he trilled were “beautiful.” He added a shiny thimble, a silver coin, and a pair of cocoons that Fallion had been saving over the winter in hopes that he might get a butterfly in the spring.

Fallion reminded Jaz, “Don’t forget Mother’s birthday present,” and pulled out a small box of his own, checked to make sure that Humfrey hadn’t gotten into it. Inside was an oval cut from ivory, with his mother’s picture painted in it, from when she was young and gorgeous, filled with endowments of glamour from beautiful young maidens. Fallion had been working for months, carving a tiny, elegant frame out of rosewood to put the picture in. He was nearly finished. He made sure that his cutting tools were still inside the box. Humfrey liked to run off with them.

When he was sure that he had everything, Fallion pushed the box into his bag.

Humfrey hopped up onto the bed and whistled, “Food? Food?”

Fallion didn’t know if the creature wanted food, or if was asking to pack food.

“No food,” Fallion whistled back.

The little ferrin seemed stricken by the statement. It began to tremble, its tiny paws, like dark little hands, clutching and unclutching-ferrin talk for “worry.”

Humfrey made a snarling sound. “Weapons?”

Fallion nodded, and Humfrey leapt under the bed where he kept his hoard of treasures-silk rags and dried apples, old bones to chew on and shiny bits of glass. Fallion rarely dared to look under his bed.

But Humfrey emerged triumphantly with his “weapon”-a steel knitting needle that he had filed to a point-probably using his teeth. He’d decorated it like a lance, tying a bit of bright red horsehair near the tip.

He jumped up on the bed, hissing, “Weapon. Weapon!” Then he leapt about as if he were stabbing imaginary rats.

Fallion reached down, scratched Humfrey on the chin until he calmed, and then went to the blades mounted on the wall above his bed to select a knife. There were many princely weapons there, but he chose a simple one, a long knife that his father had given him, one with a thick blade of steel and a solid handle wrapped with leather.

As he took it from the wall, he marveled at how right it felt in his hand. The blade was perfectly weighted and balanced. For a nine-year-old, it was almost as long as a sword. At the time that his father had given him the blade, a belated gift for his sixth birthday, Fallion had thought it a trivial thing.

It was a custom in many lands for lords to give young princes weapons with which to protect themselves, and Fallion had been gifted with many knives that had greater luster than this one. Even now some were mounted above the bed-fine curved daggers from Kuram with ornate golden scrollwork along the blades and gem-encrusted handles; long warrior’s dirks from Inkarra carved from reaver bone that glimmered like flame-colored ice; and a genuine assassin’s “scorpion” dagger, one whose handle was a scorpion’s body and the tail its blade-complete with a hidden button that would release poison onto the blade.