David Farland: Sons of the Oak

Her little cottage at the edge of the wilds was so… lush. The garden behind the house was lavish for a lone woman, and it was kept behind a tall fence so that her milk goat, which stood in the crook of a low apple tree, could not get the vegetables.

Bushes and trees had been planted around the house to break the wind and offer shelter to birds-bee eaters and sparrows that, like the chickens, cleared the garden of worms and beetles.

Wicker flower baskets hung from the eaves of the cottage, drawing honeybees, and Fallion did not doubt that the widow Huddard knew where the hives lay.

This woman lived in harmony with nature. Her home was a little island paradise surrounded by rocky hills.

Fallion said, “She works hard. Nobody around her works as hard. We’ve seen a hundred cottages along the road, but none like hers. She doesn’t want to raise some man like he was a baby.”

Sir Borenson laughed again.

Waggit agreed, “I suspect that you’re right. The other shacks that we’ve passed were poor indeed. Their owners merely survive. They look at the hard clay, the rocky ground, and don’t have the heart to work it. So they let their sheep and cattle crop the grass short and live off what scraps of meat they can get. But this woman, she thrives on ground that breaks the hearts of lesser men. One widow with the heart of a warlord, forever battling the rocks and clay and cold up on this hillside…” Waggit spoke with a note of finality. The lesson was done.

Fallion asked Waggit, “Did you bring us all of the way up here, just to see one old lady?”

“I didn’t bring you up here,” Waggit said. “Your father did.”

Jaz’s head snapped up. “You saw my da?” he asked eagerly. “When?”

“I didn’t see him,” Waggit said. “I heard the command last night, in my heart. A warning. He told me to bring you boys here.”

A warning? Fallion wondered. Somehow it surprised him that his father had spared him a thought. As far as Fallion knew, his father had forgotten that he even had a pair of sons. Fallion sometimes felt as fatherless as the by-blows that littered the inns down on Candler’s Street.

Fallion wondered if there was more that his father had wanted him to see. Fallion’s father could use his Earth Powers to peer into the hearts of men and see their pasts, their desires. No man alive could know another person or judge their worth like Fallion’s father.

Fallion’s horse ambled forward, nosed a clump of grass by the roadside. Fallion drew reins, but the beast fought him. “Get back,” Fallion growled, pulling hard.

Borenson warned the stallion, “Careful, friend, or the stable-master will have your walnuts.”

All right, Fallion thought, I’ve seen what my father wanted me to see. But why does he want me to see it now?

Then Fallion had it. “With a lot of work, you can thrive in a hard place.” With rising certainty he said, “That is what my father wants me to know. He is sending us to a hard place.”

Borenson and Waggit caught each other’s eyes. A thrill passed between them.

“Damn,” Borenson said, “that boy is perceptive.”

Movement up on the hill drew Fallion’s eye-a shadow flitted like a raven between the trees.

Fallion could not see what had drawn his attention. The wet trunks of the pines were as black as ruin. The forest looked as wild and rugged as Fallion’s father.

He focused on the tree line. A few great oaks sprawled silently along a ridge, offering shade to a pair of brown cattle, while smaller oaks crowded the folds. But still there was no sign of what had drawn his eye, and again Fallion felt uneasy.

Something is there, Fallion realized. Something in the shadows of the trees, watching us-a wight perhaps. The ghost of a shepherd or a woodsman.

The loud bleat of a sheep rode down from the woods above, echoing among the hills in the crisp evening air.

“Time to go,” Borenson said, turning his horse; the others fell in line.

But the image of the cottage lingered, and Fallion asked, “The widow Huddard, she… makes a lot of her own things. She sells milk and vegetables, honey and whatnot?”

“And your question is?” Waggit asked.

“She lives well from her own labors. But I was born a lord. What can I make?”

Fallion thought of the craftsmen at the castle-the armorers, the alewives, the master of the hounds, the dyers of wool. Each jealously guarded the secrets of his trade, and though Fallion suspected that he could master any of those trades, he had no one to teach him.

Waggit smiled with satisfaction. “The common folk manipulate things, ” he said. “Blacksmiths work metal, farmers till the land. That is how they earn their living. But a lord’s art is a greater art: he manipulates people. ”

“Then we are no better than leeches,” Fallion said. “We just live off of others.”

Sir Borenson sounded so angry that his voice came out a near roar. “A good lord earns his keep. He doesn’t just use others, he empowers them. He encourages them. He makes them more than what they could become by themselves.”

Maybe, Fallion thought, but only because they know that he’ll kill them if they don’t do what he says.

With a sly grin, Waggit added, “A lord’s craft can indeed be marvelous. He molds men. Take Sir Borenson here. Left to his own devices, he is but the basest of clay. He has the natural instincts of a…cutthroat-”

“Nay,” Daymorra threw in with a hearty laugh. “A lecher. Left to his own ways, he’d be a lout in an alehouse, peddling the flesh of young women.”

Borenson blushed, the red rising naturally to his face, and laughed. “Why not both? Sounds like a good life to me.”

“But your father turned Borenson into a lawman,” Waggit said. “And there are few better. Captain of the Guard, at one time.”

Fallion gave Borenson a long look. Fallion had heard that Borenson had been powerful indeed-until his Dedicates had been killed. Now the guardsman had no endowments of brawn or of speed or of anything else, and though he had the respect of the other guards, he was the weakest of them all. Why he had not taken new attributes was a mystery that Fallion had not been able to unravel.

Fallion knew that there were dangers in taking endowments of course. Take the brawn from a man, and you become strong, but he becomes so weak that perhaps his heart will fail. Take the grace from a woman, and suddenly you are limber, but maybe her lungs won’t unclench. Take the wit from a man, and you have use of his memory, but you leave an idiot in your wake.

It was a horrible thing to do, taking an attribute from another human being. Fallion’s mother and father had abhorred the deed, and he felt their reluctance. But why had Borenson turned away from it?

Borenson wasn’t a real guard in Fallion’s mind. He acted more like a father than a guard.

Waggit said softly, “The shaping of men is a-”

There was an odd series of percussive booms, as if in the distance up the mountain, lightning struck a dozen times in rapid succession. The sound was not so much heard as felt, a jarring in the marrow.

Waggit fell silent. He’d been about to offer more praise for the Earth King. But he often worried about praising Fallion’s father in front of the boys. Gaborn Val Orden was the first Earth King in two thousand years, and most likely the last that mankind would see for another two thousand. He cast a shadow that covered the whole world, and despite Fallion’s virtues, Waggit knew that the boy could never come close to filling his father’s boots.

Waggit had an odd sensation, glanced up the hill. Almost, he expected to see the Earth King there, Gaborn Val Orden, stepping out from among the shadow of the trees, like a nervous bear into the night. He could nearly taste Gaborn’s scent, as rich as freshly turned soil. Nearby, a cricket began to sing its nightly song of decay.